My wife I just purchase a 100 year old farm house in need of a LOT of work. It has old box gutters that are rotted through & have rotted out the wooden soffits underneath. Does anyone have a cheap easy fix to repair these? I was thinking of getting some thin 4'x8' aluminum sheet metal & tucking 2' up under my shingles & sloping the other 2' over the box gutter, maybe a 2/12 pitch or less & turning down a drip edge over the soffit & installing normal gutters. I hope I painted a clear picture of what I want to do. My only concern with that is sealing the sheet metal joints well enough so I won't have to worry much about them leaking. Any ideas on how to seal the joints well, or better ideas for fixing the box gutters is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Dan

 

I'm not sure how you plan to "tuck" this aluminum under the shingles for two feet. This will involve removing the shingles and replacing them which depending on the condition of the shingles, might result in damaging the shingles.

If the soffit is rotten, I would suspect the rot is also all along the fascia and this would affect placing any gutters as you wouldn't have a solid surface to securly fasten the gutters.

You really need to tear out all of the rotten material and replace the damaged stuff with new material.

Your plan to just cover over the rot with aluminum will just delay the inevitable and probably not for that long anyway.

 

Sorry should have stated that I am removing ALL of the rotten wood prior to fixing the gutters. I figure I will have to reshingle above the aluminum that will get tucked, but it's cheaper than reshingling the whole roof. The current shingles look in pretty good shape.

Any advice on sealing the sheet joints? Will tarring them together with screws to secure the sheet metal & then tarring over the seam real good be enough?