Why is water pooling at the bottom of my downspout?
The ground has stopped taking the water away. Where a downspout ties into a buried drain line, a puddle at the joint means the line is blocked with clay, straw or roots, and rain is backing up to the first opening it can find. Where a downspout ends on a splash block, the block has tipped toward the house or the soil under it has settled.
Both are common in Hall County. Houses built since the nineties mostly have buried lines. Older brick ranches mostly have splash blocks, and plenty of those are cracked or were turned the wrong way by a mower years ago.
How do I test a buried downspout line with a garden hose?
Five minutes and a hose will tell you whether the pipe is open, blocked or broken.
- Find where the line comes out. Look for a green pop-up cap in the lawn, a pipe end at the curb, or an open pipe on the slope behind the house.
- Lift the downspout out of the pipe at the ground. Most slide straight up an inch or two.
- Run the hose into the pipe, full on, for five minutes.
- Watch both ends.
Water at the outlet within a minute means the line is open and the trouble is higher up, usually a packed elbow. Water rising back at your feet means the line is blocked. Water at neither end is the bad answer. The pipe has come apart underground and is emptying into the soil beside your foundation.
If you never find an outlet, there may not be one. A fair number of lines here were buried ten feet and left.
Is water at the foundation a problem if the basement stays dry?
Yes, given time. Red clay drains slowly, so water dumped at a corner sits against the wall for days after a storm. On a sloped lot it also carries soil downhill from the footing, a little each time. In a crawl space it raises the humidity under the floor, and the first sign is a musty smell in the room above. The orange splash line on the brick is only the part you can see.
What does the fix involve?
It depends on what the hose showed.
- A silted line gets flushed from the house end until it runs clear at the outlet.
- A line with roots gets augered, and the tree or shrub doing it gets pointed out to you.
- A crushed or separated line gets dug up at the bad spot. The repair is a length of smooth pipe, and it is the moment to add a cleanout at the house.
- A tipped splash block gets reset on packed soil with the low end away from the wall, or swapped for a hinged extension that carries the water four or five feet out.
The usual ranges for each are listed under what clearing a buried line costs.
Why did the line clog in the first place?
Mostly from above. A gutter full of pine straw sends straw down the downspout with every storm, and the first bend underground is where it stops. Shingle grit settles on top of it, and clay seeps in at the joints. A line under a clean gutter can go many years. A line under a neglected one can close in two or three, which is why a flush belongs with every gutter cleaning.