Shared Knowledge

 

"Changing House Gutter Flow"

 

26 September 2005

 

 

 

 

I am not sure anyone else has a problem similar to the one I had and solved or not, but will define problem and solution here and perhaps it will work for you.

 

On the back of my house, I have a gutter run which goes the entire length of the house and terminates into a downspout. That is fine. Problem is that the other end of the gutter also has a downspout on it, which runs down and onto a flagstone patio along the back of our house. Again, really no problem as the patio was put in place so that water would run off it. The problem I had was the upper floor’s air conditioner (AC) unit condensate pipe simply came out of the attic and dripped into the gutter along the back of the house. With this arrangement, in the summer, I had a small stream running down the center of my rear patio.

 

To solve the problem initially, I extended the AC condensate pipe out beyond the gutter and had it drip into a patch of mulched soil but as this corner was right up against the foundation of my house and got very, very wet in the heat of the summer, I had to find an alternative solution.

 

Take off the downspout, which comes of the end of the patio end of the gutter? Really did not want to do that, as during a hard rain, need both downspouts to keep gutter from overflowing onto side of house.

 

Finally, although I not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I came up with the following solution.

 

I went to my local hardware store and bought a $.60 piece of aluminum chimney flashing and a caulk tube of gutter cement. I then used a pair of scissors to cut the flashing into the shape of the interior of my gutter and cemented it inside my gutter, just beyond the downspout on the patio end of the gutter. I then cut a small rectangular chuck out of my cemented dam so if the water got so high in the long portion of the gutter it would overflow my dam and go on down the patio end downspout. Finally, I changed the piping of my AC condensate such that it dumps into the gutter, just beyond the dam on the non-patio end.

 

Now, AC condensate runs down the gutter and down the far downspout and via buried pipes out and away from the house and during heavy rains, rain water overflows my dam and flows down both downspouts just like it is supposed to.

 

So the point being is that, by inserting a dam into the interior of a gutter, you can change the normal flow of the gutter. I do think it smart to cut a section out of the top of the dam for a spillway so if the gutter you are changing does begin to become too filled with water, the water will overrun your dam and go on down any other downspouts you might have.