Extending Downspouts - Top Tips for Reducing Flood Risk at the Lot Level

[Music] so the first tip is very simple we found that 40% of homes that we've assessed have downspouts if you can believe it that are only 4 inches long that so the downspout comes off of the east Rauf it only it deposits water right at the foundation so during heavy storms you can have hundreds or thousands of litres during really extreme storms coming down at every corner of your home oh right against the foundation try to make its way in through cracks sneak its way into window well slowly infiltrating as well a really simple thing to do to reduce that risk is to get the water away from your home so you just need to extend your downspout by attaching an extension on here ok the recommended distance is 6 feet or 2 meters now if you live very close to someone else you'll have like a drainage ditch in between the homes a swale it's called just extend the downspout into the Swale because that's designed to take water away from your home right into the street or into the backyard drainage ditch ok ok now one thing I want to mention is when we did talk to people they said they had these short downspouts so that it would would not interfere with a lawnmower right so we need people to understand that yes we understand it's challenging to to deal with a lawnmower when you've got these so this is an option that is very lawnmower friendly it's basically a hinged oh right that's oh yeah so it just clips on here when you're done you have to just flip it back down and something really critical we also want to remind people of I see this again and again the people who haven't even extended their downspouts they forget to put screws in so say in the winter when it ices up and starts to expand this can pop off so use the 5 cent screws and it will keep those in place Oh perfect yeah and that's all you need to do ok so that's the that's the first of your three you have today that's right ok yeah and then now what are we gonna be seeing this okay so next we're going to talk about sump pumps okay how to maintain them Oh perfect yeah [Music]

Channel: Intact Centre

Views: 11,470

Rating: 4.7692308 out of 5

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Id: uszMX59zA2I

Length: 2min 39sec (159 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 24 2018