Have you been wondering how to run tile or pipe underground to get the water from your gutters away from your house? We put a list together of great articles on how to do this. These articles include methods we would recommend, because there’s of course a right way and wrong way to do everything.
How to Extend a Downspout by This Old House: This is a great article on how to use pvc pipe and drain tile to move the water away from your house.
Rain gutters and downspouts provide an efficient first step in controlling roof runoff. But if the rain or melted snow channeled off the roof isn’t carried far enough away from the house, it will collect against the foundation wall or footing and seep into your basement or crawl space. One surefire way to avoid such water-related problems is to connect the downspouts to a series of buried drainpipes that lead far from the house.
Installing drainage pipe is a straightforward job that any homeowner can handle. It’s typically done in three phases: digging the trench, laying the pipe and backfilling with soil.
The drainage pipe used for extending downspouts is nonperforated Schedule 40 PVC pipe with 4-inches-diameter. Some jobs will also require flexible drainpipe, which is invaluable for getting around obstacles or following uneven terrain. For our installation, we used it to snake around a few large boulders we couldn’t pry out… Read More
Extending Downspouts Underground – Beware the “Pipe to Nowhere” by U.S Waterproofing
The pipe to nowhere comes in several disguises but they all have one thing in common – they create a concentration of storm water on or in the ground around the foundation of a home and cause the basement to seep water through any one (or more) of a variety of openings.
There’s the “looks good above the ground” pipe to nowhere that gives the appearance of an underground downspout extension but is nothing more than a piece of pipe sticking out of the ground.
One local homeowner with a concrete block foundation, for example, had downspouts running into professionally-installed PVC pipes that led into the ground. When these “extensions” were dug up, they turned out to be straight lengths of pipe that extended 2 feet into the soil and stopped. They went literally nowhere but caused the soil to be oversaturated and the basement walls to seep… Read More
Installing Downspout Drain Lines by AskTheBuilder.com
If you are allowed to drain your stormwater on your own lot, do so as far away from your home as possible. Try to pipe all water to a low point away from your home. Do not drain more water to a point on your lot than would have ended up there naturally before your home was built. Simply keep in mind where the water is falling on the roof and where that water would drain if your house had never been built. If you pipe the water where it used to go, you should not harm any of your surrounding neighbors.
Inline popup valves do a good job of allowing rainwater to discharge onto your property, so long as you are allowed to drain the stormwater on your property. Try to strategically place them where they will do the most good for your vegetation.
An invaluable tool that will come in handy in future years is a collection of photos that are shot as the downspout piping is being installed. If you stand back and include parts of the house in the photos and place shovels or other objects in the photos for scale, these prints will help you locate the pipes in the future. Over time it is very easy to forget where hidden pipes pass in the ground… Read More
