Downspout drain lines in Columbus

Why this is a gutter problem

Franklin County's soil is glacial till: dense clay with a slow percolation rate, which is why most yards here stay soggy for days after a rain. A 2x3 downspout draining 600 square feet of roof puts about 370 gallons at the foundation in a one-inch storm. On sand that soaks away. On Columbus clay it pools against the block, builds pressure, and comes through the mortar joints or up through the floor-wall joint at the nearest corner. Then it happens again every time it rains.

Basement waterproofing companies will sell you an interior drain tile and sump system for $5,000 to $15,000, and sometimes that's the right answer. But the first thing any of them should tell you — and the City of Columbus says the same in its own stormwater guidance — is to get the roof water away from the house. That's a few hundred dollars per downspout, and it fixes a large share of wet corners on its own.

Extensions first

If the yard slopes away from the house and there's nothing in the way, a rigid extension carrying water 4 to 6 feet out onto the lawn is all you need. Aluminum extensions with a splash block: $25–$80 each installed. The accordion plastic ones get crushed by the mower and pull off in ice; we don't use them. The catch in winter is that an extension full of ice stops draining, so it's worth knowing which ones to lift in December — winterizing gutters in Columbus covers it.

When a buried line makes sense

• The lot is flat, or slopes toward the house, so an extension just moves the puddle
• The downspout lands on the driveway or a walkway, where the water refreezes into a sheet
• The side yard is 5 feet wide and the neighbor's foundation is on the other side of it
• You're tired of stepping over extensions and the mower keeps eating them
• The basement corner nearest that downspout gets wet after every big rain

How we build one

Solid-wall 4-inch PVC (not corrugated black pipe, which crushes and traps silt), connected at the downspout with an adapter and a debris catch you can open, buried 8 to 12 inches down, sloped at least an eighth of an inch per foot away from the house, and ended at a pop-up emitter in the lawn 10 to 25 feet out or at a daylight outlet on a slope. Where the lawn has nowhere to send it, a small dry well filled with gravel takes the surge and lets it seep out slowly. We call OHIO811 before digging on any line longer than a few feet; the utility locate is free and it's the law.

What it costs

A typical job runs two or three downspouts on the wet side of the house for $600–$1,500. Cheapest when done with a gutter replacement, because we're already at every downspout.

Downspouts tied into the sewer

A lot of older Columbus homes — Clintonville, Linden, the Hilltop, the South Side — had their downspouts piped straight into the sanitary sewer when they were built. That's now the main reason the city's sewers back up into basements during storms, and it's what the city's Blueprint Columbus program has been undoing neighborhood by neighborhood since the mid-2010s: disconnecting downspouts, redirecting them to the lawn, and installing sump pumps. If you're in a Blueprint area, the city handles the disconnect on its schedule. If you're not, and your downspouts disappear into a clay pipe at the foundation, that's worth a conversation, because the pipe is usually broken and dumping water right at the wall anyway. The Department of Public Utilities lists the project areas at columbus.gov.

What we don't do

We don't waterproof foundations from the inside, and we don't do French drains across the yard — though we'll tell you when a yard needs one. Our job is getting the roof water out of the gutter and to a place where it can't come back in. Downspouts and your foundation explains how far is far enough on clay.