Gutters play perhaps the most essential role in protecting your house structure. An enormous amount of water falls on a roof during a rainstorm, and without gutters, all that water would fall off your roof around the perimeter of the house and soak in the ground, seeping through foundation cracks into the basement, and weakening soils causing foundation movement. A properly installed gutter system collects that water and routes it to the corners of the house through downspouts where it is discharged on the ground. The pitfall of this setup is that at the corners where the water is discharged, you are actually concentrating the water at a few distinct locations instead of it being naturally distributed around the full perimeter of the house. Draining the water around the perimeter is a bad thing, dumping it in a few specific areas is worse. That’s why the gutters are your best friend and worst enemy: they are doing mighty work until the last step where they discharge at the corners. It’s a mystery to us why contractors, builders, commercial operators — just about everyone – dumps the water at the corners when all that is needed is a 10’ downspout extension. Being a cynic, perhaps all these people are partnered with the basement repair companies! That’s where drainage specialists like us come in. We extend this problematic drainage AWAY from the house structure to sensible areas where the water can be reintroduced into the environment without damaging your house.
