Bountiful sits against the bench in Davis County, and a lot of its lots came with slope built in. That is an advantage most flat-ground homeowners would take in a…
Bountiful sits against the bench in Davis County, and a lot of its lots came with slope built in. That is an advantage most flat-ground homeowners would take in a second, because gravity is the cheapest thing you can put to work on a house. The catch is that the slope is already carrying water somewhere before your roof adds to it. Runoff crosses the yard on a path it picked itself. If your downspouts discharge into that path, you are stacking roof water onto ground that is already busy. If they discharge across it, you are asking soil to absorb what it was never going to absorb.
So the useful question on a sloped lot is not how to stop water but where to hand it off. Walk the yard during one storm and you will learn more than any drawing tells you. You will see where water collects, where it moves fast, and which side of the house it arrives from. Downspout placement and extension length follow from that. On a bench lot the right answer is often uneven on purpose: short discharge on the downhill side where grade takes over immediately, and much longer runs on the elevations where it does not.
On a sloped lot the uphill elevation does the most work and gets the least attention, because it is usually the side you never look at. Water is already moving toward the house there. Soil stays wetter longer. Then a downspout empties into the same few feet, and that corner of the foundation is handling roof water and hillside water at once. This is a common reason a basement is damp along exactly one wall while the rest of the house stays dry, and it tends to get blamed on things far more expensive than a downspout and an extension.
Fixing it is usually unglamorous. Move the discharge point along the wall to somewhere the grade actually falls away, extend it far enough to clear the wet zone, or split a long uphill run into two downspouts so no single point is releasing everything. None of that is expensive next to what saturated soil against a foundation eventually costs you. It is worth doing before you consider anything larger. If the ground beside the house runs back toward the wall, gutters can only do so much, and that part belongs to whoever handles your landscaping.
The trough gets all the attention and the elbow is where most designs quietly stop. A downspout ending in a splash block has moved water about the length of your forearm. On a Davis County bench lot that can be plenty on the downhill side and nowhere near enough on the others. The options are simple and each has a tradeoff. Surface extensions are cheap and easy to inspect, but they are in the way when you mow and they get kicked out of position. Buried lines to a daylight outlet stay out of sight, but they need somewhere to surface and a way to be cleaned.
Whichever you choose, the test is the same and you can run it yourself. During the next storm, go look. Water should be leaving in a direction rather than pooling. The ground at the base of each wall should be wet from rain, not wet from a stream arriving. If you find a puddle that lingers after the rest of the yard has drained, that is the spot worth correcting first, and correcting it is almost always cheaper than whatever it turns into. Call 801-823-6018 if you want a Bountiful contractor to walk the grade with you.
On the downhill side, often yes, because grade takes over as soon as water lands. On the uphill and side elevations, usually no, and sometimes the opposite. The measurement that matters is not distance from the house but whether the ground where water lands falls away from it. Stand at each discharge point and look downhill. If you cannot tell which way the water will travel, the extension is too short.
Partly, perhaps. On a bench lot the uphill side already receives water from above the house, so roof discharge there lands on soil working at capacity. Gutters cannot fix hillside runoff, but they can stop adding to it. Moving or extending that downspout, or splitting a long run into two, takes roof water out of the equation so you can see what is left. Often what is left turns out to be a grading question.
Sometimes that is exactly right, and sometimes it moves the problem to the neighbor below you or cuts a channel across your yard. Concentrated flow onto bare or steep ground erodes it. If the discharge point is stable, planted, and clearly falling away from the house, letting gravity do the work is fine. If you can see a rut starting, spread the flow out or relocate it. Either way, keep it off the foundation.
Formed on site from a coil, so a straight run carries no joints except at the corners and the outlets. That matters, because joints are where leaks concentrate. Size and downspout count get decided by your roof, not by habit.
Learn more →Sagging runs, water still standing in the trough two days after a storm, corners that weep down the fascia. Most of it traces back to pitch that drifted or fasteners letting go, and neither one requires replacing the whole house.
Learn more →The gutter only catches the water. The downspout decides where it goes, and against the foundation is the wrong answer. Adding outlets, moving discharge points and extending the run out to somewhere useful is the half nobody quotes.
Learn more →They reduce how often somebody is on a ladder at your house. They do not end it. Products differ enormously in how they shed fine grit and how they behave in a downpour, so the real question is which problem yours has.
Learn more →Twice a year is the rhythm most houses here need, weighted toward after the leaves drop. What neglect costs is not a full trough, it is water going over the front lip at the one spot you would never choose.
Learn more →Get a system sized to your roof. No fee to be matched.
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