Autumn Maintenance Projects: Spotlight on Gutters and Downspouts.

The most significant long-term threat to the stability of your foundation is water intrusion. And so, as the rains begin we all need to be sure that the water that falls onto our roofs gets taken away from the foundation. It’s still amazing to me how many homes I see where the water is pouring from the downspout right next to the foundation. It’s such an easy thing to fix, and such an expensive problem if left unfixed! To keep water away from the foundation, you need something more than an elbow at the bottom of a downspout. At least you should place a concrete splash block under the end of the downspout. The quick bit of insurance against a wet basement or crawl space is to add a 3- or 4-foot extension cut from a length of downspout. A splash block placed underneath the extension will convey water even farther from the foundation. However, in our area where we have months of dry weather at a time, many homeowners choose not to have the extensions in place all year. Solid pieces of drainage pipes attached with the properly shaped and connected fittings can be added on seasonally—but they won’t do much good if you leave them in the garage or basement!

Obviously those are the "quick and dirty" approaches to dealing with downspout water. What all houses need are drainage systems, including a permanent attachment of downspouts to solid ABS pipe installed in a French drain, designed with proper use of gravity to take the water from around the perimeter of your home out to the street where it flows into the storm system.

However, there's another Green approach which is gaining popularity, especially as we experience another year of drought. Capturing and storing the water from your gutters and using it during the dry seasons to water your garden makes tremendous sense. More about that in a future article!

Back to the Basics: Cleaning of gutters is a necessary evil, to assure that water doesn’t just accumulate in the gutters and then leak down walls, or damage fascia boards. Don’t forget to clean out any bends in downspouts to assure that the water is properly carried away. Most hardware stores carry a wonderful, simple tool called a gutter scoop. Often made of orange plastic, they have a handle and an extended scoop made just to fit in gutters. For another approach to keeping your gutters clean, you might consider Gutter Guards.

One of the best labor-saving gutter options that’s been gaining a satisfied following in recent years is a kind of perforated gutter cover that fits snugly overtop the gutter trough. The concept is that rainwater flows in, but leafs and twigs cannot.

Also dubbed gutter guards or leaf guards, the covers additionally keep out nesting birds, squirrels and rodents, which find the lofty cavities highly desirable home sites.

Despite the fact that a complete gutter-and-guard package costs roughly twice as much as an old-fashioned aluminum or vinyl system without covers, they are being installed in about 20% of all gutter systems today. The benefits in maintenance time and labor clearly outweigh the additional costs.

Your existing gutters can be retrofitted, however, if you don’t feel ready to shell out to replace your entire gutter system. So, that’s good news, too.

All the same, gutter covers aren’t the utter end of gutter maintenance. Even the best will collect shingle grit, and dust that turns to mud. They’ll need flushing, as necessary, which means occasional inspection.

Best case, the covers will sharply reduce the volume of debris that gets into gutter troughs. And THAT will reliably reduce a big part of your legitimate concern about gutter-source water damage to fascia boards, exterior siding, interior drywall, paint, basement and foundation, as well as to the roof itself.

One source of further information about gutter guards is a company that sells such products, Amerimax. You can visit their website at http://www.amerimax.com/guards.htm