Are Your Downspouts Too Small?
The downspouts are the unsung hero of any gutter system.
While you probably think first about the gutters themselves in terms of collecting the water that falls on your roof, the downspouts play a critical job. This is the path the water takes to get off the roof and away from your house– so it’s essential that they are up to the challenge.
If downspouts are too small for the size of your roof and the amount of rain it collects,problems will be sure to follow. Let’s use this article to look at signs that your downspouts maybe too small for your needs and how this problem can be corrected.
A Couple of Potential Problems
It’s easy to understand that downspouts are responsible for carrying water away from your
home. However, it might seem like any kind of downspout can get that job done since all the
water needs is a place to flow out of the gutters and down to the ground. That’s true, but there
are a couple of ways this process can go wrong if your downspouts are too small –
Too slow to drain. If the Portland area experiences a particularly heavy rainstorm, the
rate of water falling on your roof might be too much for your downspouts to handle.
The water will build up in your gutters, waiting to drain, and eventually flow up over the
edge of the gutter if there isn’t enough room in the downspout. This typically occurs due to how easy it is to clog a smaller downspout
Easy to clog. This point goes right along with the first point since they are often
connected. With small downspouts, it will only take a modest amount of debris – or just
one large piece of debris – to clog things up and slow down the drainage of the whole
system. Going with bigger spouts means debris will more easily be able to escape and
the spouts can continue to do their job even during the heaviest rain that Portland has
to offer.
One Other Consideration
In addition to using the right size downspouts for your roof and your gutters, it’s also important
to use enough downspouts in the design of the system. Adding downspouts will do much the
same thing as increasing the size of the spouts – it will open up space for water to exit the
gutters and get down to the ground safely. If a gutter system has minimal downspouts, there
will be more distance between each spout, and it’s more likely that water will back up either
due to debris build-up or sheer volume.
Get Professional Help
If you suspect that your downspouts are too small, or if you are going to have a new gutter
system installed and you don’t want to make this mistake, contact Stumptown Gutters today
for assistance. We are proud to serve customers throughout the Portland area and we pay close
attention to how the design and installation of a gutter system impact its performance.
Specifically, we’ll use the largest outlets available for your gutters to give water plenty of room
to get into the spouts. With any questions, or to schedule an appointment, feel free to reach
out today!
Stumptown Gutters Portland Oregon