To ensure proper coverage and protection, bury your downspout extension at least 12 inches deep. This depth helps protect the pipe from surface activities and ensures efficient water drainage.
Downspouts should be buried at least a foot deep underground and at least 5 to 10 feet away from your house.
Proper drainage is crucial when it comes to buried downspouts. Without it, water can accumulate and cause a variety of problems. For instance, water can seep into the foundation of your home, causing significant damage over time. This can weaken the structure of your home, and lead to costly repairs.
Water pooling around your downspouts, underground drains, or foundation is one of the most easily spotted signs of a clog in your underground drain. Something is preventing the water from flowing where it needs to be, forcing it to return the way it came in, leading to pooling water.
Burying downspouts improves the aesthetics of your home by hiding the pipes, enhances safety by reducing tripping hazards, and provides effective drainage that prevents water from pooling around your foundation, thus reducing the risk of basement flooding and soil erosion.
A properly installed underground downspout extension consists of an upright PVC pipe that runs into an elbow joint below ground with another length of pipe, at least ten feet long, extending underground away from the house.
The only way to completely prevent underground drains from clogging is preventing any debris from going down there in the first place. If you have under ground drains, it is highly recommended that you have some sort of leaf protection on your gutters or strainers in your downspouts.
One of the most important benefits of installing buried downspouts is protecting your home's foundation from water damage. Improper drainage can result in pooling water that seeps into the ground near the foundation, causing cracks, shifting, and other structural issues over time.
Materials Needed: Solid corrugated drain pipe in 3 in. or 4 in. (at least 15 ft.) Downspout Cleanout.
Many homeowners do not realize that their downspouts run into an underground downspout system, sometimes called a french drain. These underground downspout drains can get clogged as easily as your gutters can with leaves and debris.
Total downspout replacement costs $220 to $625 for 4 to 5 downspouts. Adding new downspouts costs $2 to $4 per linear foot installed. Burying downspouts with a drainage system costs $150 to $350 each. *Cost data is from research and project costs reported by HomeGuide members.
Size of the Gutter Drainage Area: As a rule of thumb, one downspout should be placed every 25-35 linear feet of guttering. Depending on the local climate and rainfall intensity, some homeowners may need more downspouts. Many homeowners add extra downspouts to boost the drainage capacity of their gutters.
Your gutter downspouts should not touch the ground. Otherwise, the rainwater might get backed up in the gutter until it starts overflowing.
By extending the downspout into an underground pipe, you can hide the extension and direct water to a less conspicuous area. Drainage swales. You can also conceal gutter drainage as a landscape swale – a ditch which looks like a creek bed or grassy meadow that allows water to drain away gradually.
On sloped land with clay-rich soil, downspouts should extend at least three feet out from the foundation. On flat land, the Association recommends 10 feet, unless the soil is very sandy, in which case the extender may need to be much longer.
Always vent downspouts at the house to keep buried downspouts from freezing. You can get warm water through that vent in the wintertime if you have a freeze up. Then, if you do freeze up and you have a thaw, the water will come out of these vents.
Buried downspouts don't need a huge slope to be effective, but even a 1% slope allows yard drainage to move through your system. For example, if you go under a sidewalk and then you come up, you just create a sink trap for shingle gravel to be lodged.
Larger downspouts are also less likely to clog. Leaves, twigs, and other debris that might get caught in a smaller downspout can easily pass through a larger one. This not only reduces the frequency of clogs but also diminishes the need for regular cleaning.
As mentioned above, the water should be diverted at least 4 to 6 feet away from the house. If a home has basement walls, it should be at least 6 feet away. The furthest away from the foundation the better. Putting gravel or rocks at the end of the downspout to avoid erosion is a great idea.
Install a concrete or plastic splash block at the end of the pipe to direct flow away from the foundation wall and prevent erosion. If erosion still occurs, place stones along the flow path at the end of the splashguard to protect the underlying soil. The stones should be fist-sized or smaller.
Worked exactly as advertised... rolls out to disperse water away from the foundation... then rolls back up out of the way so that landscaping crews don't run over them! Perfect for my home!
Gutter downspouts should extend a minimum of four feet away from the house; however, they may need to extend much further depending on your soil, the slope of your house and local buildings codes.