Mining style water flume for roof gutter downspout

Too much mois­ture can also be a bad thing. Dur­ing our wet sea­son, the soil sur­round­ing base­ments gets over­sat­u­rat­ed. Around shal­low foun­da­tions like attached garages, room addi­tions and crawl spaces, this over­sat­u­ra­tion soft­ens the ground beneath the foun­da­tion and the weight of the struc­ture sinks because the ground it’s rest­ing on turns to mud.

For­tu­nate­ly our dry spells aren’t as fre­quent as say, Hous­ton, Texas where res­i­dents reg­u­lar­ly water the ground around their foun­da­tions to keep their clay moist. Then the weight of house foun­da­tions sit­ting on the clay com­press those cracks and move­ment occurs. Dur­ing dry spells, too lit­tle water can dry out clay caus­ing it to shrink and crack. In our area, where many foun­da­tions are sur­round­ed by an expan­sive soil like clay, bal­anc­ing ground hydra­tion is crit­i­cal. When con­fig­ured prop­er­ly, they effec­tive­ly direct roof water away from your home. When they are not, large amounts of water are allowed to dump next to your foun­da­tion caus­ing seep­age and even worse, foun­da­tion move­ment. Gut­ters and down­spouts play an impor­tant role in man­ag­ing rain water around your house.