Downspout Drainage in Lancaster, PA

Most wet basements we see start at a downspout. A roof sheds a lot of water in a short storm, and if the downspout dumps it beside the foundation, that water has one easy place to go. We fix downspout drainage across Lancaster and the surrounding towns, from simple extensions to buried lines that carry water out to daylight.

Why the downspout is usually the first thing to check

Your gutters collect water from the whole roof and send it to a handful of downspouts. Each one carries a concentrated stream. When that stream lands a foot from the house, it soaks the backfill soil around the foundation. That soil was dug out and loosely refilled when the house was built, so it takes on water faster than the undisturbed ground further out.

Once the backfill is saturated, water presses against the foundation wall and finds the cracks, the tie holes and the joint between the wall and the floor. That is why a basement can stay dry in a light drizzle and then show a wet corner after a heavy afternoon storm. Before anyone talks about waterproofing or a French drain, it makes sense to look at where the roof water is going. Sometimes the fix is a few feet of pipe.

Signs your downspouts are causing trouble

You can check most of this yourself on a rainy day with an umbrella and a few minutes. Walk the outside of the house while it is raining hard and watch each downspout.

Indoors, look for patterns. If the wet spot in the basement lines up with a downspout on the outside wall, that is a strong clue.

• Water pooling at the base of a downspout instead of flowing away
• A trench or bare patch worn into the mulch or lawn below the outlet
• Splash blocks that have tipped, sunk or slid back toward the wall
• Damp or stained basement walls in the corner nearest a downspout
• Soil that has settled into a low spot against the foundation
• Gutters overflowing at the corner even though the downspout looks clear
• A buried pipe that gurgles, backs up at the top or never seems to empty

What usually goes wrong

The most common problem is the simplest: the outlet is too close to the house. A short elbow and a plastic splash block move water a couple of feet at best, and on flat or back-sloped ground it runs straight back.

The second is a buried line that has stopped working. Many homes have downspouts that drop into a pipe in the ground. Over the years these lines fill with roof grit, leaves and roots. Some were never pitched properly, so water sits in a low section. Others were connected to an old clay tile or a dry well that has silted up. From the surface everything looks fine, but the water is backing up and soaking the ground at the base of the downspout, which is worse than having no pipe at all.

The third is grading. If the soil around the house slopes toward the foundation, even a good extension can only do so much. Patios, walkways and driveways that have settled toward the house can direct water right back to the wall.

Repair, extend or bury: choosing the right fix

We try to use the least work that will actually solve the problem. Here is roughly how we think about it.

An above-ground extension is fine where the ground slopes away and the pipe will not be in the way of a mower or a walkway. It is inexpensive and easy to see when something is wrong. The downside is that it gets kicked, crushed and moved.

A buried line makes sense when you need to carry water further, cross a lawn or get past a walkway. We run solid pipe with steady pitch to a point where the water can safely come out, usually a pop-up emitter in the lawn or an open outlet at a lower part of the yard. Solid pipe matters here. Perforated pipe leaks water along the way, often right next to the house where you least want it.

If you already have a buried line, we check it before replacing it. A clogged line can sometimes be flushed or cleared. A crushed, root-filled or badly pitched line usually needs to be dug up and relaid. If the downspout problem is part of a bigger water issue, such as a yard that holds water or a basement that leaks even with the roof water handled, we will say so and talk through grading, a French drain or interior work as separate steps.

What a visit involves

We start by walking the whole house, not only the downspout you called about. We look at the gutters, every downspout, where each one discharges, the slope of the ground and any low spots where water collects.

If there are buried lines, we run water into them and watch where it goes. Often we will use a hose at the top of the downspout and see whether it comes out the other end, how fast, and whether it backs up. Where it helps, we look inside the line with a camera to see breaks or roots.

Inside, we check the basement wall nearest any suspect downspout for staining, efflorescence or damp. Then we explain what we found in plain terms: which downspouts are fine, which need work, what we would do and why. You decide what you want done. We call before digging near utilities and we put the lawn back as neatly as we can when the work is finished.

Downspout drainage in Lancaster homes

Lancaster has a wide mix of houses, and each type has its own downspout habits. Older brick rowhomes in the city often have downspouts that drop straight into old terracotta or cast iron lines under the sidewalk. Those lines are well past their working life in many cases, and when they fail the water ends up in the basement or under the front steps. On attached homes there is also less room to run water away, so the routing takes more thought.

Farmhouses and older stone-foundation homes in the surrounding townships tend to have fieldstone or rubble walls that let water through more easily than poured concrete. Keeping roof water well away matters more on those walls. Newer developments usually have poured or block foundations and buried downspout lines installed by the builder. Those lines were sometimes put in quickly and are a common source of trouble a decade or two later.

Much of Lancaster County sits on limestone, and soil over limestone can wash out or settle when a lot of water is concentrated in one place. That is one more reason not to dump roof water into the same spot next to the house, storm after storm. Summer thunderstorms and spring rain on half-frozen ground both put a heavy load on gutters in a short time, so a system that copes with a steady drizzle may not cope with a real downpour.

Whether you are in the city or out in Lititz, Manheim or Willow Street, the goal is the same. Get the water off the roof, into the downspout and far enough from the house that it stays out of the basement.