Downspouts: Keeping Water Away from Your Foundation

LESLIE: Eric in North Carolina, you’ve got The Money Pit. What can we help you with?

ERIC: Yeah. I’ve got a downspout coming off the back of my house.

TOM: OK.

ERIC: So it gets a lot of water during a heavy rain and – so, trying to think of a good solution to keep the water away from my foundation; whether to bury the pipe or if there’s another, you know, idea that I hadn’t thought of to keep that water away from the house.

TOM: (overlapping voices) OK. Well, I mean, your two options are either to extend that out with a piece of downspout material but you’re still going to have the water reasonably close. The best option is if you can run it underground through a PVC pipe; a solid PVC pipe.

LESLIE: Not the perforated ones.

TOM: Yeah. Is there an opportunity to discharge that somewhere on the property?

ERIC: Yeah. Well, I’m kind of at an angle, so it always rushes down the back of my house.

TOM: OK.

ERIC: So, yeah, something to that effect I could probably do.

TOM: Yeah, well, what you want to do is – there’s a PVC fitting that’s a square – that’s designed to fit a square leader pipe on one side and then a round four-inch PVC pipe on the other. So it actually transitions between the gutter, leader, the gutter spout and the PVC pipe.

LESLIE: (overlapping voices) And the one you would bury.

TOM: And then you use standard PVC fittings, run it out underground, break it out to daylight somewhere where the water can gush and just run away from your property.

ERIC: OK.

TOM: Alright. And then you won’t have to worry about it anymore. That’s really the best solution.

ERIC: Because someone was telling me about like a rock pit that they did, where the water …

TOM: Yeah, that’s called dry well and it can be effective but I’d much rather see it discharge out to daylight somewhere.

ERIC: OK. OK, great. 

TOM: Because the pit sometimes fills up and then the water …

LESLIE: And then you end up with the same problem.

TOM: Yeah, the water could back up into the crawlspace anyway.

ERIC: Yeah, because it is a lot of water.

TOM: OK?

ERIC: Half the house worth of water. Yeah. Oh, great. Thanks.

TOM: Alright. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.