How To Install Buried Downspout

Rain gutters and downspouts provide an efficient first footstep in decision-making roof runoff. Just if the pelting or melted snow channeled off the roof isn't carried far enough away from the business firm, it will collect against the foundation wall or footing and seep into your basement or crawl space. One surefire way to avoid such water-related problems is to connect the downspouts to a series of cached drainpipes that lead far from the business firm.

The drainage pipe used for extending downspouts is not-perforated Schedule 40 PVC pipe with 4-inches-diameter. Some jobs will too require flexible drainpipe, which is invaluable for getting around obstacles or following uneven terrain. For our installation, we used it to snake around a few large boulders we couldn't pry out.

What You Need for a Downspout Extension

Along with the drainage piping, you lot'll need an array of PVC elbows, T-fittings, couplings, adapters and other specialty fittings that allow you to connect together the pipe sections. Too, purchase a xvi-ounce tin of PVC primer and PVC cement for gluing together all the parts.

How to Extend Your Downspout

Installing drainage pipe is a straightforward job that whatsoever homeowner can handle. It'southward typically done in 3 phases: excavation the trench, laying the pipe and backfilling with soil. Read on to learn how to expend your downspout in x steps.

Laying out the trench for the downspout. — Lay out the trench.

Step ane: Lay out the Trench

Use a string and 1x2 stakes to lay out the trench. Pound in two stakes 4 feet from the house and direct in front of each downspout.

Place other stakes spaced eight anxiety apart in between. Necktie the string to the downspout, so stretch it out and around all the stakes.

Step 2: Marking the Trench Line

Sprinkle flour from a tin forth the string to mark the trench line. Remove the string and lay cardboard forth the edge of the white line.

Pace 3: Dig the Trench

Begin earthworks the trench and dumping the dirt onto the cardboard. This is a pull a fast one on that can make backfilling go much more smoothly later on.

The trench should be at least 6-inches-wide and slope downwards slightly (1 to two inches per length of pipe) so water drains away from the downspouts. Continue until yous have completed the trench.

Depending on the trench length and, more of import, the type of soil, digging the trench with a shovel can range from relatively easy to downright impossible. For our installation, nosotros dug a 70-foot-long trench by paw through rocky soil, a chore that took iii weekends.

A quicker, easier alternative to manus digging is to hire a trenching machine or hire a backhoe operator. The average job can usually be done in under ii hours. To minimize impairment to the landscape, have the operator employ a 12-inch trenching saucepan.

The trench must be at least 10-inches-deep, but be enlightened that in cold-weather condition regions the pipage occasionally will clog with ice during periods of heavy precipitation. This status most frequently occurs when the air temperature is balmy during the twenty-four hours merely drops below freezing at night.

Tip: The merely guaranteed way to keep the pipe from freezing is to bury it below the frost line, which ranges between 32 and 48 inches in about areas of the snow belt. Digging a trench that deep is merely practical when the end of the piping drains into a dry well or is connected to an existing drain line.

Step 4: Lay out the Pipe Lengths and Fittings

Laying out the pipe lengths and fittings. — Lay out the piping lengths and fittings.

Lay out all the pipage lengths and fittings beside the trench to make certain you've got all the necessary parts. Press a downspout adapter into a 3x4-inch reducer coupling and slip it onto the bottom end of the downspout.

Pace 5: Install the Starter Elbow

Place a 90-degree elbow in the trench directly beneath the coupling and measure the distance betwixt the two fittings.

Cutting a piece of pipe to friction match with a handsaw, hacksaw or 12-in. power miter saw.

Swab the two mating surfaces with purple primer, and so apply the cement to the same surfaces and immediately press the pipe onto the elbow.

Installing a starter elbow. — Install a starter elbow.

Requite them a slight twist, then hold them. The cement cures in only a few seconds.

Pace six: Insert Adapter and Reducer

Gently insert the downspout adapter and reducer assembly into the pipe protruding from the elbow afterward slipping the adapter onto the downspout; don't gum this joint.

Then proceed downwards the trench to the first turn, lay in a 90-degree elbow and cutting a length of pipe to fit between it and the assembly at the downspout.

Glue the parts together, and then check with a level to make sure the pipe slopes down slightly.

Inserting the adapter and reducer. — Insert the adapter and reducer.

Step seven: Keep Installation

Continue installing pipes along the trench until you achieve the 2nd downspout. Apply standard couplings to connect the pipage sections.

Step 8: Begin 2nd Downspout

Make some other adapter-and-reducer associates for the second downspout. This fourth dimension, gum a sanitary T-fitting to the pipe end and the other end of its trench.

Be certain the curved elbow of the T-fitting faces "downstream."

Glueing a sanitary T-fitting to the pipe end and the other end of its trench. — Glue a sanitary T-plumbing fixtures to the pipe and the other end of its trench.

Then glue the drainage pipe from the starting time downspout to the sanitary T-fitting.

Step 9: Finish Pipe Installation

Continue running pipe from the T-plumbing equipment along the trench. Again, employ couplings to join together lengths of pipe.

Footstep 10: Finish the Job and Backfill

If you lot're going to run flexible pipage, outset glue a 3x4-inch reducer coupling to the terminate of the rigid pipe in the trench.

And so, slip the flexible pipe over the reducer and secure it with a stainless-steel pipe clamp.

Placing flexible pipe over the reducer. — Identify flexible pipage over the reducer.

At the very end of the trench, dig a wide, shallow hole (approximately 16-inches-deep x 36 inch-diameter) and line information technology with flat rocks or a 4-inch layer of gravel.

Lay down the pipe finish on this rocky bed and cover it with more rocks or several inches of gravel.

In Footstep 3, you lot put down broad pieces of cardboard abreast the proposed trench. Cease by backfilling the trenches, using a garden hoe to pull dirt off the cardboard and into the trench.

Tools:

Source: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/gutters/21016408/how-to-extend-a-downspout

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