One of the first items of due diligence for the home groundwater drainage contractor, and the homeowner as well, is to review the health of the gutter system that vents the roof water from your home. The gutter system can many times be the weakest link in the overall home groundwater drainage system. Inspect gutters every 6 months.
Look for areas on the gutter system that are leaking. Usually you will see leaking gutters during the rains. Walk outside in the rain and look up. Are the gutters overflowing in any areas due to leaves and debris that is clogging them? Clean gutters every 3 months approximately for best performance.
Avoid using gutter helmet types of covers as they have a tendency to run the water right off the edge of the home during hard rains. The helmet type gutter guards may seem like the coolest thing since ice cream, but in practice they restrict the amount of water that can enter the gutter when hard rains fall. The opening in the gutter width is reduced substantially. They work fine when the flow of roof water is low and the water can slowly pull itself around the round front of the guard into the gutter. It works kind of like tipping a glass of water slowly and watching the overflow run down the side of the glass instead of away from the glass to the desired location.
Inspect your gutters for gutter spikes that are popping out from the facia board to which they are nailed. The gutter spikes should firmly penetrate the ends of the rafter tails on the back of the facia board at the edge of your overhang, or soffett.
Inspect the ground area directly under the edge of the gutter for a drip line that will form if your gutter system is overflowing during hard rains. If the gutter system is overflowing and the gutter is tilted downward away from the roof, you may want to have them hung in a more vertical way or replaced all together. Make sure the gutters are hung to slope the water in the direction that was originally intended, which is to the downspout. Inspect the gutters and downspouts to determine if they are corroded, leaking or separated from the other sections of gutter or downspout. Have a contractor with a gutter maker come out and fabricate new sections of gutter to be installed as one piece without joints where ever possible.
Use a gutter screen type of gutter guard that arches upward from the gutter to keep leaves from clogging the gutters. Use k-5 or k-6 gutters rather than old style gutters that are not as wide as 5 or 6 inches. Use downspouts that are appropriately sized for the gutter system, not the round pipe style that are much smaller. Vent the downspouts into 3″ abs rain drain discharges. The 3″ abs may be connected to flexible solid pipe away from the home for the twists and turns required of hand excavated french drains used to remove roof water and also groundwater with a perforated pipe in the hand excavated french drain.
Last but not least, do not put so many layers of roofing on that the edge of the roof sits above the gutter which makes the roof water run right off the roof. Sight the edge of the roof line and you will see if multiple roofing layers on your roof actually creates a stream of water that runs over the gutters in hard rains. Gutters and the role that they play in your home groundwater drainage cannot be under estimated in their importance to the removal of rainwater from your home. If these items of importance are overlooked and neglected, you will be in for an expensive repair or groundwater drainage solution project.
Install hand excavated french drains and create a splash block of compacted dirt and clay sloping away from the foundation wall to act as insurance in the event one of the gutter problems happens when you are not able to see what is happening. The splash block will slope rainwater to the hand excavated french drain before the rainwater becomes a groundwater removal problem and prior to the groundwater saturating and creating hydrostatic pressure on the homes foundation which causes leaking into basements and crawlspaces.
The removal of groundwater from the foundation area, no matter how it got there, is the most important item of due diligence to prevent groundwater from entering crawlspaces or basements. Home groundwater solutions can be accomplished by the homeowner as well, preventing the home drainage problems caused by groundwater rather than dealing with the home groundwater drainage problem after it is created. As they say, “a stitch in time saves nine”.