Where Should Downspout Water Go? Check the Last Three Feet

Where should downspout water go? Four to six feet out from the foundation, released onto ground that slopes away from the house. Most houses in St. Paul and Minneapolis do not do that. The downspout ends in an elbow about six inches off the ground, pointed more or less at the wall, and everything the roof collects lands in one spot beside the basement.

Gutters get the attention and the last three feet get none, though that is the part that decides whether the gutter did anything at all.

Why the ground end matters more than the trough

The arithmetic is worth seeing. A thousand square feet of roof in a one inch rain sheds roughly 600 gallons of water. Split between four downspouts, that is about 150 gallons out of each one, usually inside an hour or two, all of it arriving in the same square foot of dirt.

A clean gutter moves that water sideways to the downspout. If the downspout then puts it against the foundation, the water has been moved twenty feet along the roofline and zero feet away from the house. Clearing the gutters is still worth doing, and what a gutter cleaning should include covers why the downspouts are the half that actually clogs. But a clear downspout pointed the wrong way is a faster hose into the same bad place.

How to check yours in five minutes

The next steady rain is the best time, because you can watch it. A garden hose run into the gutter at the far end works too. Walk the perimeter and look at the ground under each spout:

• A trench, a bare spot, or mulch washed into a fan shape means the water is landing there and staying.
• Splash marks and dirt streaks up the siding mean it is hitting hard and bouncing back onto the wall.
• Soil that has settled into a dish against the foundation means water has been running toward the house, not away, possibly for years.
• Green growth or moss at the base of the wall on one side of the house is usually one bad downspout, not a whole-house problem.

Then look at the basement wall on that same side. A damp patch or a white mineral bloom low on the concrete lines up with the downspout outside more often than people expect.

The fix is usually cheap and needs no ladder

A flexible extension that clamps onto the existing elbow is the simplest version, and any hardware store carries them. A rigid extension made from a length of downspout and a second elbow lasts longer. Either one is a ground-level job.

One thing people get wrong: a splash block is not drainage. It keeps the water from digging a hole, which is useful, but it leaves the water within a foot of the wall. If the soil there slopes back toward the house, a splash block just makes a neater puddle.

Roll-out sleeves that unfurl under pressure are fine for a back corner nobody walks through. Buried lines with a pop-up emitter out in the yard are tidier and much more expensive, and here they have to sit deep enough that the emitter is not the first thing to freeze.

The Minnesota part: ice, and where people walk

Everything above is true anywhere. Here it comes with a second problem. Any downspout that discharges across a walk, a driveway, a set of steps, or the path from the car to the door is building a sheet of ice from November to March. Water runs during a thaw or a sunny afternoon, crosses the concrete, and freezes again that night. By February it is a mound.

So aim the discharge away from anything anybody walks on, even if that means a longer extension or turning the outlet ninety degrees. It matters most at the front step and the service door.

Flexible extensions are worth pulling off before the deep freeze. They crack when they are full of ice and somebody steps on them, and a frozen extension dams the downspout behind it. Getting the gutters clear before freeze-up is the same errand, and when to clean gutters in the Twin Cities covers that timing. If the leaves are down and the gutters are not done, gutter cleaning in St. Paul is the one to book before the ground hardens.

When it is not a downspout problem

Some of this is out of reach of an extension. Ground that slopes toward the house in every direction is a grading job. A buried line that has collapsed or filled with roots is a drainage job. Water coming up through a basement floor rather than down a wall is not roof water at all. Those belong to a drainage or foundation contractor, and so do window wells that fill up and stay full after they have been cleaned out.

What a gutter cleaning can tell you is where the water goes. The downspouts get flushed and the discharge end checked, so you learn whether yours is clear and where it empties. That is often the whole diagnosis, and the fix after it is a hardware store trip rather than a contractor.

Want the gutters cleared and the downspouts flushed before freeze-up? Get a free quote or book a visit.