How Gutters Help Protect Your Home’s Foundation
Rain gutters are some of the hardest working parts of the home, but many homeowners seem to overlook how essential they are in protecting their home’s foundation. They’re just sitting outside, after all! But gutters are the first line of defense as they channel and divert rainwater away from the ground that your very house sits on.
Understanding the important role your gutters play in the protection of your foundation from water damage is vital if you want to extend your home’s useful life. That means that guarding your gutters from blockage and keeping them in good condition goes a long way in protecting your home.
What’s The Relationship Between Working Gutters And A Good Foundation?
Simply put, gutters ensure that the water that flows through the gutters reaches the downspout and keeps down the drain away from the house. An improperly working gutter will instead dump the water right there on the ground next to the house, bringing a slew of problems that can directly affect your home’s foundation. Sounds dramatic, but it’s true!
How Does A Clogged Or Damaged Gutter Affect My Home’s Foundation?
Letting your gutter problems go unchecked can lead to severe water damage issues around your home that, in turn, lead to very expensive solutions, not to mention extensive and complex repairs that can disrupt your daily life for at least a couple of weeks.
Here are some examples:
- Foundation Damage: The main role of a roof gutter is to prevent excess rainwater from falling on your roof and away from your house and to prevent it from pooling on the ground right next to where your foundation is. When gutters get clogged, however, this water overflows the gutter, which makes it spill from it right into the ground. What follows is the water seeping into the ground through existing cracks (or worse, by eroding it), results in a wet foundation during the summer or into a freeze-thaw cycle during winter, causing cracks on the foundation materials.
- Wood rot: When the water overflows from your congested gutters or blocked gutters, it might not spill directly on the ground. Some of it may wash over the walls, which brings its own batch of problems. This excess moisture can lead to mold and mildew, as well as swollen and rotting wood. If this rotten wood is part of a support beam, then you’re looking at very serious structural problems in your home.
- Flooding: The water that overflows from your gutters can also find its way into your basement, which is a can of worms in itself. Not only does flooding accelerate any underlying foundation issues you might already have from the water, but it can bring about a great deal of problems, such as molds, material loss of stored objects, and damage to the electrical system.
- Pest infestation problems: Rotten wood is a preferred snack of many types of insects that you definitely don’t want in your home. Termites and carpenter ants can do some serious structural damage to wooden houses, not to mention the costly pest control that you’ll have to hire in order to get rid of them.
Now that we have explained a few of the many scary problems that can originate from unkempt, clogged gutters, let’s take a look at the ways that properly functioning, clean gutters protect your home’s foundation.
1. Gutters Prevent Hydrocompaction
The composition of the soil around your home is rarely uniform. If the ground is getting continuously flooded from overflowing gutters, some patches of that soil will expand and then wash away, leaving empty spaces in the ground. The soil around these empty spaces then sits and compacts, which leaves it uneven, which can cause shifts and cracks on your foundation that are costly to repair.
2. Gutters Prevent Infiltration
Water is going to find the quickest way down wherever it falls. “Down” can be either on proper drainage traps or the cracks in the concrete surrounding your home. If the ground then becomes saturated, the pressure it can exert on the sides of your foundation can exceed 5,000 pounds of pressure! This, obviously, can have a devastating impact on your home’s structural integrity.
3. Gutters Protect Your Lawn From Erosion
Erosion happens when the ground on your lawn starts wearing away. If this happens to the soil around your foundation, then it will eventually become exposed (in the more severe cases), leaving it at the mercy of the elements and all sorts of accidents.
How To Ensure That Your Gutters Will Protect Your Foundation
Gutters are more important than just an aesthetic addition to your home’s exterior. To keep them in working condition, it’s recommended that you clean your gutters twice a year at the very least (and even more if you live in an area with frequent rainfall). It’s important to quickly address any issues you find with your gutters before the rainy season starts, as leaving them unattended can escalate any foundation water damage that is already underway.
After the rainy season ends, make sure to inspect both your gutters and your foundation to verify they’re both in top condition. Make sure that there are no obstructions preventing the water from reaching the downspout, that there’s no excess humidity on your exterior walls, and that the ground above your foundation is not too damp or feels swollen.
It’s safe to say that your gutters and foundation work as a team. You would be surprised at the amount of people who simply remove the gutters from their homes because they consider them unappealing! Gutters play a major role in protecting your foundation from water damage and your home from costly problems such as uneven floors, electrical issues, soil erosion, bowing walls, infestations, and much more.
So, remember to call the experts if you know that your gutters are in need of some much-needed maintenance, you’ll certainly be thankful that you did!
