How to Drain Downspout Water Flow Away from a House | This Old House

the first line of defense is keeping you gotta clean so the water can flow down the downspout all right we've got a good working gutter here and it's actually been extended away from the house and that's a great thing imagine all that water concentrated coming down and splashing right there on a foundation could lead to a problem it's actually worse than having no gutters at all exactly so we've extended it we've moved it away from the house and this is great because he's got a 4-foot section on here then the water comes out and this slopes off so that water just comes in and runs away from the house great is our friend here right sometimes you might need a longer piece of pipe a to ten feet to get it out but just get it out long enough the water's going away from the house all right so getting it from the downspout to the extension is done with an elbow to make a bunch of different kinds right this is a classic it just slides right in and then you could attach here this one attaches this way and pulls it away from the house case you had to go to a different direction now these are made out of aluminum yep but there's some alternatives these are plastic and that accordion style yeah they Bend they can go around a corner for the only thing I don't like about these is this shot you really have to add two or three together if you look on the inside you'll see this all ridges in there those ridges can collect debris and clog this part you know we don't want to stop it we've also got these splash blocks how do you feel about these these are good in certain situations now if you have a you can get close to the house the water comes out and it disperses it so it's not concentrated any more but you got to make sure that it's not tip back towards the house it has to be able to run away from the house so these are only gonna work when we have proper grade right okay now here's an extension arm that we found at the Home Center that's pretty clever in this case the extension is easily hidden behind all the plantings in the mulch sometimes those extensions go out onto the lawn in the affixed in place you have to kind of more around them but in this case you can actually just bring the lawn mower up to it it tips right up you mow underneath it and you put it right back down pretty clever yeah well the homeowner did some good things on this corner of the house but out back we got some problems we need to look at it now here's the corner where I found a problem the downspout comes down the homeowner extended it out to this point but you can see when the water comes out it's going to build up and flow onto the driveway in the wintertime it will freeze but also is that water bills up it's going to come back this way see this big drop-off in here all that water is going to flow back down here and rate down on the foundation and could we trade in so good intentions but not the greatest effects but sometimes you can't fight great it's just going towards the house and we don't want to come in here with the big equipment and regrade this whole yard so what do you suggest well fortunately this homeowner is very lucky if you look that great drops right off down there so what I would do is connect this downspout to a solid pipe and just take and run it all the way down under the ground across the driveway it so it flows down the hill not always an option for everybody because sometimes grade never daylight never an opportunity to daylight and then we've got another situation right so then we change tactics I'm gonna try to weep the water down into the ground I would dig a trench oh good eight or ten feet out away from the house yep and in that trench I would line the trench with fabric put some stone and then take a perforated pipe with the holes down put it like this the water will come through go down in the stone and weep into the soil and the fabric is to make sure that we don't get any of the soil into the stones and then others clogs up that's right I wanted to show you something new take a look at this what this is is a black slotted pipe wrapped in fabric in between the fabric in the pipe are all little foam kernels and so this is replacing our pipe stone and fabric it's put in all in one right and it's lightweight we can attach and piece by piece it's just a much more efficient way to do it so this system here or this system here actually allows the water to leach out the length of the pipe that's right what I do is I look at the roof to see how much water's coming off the roof but I think it's going to be a lot of water that the channel itself can't handle I'll put in a drywall mm-hmm you take a look at this drywall it's got slots all around it and no bottom on it right i over dig a hole I put in 3/4 inch stone set this down in put the cover on line the hole with fabric and then between the fabric in the drywall more stone so that water can just leach out and this is gonna be able to handle quite a bit of water yes it is you

Channel: This Old House

Views: 679,964

Rating: 4.7720046 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, gutters, Downspout, rainwater, Away, Flood, floodproof, waterproof, water, Home Repair, Irrigation, Landscaping, roger cook, drainage, landscaping ideas, landscaping for beginners, how to landscape around house, landscaping how to guide

Id: gQXs4n5EUrE

Length: 4min 21sec (261 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 29 2014