The Acne Guide To Removing Cats and Dogs From Your Roof
Have you noticed? The Balinese don’t like rain, they
don’t drink rainwater and they certainly don’t
like it on their heads. It is something to do with picking
up evil spirits on it’s way from the sky. I picked up
an evil spirit the other day, it was supposed to be gin and
tonic but I suspect it was a particularly evil batch of Arak.
“Arak attack” is of course the name of a condition
not a drink. Arak does have it’s uses though - it is
very good for cleaning carburettors.
Have you also noticed, the Balinese don’t have gutters.
The logic is, in fact, sound. Get the water off the roof straight
onto the ground and organise for it to run away somewhere
out of the way. This is also good because much of it ends
up back in the water table.
It is a bit of a pain though isn’t it. It starts peeing
down, cats and dogs turn into elephants and whales and as
Mr Murphy would predict you are just about to leave for work
with papers clutched under your arm. You wait with a sheet
of water running off the roof in front of you, it doesn’t
slow so you make a dash for the car. Damn, where is the key
on the key ring? Then the key just won’t go into the
lock. You flop, wet through, on the car seat and you stare
out through the windscreen as the rain eases off. The soggy
papers clutched under you arm are starting to run ink onto
your shirt. The worst bit was that initial drenching as you
plunged through the sheet of water coming off the roof.
A gutter can be a good idea.
You can get plastic gutters and downpipes here in Bali with
all the fittings (apart from good brackets but we’ll
come to that). Prices are very reasonable and installation
is not difficult but does need to be planned.
Be careful because most Indonesian people know very little
about gutters. Unfortunately the fact that water does not
flow uphill has never been pointed out to Indonesians. Have
you noticed how much time and effort goes into building those
drainage channels along the sides of the roads, and have you
also noticed how the bottoms of the channels don’t always
flow downhill, they go up and down with the surface of the
road?
I can’t count the number of times I have climbed on
a roof to find out why water is coming in to find a valley
gutter between two roofs which is lower in the middle than
at the end where the water is supposed to run out.
Gutters come in a round semi circular section and square box
gutters. Two sizes are available in both the round and square
section and the size you chose is dependent on the roof area
that will flow into it. Don’t underestimate how many
cats and dogs will fall out of the sky in a particularly fertile
wet season. You should also make sure the downpipe can take
a full sized cat.
A technical point. Round gutters and round pipes such as sewers
are known as “self cleaning”. It works like this
- as the amount of water flowing decreases it falls to a lower
level and is concentrated in a smaller width in the pipe,
the cross section of flow reduces so the speed of flow down
the pipe or gutter is maintained thereby helping to wash things
away. In a flat bottomed gutter this is not the case. As the
amount of water flowing falls it still has to fill the same
width of gutter so the speed of flow drops and anything being
washed down falls to the bottom and is left. The Victorians
understood this principle well when building sewerage systems
in Britain.
Having said this I would always recommend the square box section
gutter for use in Bali. Why? Because you can get good brackets
for them.
The brackets for box section gutters are good solid plastic
that hold the gutter firmly in place and can take a reasonable
load. The brackets for round gutters, on the other hand, are
flimsy sheet steel. They rust immediately so they quickly
look a mess. Worse they bend very easily so one dose of cats
and dogs and your gutters sag in the middle and the water
doesn’t drain away properly. You may be interested to
know that round gutters are being heavily promoted by the
“Denpasar Save The Mosquito Society”.
You also need enough brackets. The Indonesian habit of “saving
a bit of money for my poor old mum” means that local
contractors will agree to put up a gutter but leave out most
of the brackets only putting enough brackets up to hold the
thing in dry weather. Cats and dogs, and water for that matter,
are very heavy. You must insist that brackets are placed as
close as 60 cms apart (ok, ok, two feet to you imperialists,
why don’t you get a life, a metric one that is, join
the real world....... I do like the inch though. It is such
well proportioned thing isn’t it. Even it’s name
has a rather nice ring to it. I don’t really like centimetres
very much, in fact I hate the horrible little things but we
must move on. I stopped using a bone to bang in a nail a long
time ago.)
You must plan the slope of a gutter along with the placement
of downpipes. A slope of 1% to 2% is fine (as long as you
have enough brackets to keep it firmly in place) and again
enough downpipes to suit the area of roof being drained.
You might consider doing the island a favour by not putting
your rainwater into the drains but instead returning it to
the water table either through a soak pit or an old well.
It is clean, fresh, sterile water after all. Believe it or
not if development continues at it’s present pace Bali
will have a water shortage in the not too distant future.
A final word of advice, paint your plastic gutters, brackets
and downpipes. Ultra violet light from the sun damages the
plastic. You may see that old pipes can become faded and the
plastic brittle when exposed continually to sunlight. The
grey plastic has a pigment in it to protect it from UV but
the sun is intense here and you will extend the life of the
plastic if you paint it.
Now where did I put that evil spirit?
Phil Wilson
Phil Wilson a project director for Focus Indonesia and a partner
of MrFixit property maintenance services. Opinions expressed
are those of Phil Wilson. If you have any questions or comments
he can be contacted at the office on 0361 288 789 or through
the website at www.mrfixitbali.com
