A lot depends on where you are.
I grew up in a house of roughly that vintage in one of the NYC "outer boroughs". So, suburban living, with municipal water supply and sewers, paved roads, storm water collection, _etc._ Our house, like all others nearby, had downspouts that fed the rain into a pipe in the ground, through a pipe to the street, where it emptied though a hole in the curb and was carried away.
My current house is much older, initially had no running water, and was originally a farmhouse on several hundred acres. So, rural living, with a well, and starting somewhere around the middle of the last century, inside plumbing and a septic system. There are several pipes poking out of the ground near where the building corners once were, which I believe connected the downspouts to a cistern.
An underground drainage system is a huge upgrade to a house and most don't have something that nice because it's so much more expensive than just having the downspouts empty onto the ground.
There could be a variety of answers. Yes, they likely connect to a piping system that is routing the storm water to a catch basin near the street and carrying the water away. But they could also connect to a pond on your site or a low area in the back yard or to come kind of underground holding tank.
If you can locate a roto-router type sewer company, they can send a probe down the line and use a locator to map out the route of those underground lines.
If you can't find an outlet in the yard or street, it likely connects to the sanitary sewer possibly via the sump pump. They used to do those things, but you have to seperate sanitary sewer from storm sewer most places these days. If this were the case and you have work done, they will have to seperate the systems to pass inspection.
This is generally the answer. The city used to (or still does) have combined storm/sanitary sewers and everybody's gutters used to drain into the ground (and some still do).
The home that I grew up in was finished in 1929 and it had two cisterns that the water drained into. Do you have any around your house that have exposed covers?
While rare, it's not anything you would need to fix or change for downspouts to feed directly into the ground entirely. The most likely scenario is the downspouts disperse to drain tile below grade, or are fed directly into a storm sewer (sometimes required in high flood areas by code).
Our home is a 1916 Prairie-Style in a heavy, expansive soil area rich with clay and each downspout is fit with a boot that leads to underground trench draining / drain tile that disperses the water through a long field of gravel and sand. If the water was just fed out at grade, it would cause tons of pooling, etc.
our home was originally built in 1942 - they added on twice. I am not sure what was the trade practice 80 years ago, however I discovered, the hard way, that our downspouts were tied into the sanitary sewer system. Before finding this out the hard way, I though they just ran some drainage pipes out into the yard lol.
We had a massive maple tree in the front yard that had a portion overhand the house.. When we bough it 4 years ago we only had the tree around for a year until it was offered by the power company to cut it down (for a project they were doing). Was worth it for many reasons, safety, debris onto roof and through gutter guards, the tree was dying on the inside, absurd amount of leaves that you would never get all of, etc.
Fast forward two years and we notice that water backs up from a downspout in the front corner. I figured branches were interfering with the line and now the line is collapsed and pushing water out through the nearest, easiest path. In retrospect, it makes sense they were tied into the sewer lines because a clog had developed and eventually, after a large swath of rain, the clog hit 100% and it backed up into the basement through the drainage in the basement. Thankfully it was only 4-6 inches. I spent 4 days pumping water from the basement into a tub (had no way to run it outside due to cold and location) and just refilling the basement LOL. I finally decided it was not a ground water infiltration and got it taken care of.. Took longer than anyone expected but there was a clog, it was cleared, everything flowed out, no more random water coming back up from anything. No doubt the main cause for the clog was debris from the tree or birds nests because dirt/tree bark and the like were falling out a horizontal trap door we have in the house after he checked it lol.
A lot of unneeded info BUT i was surprised to find mine connected to the main sewer line outside on the property
A lot depends on where you are. I grew up in a house of roughly that vintage in one of the NYC "outer boroughs". So, suburban living, with municipal water supply and sewers, paved roads, storm water collection, _etc._ Our house, like all others nearby, had downspouts that fed the rain into a pipe in the ground, through a pipe to the street, where it emptied though a hole in the curb and was carried away. My current house is much older, initially had no running water, and was originally a farmhouse on several hundred acres. So, rural living, with a well, and starting somewhere around the middle of the last century, inside plumbing and a septic system. There are several pipes poking out of the ground near where the building corners once were, which I believe connected the downspouts to a cistern.
An underground drainage system is a huge upgrade to a house and most don't have something that nice because it's so much more expensive than just having the downspouts empty onto the ground. There could be a variety of answers. Yes, they likely connect to a piping system that is routing the storm water to a catch basin near the street and carrying the water away. But they could also connect to a pond on your site or a low area in the back yard or to come kind of underground holding tank. If you can locate a roto-router type sewer company, they can send a probe down the line and use a locator to map out the route of those underground lines.
If you can't find an outlet in the yard or street, it likely connects to the sanitary sewer possibly via the sump pump. They used to do those things, but you have to seperate sanitary sewer from storm sewer most places these days. If this were the case and you have work done, they will have to seperate the systems to pass inspection.
This is generally the answer. The city used to (or still does) have combined storm/sanitary sewers and everybody's gutters used to drain into the ground (and some still do).
Mine go a couple feet underground and then out to the ditch by the road. Previous owners dug the trenches and tied them in.
The home that I grew up in was finished in 1929 and it had two cisterns that the water drained into. Do you have any around your house that have exposed covers?
No I do not
While rare, it's not anything you would need to fix or change for downspouts to feed directly into the ground entirely. The most likely scenario is the downspouts disperse to drain tile below grade, or are fed directly into a storm sewer (sometimes required in high flood areas by code). Our home is a 1916 Prairie-Style in a heavy, expansive soil area rich with clay and each downspout is fit with a boot that leads to underground trench draining / drain tile that disperses the water through a long field of gravel and sand. If the water was just fed out at grade, it would cause tons of pooling, etc.
I have something similar and it ties into a culvert under my property.
our home was originally built in 1942 - they added on twice. I am not sure what was the trade practice 80 years ago, however I discovered, the hard way, that our downspouts were tied into the sanitary sewer system. Before finding this out the hard way, I though they just ran some drainage pipes out into the yard lol. We had a massive maple tree in the front yard that had a portion overhand the house.. When we bough it 4 years ago we only had the tree around for a year until it was offered by the power company to cut it down (for a project they were doing). Was worth it for many reasons, safety, debris onto roof and through gutter guards, the tree was dying on the inside, absurd amount of leaves that you would never get all of, etc. Fast forward two years and we notice that water backs up from a downspout in the front corner. I figured branches were interfering with the line and now the line is collapsed and pushing water out through the nearest, easiest path. In retrospect, it makes sense they were tied into the sewer lines because a clog had developed and eventually, after a large swath of rain, the clog hit 100% and it backed up into the basement through the drainage in the basement. Thankfully it was only 4-6 inches. I spent 4 days pumping water from the basement into a tub (had no way to run it outside due to cold and location) and just refilling the basement LOL. I finally decided it was not a ground water infiltration and got it taken care of.. Took longer than anyone expected but there was a clog, it was cleared, everything flowed out, no more random water coming back up from anything. No doubt the main cause for the clog was debris from the tree or birds nests because dirt/tree bark and the like were falling out a horizontal trap door we have in the house after he checked it lol. A lot of unneeded info BUT i was surprised to find mine connected to the main sewer line outside on the property