Ever wonder how the rain gutters around your roof protect what’s underneath your house?
Gutters are designed to direct water away from your home. They collect rainwater to the edge of your roof so that it doesn’t start rotting the sides of your roof or leaking into your attic. A properly working gutter system also help protect your home’s foundation by preventing the water from falling right next to it and causing costly water damage, basement flooding, soil erosion, and most importantly foundation damage.
As any seasoned homeowner will tell you, water is your foundation’s worst enemy, and preventing water damage is your ultimate goal year-round. When water seeps in excess into the ground and finds its way into the cracks of a concrete foundation, the problems it can bring are both costly and time-consuming to repair. In short, if you don’t have gutters installed on your roof, foundation problems are around the corner.
Foundation Problems That Can Happen When You Don’t Have Rain Gutters
Here are some of the most notorious foundation problems that rain gutters can help you fend off.
1. Water Saturation
Water doesn’t follow a complicated path at all; it just goes downwards, but if you think it will stop once it touches the ground, you’d be mistaken. Once it flows down from your roof, it will seep into and saturate the ground where your house sits, even through the cracks in the concrete floor; this can cause the ground to become saturated and apply unbearable pressure to the sides of your foundation (up to 5,500 pounds per square foot).
It doesn’t take an expert to tell you that this amount of pressure is bad news for your foundation, but take our expert word for it: water pressure building around your foundation is terrible news!
Your foundation is designed and built to withstand the full weight of your house vertically, but sideways pressure is a whole different story. However, having rain gutters helps you prevent this by making the water flow away from the sides of your house and down to a proper drainage point. And speaking of the soil around your home…
2. Ground Compaction
The soil around a home (or anywhere, really) is very rarely uniform, and while water saturation can occur in some parts, the others will simply dissolve and wash away, leaving empty spaces all through your property. The part of the soil that didn’t wash away, now swollen by all the water, then shifts from its places into the empty pockets, causing the floor around your foundation to settle and tilt unevenly. All this uneven shifting can cause structural damage around the house, which is its own can of worms.
In the same manner that they protect you from water saturation, rain gutters installed around your roof can prevent ground compaction from happening because the water is being channeled away from the soil and into a proper drain. However, the soil is not the only one at risk from water damage.
3. Concrete Spalling
Sometimes, the water filtering into the soil is not the main concern. Suppose that the water keeps flowing unchecked from the roof to the sides of your house and then into the ground; there, it makes its way right into your foundation itself, degrading and damaging the concrete. Pieces of the foundation’s surface then start to chip away little by little, making it weak and brittle.
How can this happen? Well, the little cracks and pores in the concrete of your foundation act as a conduit for water to get inside the foundation. When there is excess water and humidity for too long, the concrete itself becomes swollen and starts to deteriorate (sometimes at an alarming rate). This deterioration process is called “spalling,” and most concrete surfaces are vulnerable to it. Again, by diverting rainwater away from your home, rain gutters can prevent water from damaging your foundation. More on this here.
4. Flooding
Runoff water from your roof can eventually make its way inside your home after the outer layers have been damaged enough. From rotting wood to cracked concrete, constant exposure to water can create a large enough gap for water to come in and flood your basement, attic, or, in a worst-case scenario, the main levels of your house.
Flooded yards and basements are of particular concern because of the large amount of wires and materials you probably have in them. Not only that, a flooded yard can ruin your landscaping! A terrible waste of effort and resources that’s only gonna repeat itself if you don’t have rain gutters protecting your home.
5. Fungal Growth And Infestations
Even if the water runs off from the roof, down the sides of your walls, and into the ground, that doesn’t mean your home is safe. Plenty of wood-burrowing pests breed in stagnant pools of water (like the ones that form on the ground or clogged gutters), and they can damage wooden walls and roofs alike.
Below the ground, the picture isn’t prettier. A damp, dark environment is the perfect home for mold to grow on your foundation; the danger of mildew growth might not seem obvious at first, but fungi like mildew produce acid that can degrade concrete foundations over time.
Prevent Water Damage To Your Foundation With a Home Inspection
By now, you know the crucial role gutters play protecting your home and how the consequences of faulty gutters and neglected gutter systems lead to structural issues and even severe damage to your house’s foundation, compromising its overall structural integrity. With that, you’re probably 100% on board about either installing rain gutters if you don’t have them or getting the ladder out of the garage to finally do some overdue gutter cleaning to get rid of blockage and debris, then making sure that the spout takes the water to the drain like it’s supposed to. That’s great! However, if you also suspect that your concrete foundation might already be damaged or you just want to make sure everything is OK down there, give our team a call.
At XPert Foundation Repair, we’ve got you covered no matter the type of foundation issue that you want repaired. Our technicians are both skilled and amply experienced, and we have access to all the professional equipment necessary to inspect and fix any type of foundation.
Leave the heavy lifting to us, all you need to do is give us a call. Schedule your inspection today!
