Tips to Maintain Your Home's Exterior Drainage System
As a homeowner, it is essential to maintain your home's roof and gutter drainage system to prevent water leaks in the roof and foundation. Here are some tips to help you maintain your home's roof drainage system with proper gutter and downspout care and service.
Ensure Optimal Gutter Flow
Your roof's gutters can become filled with dirt and silt, leaves, and other debris blown onto your roof during a storm. If you have trees in your yard, their leaves can clog your gutters as they fall in the autumn, requiring you to clean out the gutters each year just before winter. If you have any evergreen trees around your home, this can require you to clean out your gutters several times each year as they lose their needles all year long and the needles can build up inside the gutters, reducing drainage.
It is recommended that you remove the build-up of debris from inside your gutters by getting up to your roof's edge to clean by pulling, scooping, or spraying debris from inside the gutters. Be sure to follow safety recommendations when upon your roof or on your ladder so you don't fall from height. Be sure to wear work gloves while you clean the gutters.
To help prevent your gutters being filled with dirt and tree debris, you can also install a gutter screen over the tops of all your roof-installed gutters, which you can buy at most home improvement stores. There are several different types of screens, which all block debris from falling into your gutters but allow water to flow from your roof.
Gutter screens can be easily installed over the top of the gutters, sometimes beneath the edge of your roof shingles, but will need some minimal maintenance each year. Dirt particles and roof granules from your shingles can sit on top the screen or mesh and block your roof drainage. You can easily brush or rinse the top of the screens regularly to keep them free of debris, which is easier than scooping debris from inside your gutters.
Divert Roof Runoff
Along with keeping your gutters draining well, it is important to make sure the rainwater that flows from the gutters drains down the downspouts and away from your home's foundation. The purpose for your roof's gutters is to stop rainwater from falling from the roof's edge onto the soil around your home and its foundation, which can lead to basement and foundation moisture problems. Once your roof gutters catch the rainwater, it needs to flow down a downspout and be diverted away from your home's foundation.
When you clean your gutters, you should check the flow and integrity of your downspouts. Rinse water from your hose down into the gutters and downspouts to make sure there is no blockage within each downspout. If you do discover a blockage, use your garden hose with a nozzle sprayer attachment to rinse it free. You can also use a plumber's snake to dislodge stubborn blockages.
Next, make sure the downspout is attached to a gutter diverter that is of an appropriate length. It is recommended to divert rainwater from your gutters and downspout to at least five to ten feet away from your home and its foundation. It is also a good idea to slope this away from your home's foundation to help keep your basement dry. This prevents saturation of the soil around your foundation slab or your basement walls, which prevents water from entering into your home's interior and water damage and mold growth. Many basement moisture problems can be remedied with some basic roof drainage maintenance.
Contact a business like Mr.Gutter, LLC to learn more about the importance of gutters and roof drainage.