bagging downspouts

[Scott D.]

What is the proper method of bagging downspouts? What kind of bags work best, what kind of tape to tape it to the downspout, how to dispose of it, etc...

Ive never done it before, but have a hotel Im doing tomorrow and I think bagging would really be a good idea.

Thanks.

[Carlos]

Bagging downspouts...mmm...not sure what you mean by bagging and tape?

Talk to me goose......

[plainpainter]

Carlos - he is refering to catching roof cleaning chems and preventing them from coming down the downspouts.

The way I do it is to purchase those extra strong contractors grade trash bags you buy at home depot or lowe's. And then I use duct tape to tape the bags to the downspouts. I don't tape directly to the downspout - I wrap the bag onto itself - and then tape around tightly so the bag is held tightly in place, yet the tape isn't actually touching the metal.

[Scott D.]

Carlos - he is refering to catching roof cleaning chems and preventing them from coming down the downspouts.

The way I do it is to purchase those extra strong contractors grade trash bags you buy at home depot or lowe's. And then I use duct tape to tape the bags to the downspouts. I don't tape directly to the downspout - I wrap the bag onto itself - and then tape around tightly so the bag is held tightly in place, yet the tape isn't actually touching the metal.

its a tile roof. Do the bags usually fill up quickly? I dont want to have to empty the bags 10 times.

[Johnson]

Dont really know for sure but it depends on how steep the roof is and how much mix you use.
Are you using alot of soap to make your solution stick well? Thus less runoff. Those things will come into play a bit.
I dont bag the downspouts but whenever I do roofs I just notice alot of foam.

[Carlos]

Gotcha...and I suspect the reason for this is to NOT allow the chems down in the gravity flow drain system which ultimately drains out to the curb in front of the house which in turn discharges to a common drain system aka as a sewer drain?

Fair enough...even an old dog can learn a new trick.

Okay, so let me ask this ~ why not just sand bag the hole at the downspout...allow the water and chems to "spill" over at the gutters if you will? Your ground guy is rinsing continuousy from the gutters down making sure that the chems on constantly moving down the house with a final destination into a landscaped area that was totally presoaked with water at the beginning of the job?

[Johnson]

Gotcha...and I suspect the reason for this is to NOT allow the chems down in the gravity flow drain system which ultimately drains out to the curb in front of the house which in turn discharges to a common drain system aka as a sewer drain? Thats correct, but mostly to not let any of the solution to run off into the grass or landscape Around here most people arent to worried about runoff to a drain unless your doing a commercial property.
Fair enough...even an old dog can learn a new trick.

Okay, so let me ask this ~ why not just sand bag the hole at the downspout...allow the water and chems to "spill" over at the gutters if you will? Your ground guy is rinsing continuousy from the gutters down making sure that the chems on constantly moving down the house with a final destination into a landscaped area that was totally presoaked with water at the beginning of the job?

You could do that if you wanted. I just water down the area where the downspout stops to again- prevent the runoff from killing any grass or lanscape. Sometimes I get lucky and the down spout has a corrogated pipe connected to it that runs underground to a low spot away from the property.
That is another thing you could do as well. Connect a piece of that pipe to the down spout and run it away from the house to a different location, instead of using garbage bags, if the lay out of the property allows you to do that. Different stokes. Good luck with what ever you decide to do.

[A-PLUS]

The main reason for bagging the downspouts, is so your mix doesn't soak
into the ground and kill the landscaping at the roots.

I normally stuff a garden hose in the end of the downspout when I arrive to flood the area.

Los, if you sand bag the downspout at the top you are going to have a hell of
mess on the house and making alot of unnessesary work for ground man.

[cleanhoods]

I acually done that before but what i done was take the spout apart and placed a 55 gal trash can to catch run of.It would take longer to rinse the parking lot then just to catch an dispose. If spout is high use trash bags or polly film to direct the flow held on by duck tape>and like was said dont tape on metal tape to plastic tight. Or you can go to lowes and pick up some of the black fex pipe to direct the run of were ever you want a plus for that it is reuseable
Marko

[Scott D.]

Thanks for the replys guys. heres a little more infomration about the job. The down spouts are about every 10 or so feet around the whole building, and it is a tile roof. Most of them empty onto concrete, which is very dirty, and I do not want my ground guy to have to try and dilute it as it is running onto the concrete and I def. dont want it to clean the concrete in streaks.

I know I know, sell the concrete right? Well they have a maintenance guy who does it every year for $200, and he does a pretty good job, so they wont spend the extra money.

Anyways, We did the Hotel today and the bagging worked great. They only filled up maybe 1/5 full and we just dumped them and washed em away.

Marko mentioned using tubing to divert. Here is a link to a company posted by Dave Stauffer for some cool plastic tubing you can just measure how much you need and cut it. http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/pro...565B511CBACBA0