John Occhipinti from Hempstead (NY) Fire sent in this picture of another interesting installation. This picture was actually taken in Manilla, Iowa by an architect friend of his. (Just for clarification, he did not design this.) Apparently each gutter on the second floor of this home was installed like this, possibly to eliminate the amount of down spouts. Now from our stand point, a light weight aluminum gutter is not difficult to remove, it would just be irritating. If we needed to get in or out in a hurry it might be one of those things that slows us down just enough to make a bad situation worse. And besides, it looks ridiculous.
18 thoughts on “In the Gutter”
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It does indeed look tacky…downspouts would look better. It looks as if this window has some sort of roofed section below it (possibly a porch?) so it would be a decent escape window, but if this problem wasn’t identified early it could cause a hang up on a window bail. If all gutters on the house are like this, then it needs to be identified by the RIT/FAST/RIC (whatever you want to call it) team as the ladders are thrown and thus needs to be removed. While this narrow window may be a little small for us larger firefighters, if this was on a normal window it could defiantly hang up an airpack.
In either case, this needs to be addressed by the persons throwing ladders. The RIT team cannot wait for a firefighter to need to bail to realize that there is a possible obstruction in the way…so this should be treated like bars on the window and removed during preliminary RIT ops.
The city where I live wants to stop rainwater from entering the storm drains. They want it dumped on the ground or into rain barrels. My house has 4 dormers like the one shown and the troughs are divided so I would need 6 rain barrels. I could connect all the down spouts (crossing windows and doors) or…..all the troughs (just blocking windows) as shown.
Either way….I ain’t do’in it.
🙂
Side bar: from a firefighter’s “size-up” point of view this deliberately blocked window may indicate that the occupant of that room may be a teenage girl…who’s poor dad is trying to keep a leash on.
Keep her…”out of the gutter” as it were. 😉
Your city wants to keep rainwater out of the sewers? First… why?? And more importantly how do they expect to manage that? Don’t you have storm drains along the curbs for the run-off to go into?
TxFF, we ffs can’t hope to undertand the superior intelligence and logic of politicians.
We do have storm drains but those are for rain water from a err….storm.
Evidently, rain water (from a storm) that has landed on your roof is no longer rain water, it’s roof water and it has no place in a storm sewer.
😉
Apparently the rain that falls on a roof and gets directed into the storms drains overtaxes the system, whereas if the house didn’t exist and the rain fell right on the ground everything would be just peachy.
Clear as mud.
Ok, the trough is outta the way.
What’s that smell?
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e193/funepics/noguttersnoglory.jpg
Have a good weekend guys!
It’s a casement window. I’ll bet it doesn’t open all the way with that abortion in the way. Whoever designed that and convinced the homeowner it would look okay should be drawn and quartered. Jesus Christ that is horrid.
FitsSiks, the water runoff and management issue is a matter of timing and volume along with permeable vs non permeable structures…..hope that helps.
WTF!
i’ve been to manilla iowa, and let me asure you this is one of the least wierd things about the town. 🙂
I would just donkey kick the gutter out of the way. Then I would pull the electric meter.
don’t forget to donkey punch the daughter once your in..you guys are frikin hilarious!! pretty weird set up on that house!
With all of the talk of Donkeys, it bring up this question: Where does the donkey runoff go? Is that allowed in the storm drains?
I don’t think anyone mentioned where the gutter brackets were installed. Tell me that that’s up to code, too…
Storm sewers and sewage sewers are two different things. The water authority does not want to pay to have rain processed as raw sewage, nor does anyone want raw sewage run into lakes, streams and rivers. Hence the need for storm sewers, retention ponds and rain barrels. any more confusion?
the window could open in!!!
This is another example of why we all need to do our own personal size up. If things go bad and you need to bail, those few seconds you took looking at the building could save your life.
I am actually the friend of John Occhipinti who took this photo and some of your assumptions as to why the gutters were done this way are pretty funny. I’m not even sure why they were done this way but after talking with people I know that live in Manilla, it could be as simple as laziness. Remember, building/fire codes are probably not enforced as much as they are in bigger cities. These installers probably didn’t feel like cutting two sections. The second section of gutter isn’t even necessary here because there is a roof below the window to the left. It is, most likely, just laziness and, YES, all the windows on the second floor are like this.