Repainting Rusted Steel Gutters

Before you paint your steel gutters you want to repair any holes or cracks in them.

Repainting rusted steel gutters.

Make sure you spray at a downward angle and rinse thoroughly. After the patch is situated cover it completely with another coat of roofing cement. After your done washing you need to rinse the soap off with your water hose. Then paint with a good quality exterior latex paint.

This became less commonplace however as steel gutters are far more likely to develop problems with rust. The first step is to clean off loose rust and flaking paint and then apply a rust inhibitive primer. Do not paint the interior of vinyl gutters. The plastic putty knife does not scratch aluminum like a metal putty knife or steel wire brush.

When treating rusted gutters small patches of rust can be rubbed down with an emery cloth or some fine sandpaper whilst larger patches should be cleaned up with a stiff wire brush or a wire brush wheel fitted in a drill. Sometimes rust corrosion can eat all the way through galvanized steel gutters. This primer will protect the bare metal almost as though you were replacing the zinc coating. If grime or grease remains use mineral spirits and medium steel wool to remove it.

Once the hole is clean and dry spread roofing cement 1 around the edges of the hole and apply a patch of appropriately sized metal flashing. Scrape off any flaking paint with a plastic putty knife. In either case rub the rust back until you see only clean bare metal. You are now ready to inspect and repair your steel gutter.

Fixing cracks are the easiest. First prepare the surface by rubbing the gutters down with denatured alcohol. Position a stepladder under the gutters. When you want to repaint your gutters you will need to do some extra preparatory work.

Once the bulk of the rust and peeling paint have been removed clean up the surfaces with a dry scrubbing pad. Gutters often used to be made of galvanized steel as it was a very strong and hardy material. Although they probably won t rust aluminum can be punctured more easily than steel gutters. Rusted gutters mean trouble and some gutters seem to rust more readily than others.

For non flat surfaces that the metal scraper can t reach switch to a wire brush to remove the rest of the rust. Tips for repainting gutters. However badly rusted metal areas need more prep work and possibly a special primer. You can use the same process for repairing holes in both steel and aluminum gutters.

If the surface has peeling or soft paint it scratches with a fingernail remove it with a putty knife or a. Move the stepladder as necessary and continue scraping the old loose paint from the entire gutter system. You don t need to get down to bare shiny metal just clean off the flakes and powdery surface rust that prevent paint from adhering. Scrape off all loose flaking and peeling paint.