A wet basement after a storm sends most people downstairs with a flashlight. On a Lakewood house built in the 1910s or 20s, the better place to start is outside at the corners, where the roof’s water comes down. The gutter repair list has one line for this, missing downspout extensions and splash blocks put back where water was hitting the foundation. This guide is what sits behind that line.
Can a bad downspout cause a wet basement?
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons an old basement takes water in a hard rain. A downspout collects the runoff from a whole roof plane and delivers it to one spot. If that spot is against a stone or block foundation, old mortar joints get all of it in the same few feet.
So the check is a trip down one downspout, top to bottom. The outlet where it leaves the gutter. The first elbow. The straps holding it to the wall. The bottom section, which takes all the abuse. And then the part people skip, the last few feet: the extension, the splash block, or the pipe in the ground it drops into. The problem is usually in that last stretch.
If the corner is pouring over the top instead, the trouble is above the outlet, and where the water comes over covers that half.
What does a crushed or disconnected downspout look like from the yard?
Most of it shows from the grass. A bottom section dented flat, an elbow lying in the mulch, a splash block that has drifted a couple of feet from where it belongs, or a downspout that swings when you push it because a strap let go. Any one of those can put the water back at the wall.
The bottom four feet get hit. A mower deck clips it every other week all summer. On the driveway side of a double, where the houses sit close, the recycling bin and the car door do the rest. A crushed section still looks like a downspout, but the water backs up at the dent and leaks out of the seams above it, right at the foundation.
A missing elbow is worse. The pipe ends a foot off the ground and empties straight down beside the wall. After a few years a small hollow forms there, and the hollow holds water against the stone.
My downspout goes into a pipe in the ground. Where does that go?
On a lot of century houses, nobody alive knows for sure. Older homes here often had downspouts tied into buried lines that ran to a footer drain, toward the front of the lot, or into clay tile that cracked or filled with roots decades ago. If the line has failed, every storm fills the pipe and the water leaves it underground, right beside the basement wall.
A hose tells you a lot. Pull the downspout off at the ground connection if it comes loose, run a garden hose into the pipe at a steady flow, and watch. Water that disappears and keeps disappearing means the line takes water somewhere. Water that backs up to the top within a minute or two means it is plugged or collapsed. If you are not sure where the line was meant to go, ask the city before you assume anything.
This is the honest limit of a gutter crew. The downspout down to the ground connection is ours. A flow check at the connection is part of the visit. The buried line itself is drain work, and a plugged or broken one gets a straight referral to a plumber or drain contractor rather than a guess. What a gutter crew can do is take that corner off the old line and send it to the surface instead, so the downspout stops feeding a pipe that dumps it at the footing.
Does my downspout need a longer extension or a drain connection?
It depends on what is below the corner and how much room there is. The goal is the same every time, which is getting the water far enough from the wall that it cannot run back:
- A splash block is enough when the ground slopes away and the water has open lawn to spread across. It has to be under the elbow, pointed out, and staying there.
- An extension carries the water past a flower bed, a patio edge, or a flat stretch of yard to where the ground finally falls away. Several feet out is the usual aim.
- A tie-in to an existing drain makes sense when there is a working line and nowhere on the surface to send the water.
Narrow lots are where this gets hard. On some doubles the only open ground on one side is the shared driveway, and that corner has its own problem in winter, which the repair page deals with under the downspout that dumps onto the neighbor’s drive.
Should the downspout be replaced or repaired?
Repaired, most of the time. A crushed bottom section gets swapped for a new one; bending it back leaves a kink that catches debris. A loose run gets new straps, a missing elbow gets replaced, and none of that needs a new downspout top to bottom.
A full new run makes sense when the pipe is rusted steel coming apart at the joints, when it has been patched with tape in three places, or when the gutter above it is being replaced anyway. Size comes into it only there. A 2-by-3 downspout under a big rear roof plane can be too small to keep up, and moving to a 3-by-4 pipe usually comes with a 6-inch gutter above it. That call belongs to the gutter it drains.
How much is a downspout fix in Lakewood?
Less than most people expect. A downspout extension to grade, or a tie-in to an existing drain, runs $40 to $120 per downspout. A repair visit that re-straps a run, replaces elbows, or swaps a crushed section falls in the general gutter repair range of $150 to $350, trip included. Both figures are on the cost page.
There is no published price for underground drain work, because that is not gutter work. If the hose test says the buried line is the problem, the price that matters comes from a drain contractor.
Fixing a downspout will not dry out every basement. Some walls leak for reasons that have nothing to do with the roof. But it is the cheapest thing to rule out first, and it often turns out to be the reason.
Which corner of the house is sending water to the basement?
Find out in the next hard rain, from outside, in about five minutes. Go to each downspout in turn, starting with the one nearest the wet spot in the basement.
- Is water coming out of the bottom at all? Nothing, while the gutter above is full, means a plug near the outlet. A gutter cleaning with a flush clears that.
- Is anything leaking out of the pipe partway down, at a dent or a joint? That section is getting replaced.
- Where does the water land? If it is within a foot or two of the wall, or pooling in a low spot next to the stone, that corner is a suspect.
- If it goes into the ground, is the connection backing up and spilling over the top of the pipe?
Take a phone photo at each one while it is running. A picture of water bubbling up at a ground connection, or pouring into a hollow beside the foundation, shows which corner to fix and which kind of fix it needs, which a dry afternoon can’t.