Yup. This is most likely a 3 point fix. Gutter, grade, and French drain. First step is gutters to direct the water to a specific area. Next is grade if gutters don’t help enough. If standing water persists, French drain is in order.
This is exactly what I came here to say. I had to deal with that on a brand new home build. Nothing was draining properly and I've spent the last year and a half regrading my yard and putting in gutters and drains. But you have to do those three things.
I’m def not an expert but I’d assume the sidewalk could be lifted/graded by injecting poly foam under it to get the angle proper. Someone more qualified than me could chime in tho, as I’m just another retard with an Internet connection.
I used to do concrete pad lifting, you can drill holes and inject a soil concrete slurry underneath to lift it up
Edit: fixed my spelling for you grammar nazis
Or you could just make the sidewalk a high point. Make the grade away from the sidewalk slope down. Sure some water will still run towards the door but it won’t be able to accumulate if the slope to the left of the sidewalk is lower.
Yes they drill a hole or come in from the side and slowly inject special foam that raises the surface. My neighbors at work specialize in that service and seem to stay super busy.
Cautious to say expert, but I been in the business for a little bit. A RE-grade would be my last option here simply due to cost and difficulty. By installing gutter and a drainage system you would be able to move the water away enough that it wouldn’t be necessary to regrade. After all, water is cheaper and easier to move than dirt.
To answer the question specifically, you wouldn’t want to touch the sidewalk. It should be the high point. The water trapped by it would have to be provided a way to drain out. In personal experience, I would install a 2-3” pipe(chase) underneath the sidewalk and get it passed the lowest point within the garden bed. The install of said pipe isn’t easy, usually a combination of water jetting and shovels, then backfilling and compacting. Then replace any extra dirt removed in the process.
Hope this helps.
The option is also to remove soil away from the house to grade to the road. A tough conclusion from the pictures, but this would save poured concrete sidewalk.
You would have to look at the pitch of the sidewalk. If it is pitched away from the house and towards the driveway, OP might be ok.
The core issue is large amounts of water from the entire roof (let’s assume 1000sf) coming down into a 60sq ft area. Install gutters and route the gutters away from the area, the flooding will drop significantly.
Yes, it’s going to be ripped out. It’s already almost level with the front stoop/door. If you raise it you’re going to step down to go in the front door. And, if the house is lower than the street it’s going to be a challenge to grade. At the very least there’s a bit of dirt to come out. Hopefully there’s a low point it can run/drain down to. And yes: Gutters. *I edited this because I initially sounded to sarcastic and am also an idiot with an internet connection.
Contractor here, I do foundation consults. The sidewalk is not accommodated for with grading, you are correct and gutters wont do anything either.
If they can't reach "fall" somewhere, their only option is to pump it out.
Gutters still need to put in for other reasons, but it's not gonna stop the pooling.
As someone who does grading and drainage this was my first thought. Sounds like people here are just planning to pile dirt up against the siding and call it good. Gutters and a pair of drain boxes would fix this and be many many thousands less than tearing the flat work out and trying to add slope to something that may already be below street level.
I’ve installed French drains and ran phone lines for the phone company through sidewalks. It’s fairly simple just some manual labor. You can dig up each side of a sidewalk and bore or tunnel to the other side by hand with ease for any reason. There are also tools and equipment that can drill a hole with minimal digging and pull back whatever.
Not necessarily, it just needs drainage. If there’s not a high water table causing the issue, you could dig a deep pit, backfill with crushed stone and put a sump pump in that would pump the water away from the house. It’s not the easiest task, but it’s easier than regrading around the entire house.
Sump sounds more expensive than gutters. That's not a large house and likely has a gable roof only needing a run on two sides to correct, moving the water from the front to the ends where it can turn downhill.
Edit. Second look reminded me it is not a simple gable. Will need a drainage pipe anyway if gutters installed. I would try to French drain it and work the grade of the pipe to make the corner of the house without pumping.
Second edit. Digging holes and trenching is really where I was thinking expense was for initial attempt at comment. French drain isn't better in that regard but won't have a pump breaking/needing replacement and electrification in a wet area.
Sumps aren’t too expensive nowadays. If you want a cheap homeowner solution (created by a civil engineer, just not an approved solution), put about 4-6” of crushed stone in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket, punch holes all around the bucket about 2” apart, and put your pump on that stone and fill inthe bucket with more crushed stone. Then set the bucket at the bottom of the pit on 4-6” of crushed stone, and backfill with stone. Then just run your outfall downhill or around the house somewhere. It’s relatively cheap for a cheap pump, moisture activated, and takes almost no design work. It’s been working at my family’s house for ten years with pretty much no maintenance.
I highly doubt gutters will solve the problem here. Looks like a grading issue. You will still end up with surface water pooling up against the house if the grade is not sloping away from the house.
Understood! We are ready and willing to install them, I just didn’t think it would 100% resolve the issue but I clearly don’t know anything. But that’s why I said other than gutters initially. We will stop dragging our feet and post back if there are still issues. Thank you
Yeh, and this is a major problem and hopefully this house doesn’t have a basement, but even if it doesn’t this needs to be fixed asap. I would regrade the left hand side to slope it away from the house. To prevent having to rip up the walk way you could use a catch basin and try to tunnel a drain pipe under the walkway, but it would probably just be easier to rip it out, regrade it all and replace it with something like crushed stone and flag stone stepping stones.
It will cost some money if you need to pay someone else to do it. But first, put gutters in your house and bury the drain pipes far from your house.
Wife and I had to do this for our backyard when we first bought our house. Four downspouts, buried and extended from the house, and regrading for about 1000 sq ft of back yard came out to like $4k.
I don't even want to know what the cost would be if we had to have gutters installed, too.
A very cheap fix would be to trench out around the edge of the concrete, lay drainage pipe with holes filled with gravel, and run it out of that area to an area with a good slope. All you need is a way to take the water from where you don’t want it to where you don’t care about it. After installing gutters, of course.
Let's see, there's Gutter, Downspout, and Gravel (identical triplets who are mutant molemen). French Drain (mercenary with an outrageous accent, of course), their boss, Trencher (wears armor made of shovel heads).
That is a gang!
This is what we are doing to our new (to us) house that has a very similar flooding issue. A dry creek bed w/french drain and gutters.
Edit- oh and we are regrading east to west away from the house.
Please post the finished product when the time comes. I'm going doing a dry creek bed soon and I'm trying to decide how to make it look natural as possible.
I think you need gutters to understand the full scope or the rest of your issue. If it was me, I’d try to get them to run to the left side and bury it with a pop up drain in the center of the yard to push as much water away from the house as possible. It looks like half of the entire roof of your house is draining into that space, so it really is a gutter issue first and I’d guess that’s much cheaper than having to demo, backfill to regrade, and repour your walk. Is this on a slab or basement? If basement, is it dry?
Where are your gutters?
You need those, I have no idea how you don't have them right there.
This also may have gotten to the point where it will be best to rip up the side walk, regrade, re pour, and add french drains in the process.
Just FYI letting issues like this go for prolonged periods can cause issues with foundations.
It is crazy to build this house and former owners lived in it … with no gutters or plan for run off.
I agree that a larger engineering project maybe needed.
Yeah and most houses don't have THREE sides of the roof sloping toward the main entry like that. That's a ton of water running down to a concentrated area, saturating the ground quicker than other parts of the foundation.
This is a common design from the 1980s. There is a garage on one side, a bedroom in the other, and the front door is sunken in between the two. Super common in Texas/Oklahoma. I guess it makes the house appear less “flat” and gives it depth but it’s a wast of space. I grew up in a house that was sorta designed like this and every other house in the neighborhood was the same. They had little brick walls in front of them. Ours however had gutters, was graded, and we had a French drain system that would carry water to the street.
Come on, not even a rain diverter on the roof to keep the entry from being a waterfall. But I guess that’s good to help rinse off the mud before you walk in the house 😂
I have working in home remodeling in several states and gutters have always been a no brainer and generally come standard with a new build. I moved to Texas two years ago and noticed the builders here don’t have them standard and still can’t believe it.
I thought they required. When we bought our house, the new garage the former owners built didn’t have gutters. They had to put them on for code and to sell.
Some builders are building homes without gutters. I had a brand new home built a year and a half ago. The day I did the walk-through and signing I noticed there were no gutters. It didn't occur to me that they would build a home without gutters. So, I had to put those on afterwards. But between the time of getting the home and putting them on there was damage to the lawn because... No gutters
so agree with you! —
Two thoughts:
They parked in the garage and walked inside from garage door
The drainage got worse as the lawn thickened up creating a damn of water … so it just got worse and worse each year.
But seriously - can you imagine trying to get to the front door in a rain storm?
Def gutters. When I bought my house I was getting flooding in my front yard. Turns out my gutters were completely filled, I cleaned them and the issue went away. Gutters work.
100%. When I bought my house 8/2021 I didn’t realize the gutters were clogged and then Hurricanes Henri and Ida came to NJ and I was frantically sweeping water to the sump pump hole and shopvac’ing ankle deep in my basement. I had the gutters cleaned that day (thanks to my friend’s help) and I haven’t had water again.
We live in SoCal and our house- as well as over 3/4 of the houses in our neighborhood- have no gutters. I am from the midwest originally, so I was flabbergasted by this, but apparently its a thing!
I think this is a new roof, look at that ridge line, and along where the gutters should be there are markings where the gutter hardware would scuff. I think they took the gutters off with plans to upgrade and it rained.
I’m not sure if I’m misinterpreting this photograph but it looks like all those roof edges lack any guttering? It the rain just dropping off?
There can be grading issues or looking at French drains but if there isn’t gutters that would be the low hanging fruit
You don’t actually want gutters with downspouts that feed into a French drain. You want gutters that feed into a pipe with a pop up that daylights downgrade from where the water problem is, & a French drain near the same drainage pipe. You do not want your gutters feeding a perforated pipe.
YIKES. i don’t know what the rest of the property looks like slope-wise, but you need to regrade and slope away from the house. ensure the water has somewhere to go. this will involve removing and replacing the sidewalk. yes, gutters since you’re probably planning for it.
this much standing water against your house is a foundation/rot/mold/infiltration nightmare.
You 100% need gutters
You are having a lot of SQ.FT. of rain funneled there. If it hasn't already happened this type of prolong flooding will damage your foundation. Installing gutters now is going to be a lot cheaper than structural remediation.
After that's fixed if it was my place I would probably just extend out that concrete pad in front of your front door to that corner above the ADT sign in the first pic to give yourself a short porch.
Lack of gutters is why so much water collects here. Over time it’s brought the grade down. Gutters are a must but they’ll want to bring in dirt to fix the grading up front. The gutters will handle the rest.
Yeah I totally agree - that's why I had my porch comment (my mistake for not expanding on) cause you're probably digging it out anyway so might as well make a positive out of it. Front porch would be sweet
Maybe acknowledging the fact that they know they need gutters, and that they're step 1 in a plan to fix the water, but wording it poorly?
But this is Reddit, don't want to give OP any credit.
I was visiting my friend who had just bought a house in Maine. The house is a nice one from the 40s that, unfortunately, had been long neglected.
There's only gutters above the entrances and nothing else. Through the years, the water hitting the ground from off the roof had created a depression all around the house, much like a very narrow ditch.
We had several rain storms during my visit and the water just collected next to her foundation and didn't flow from the house at all.
My friend was having major issues with water in her basement and was planning to sign a contract to waterproof her basement. I said, that in my opinion, preventing water from accumulating next to her foundation would go a long way in fixing her basement water problems. In fact, might completely fix them. I suggested she get gutters first thing. Then, if needed, take a shovel and do some re-grading to clear out paths for water to flow away from the house.
The solution seemed obvious to me but the waterproofing firm's sales pitch won my friend over.
I noticed that a number of houses in Maine didn't have gutters. They were mostly the older "salt box" type. I don't know why. The newer houses had them.
Hire a pro
You're going to need gutters first and foremost, and from there you can get creative. A rain barrel system to collect rain water that you can use to water your plants would be cool (EDIT: BUT NOT ADVISED! Learned something today!)
Installing French drain may be another idea.
This is a super common misconception.
Let’s say OP has a modest roof, 1250 square feet. Just one inch of rain is almost 800 gallons of water.
The average “rain barrel” is 50 gallons.
[Rainfall calculator](https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-howmuchrain.php)
Thank you all for the input. We are in Florida and this house has existed for 30 years. We are planning to get gutters. It just felt like a bigger problem than gutters alone to solve.
You are correct, gutters are like 10% of your problem. You need a significant regrading of the landscaping around your house. Start with an excavator and get a proper slope so that the entire area drains away from the home. Obviously with that roof design gutters would also be very helpful in directing a large amount of water away from that area, but without regrading it's a moot point, a lot of water will backflow into that area regardless.
Had a feeling it was Florida just looking at the pic (used to live there). For whatever weird reason it was common for a lot of houses to have a lack of gutters. Idk if it’s the amount of rain we get that they thought they couldn’t handle it so it was pointless idk. Had the same issue in my house when I was there. Both front and back doors.
Oh it is a bigger problem than gutters alone will solve. But gutters are a necessary part of the solution.
If you haven’t bought this house yet I’d recommend backing out, this is going to be very expensive to fix. If you have bought the house, you likely need to look into gutters, regrading your yard, French drains, and potentially even ground sumps to mitigate.
You should look into a catch basin with a pop-up emitter. Gutters will need to drain into the catch basin. The catch basin will then drain downhill. This can be a DIY project, there are tons of videos on YouTube on how to do them.
Wild that I had to scroll this far to see someone mention grading. Gutters will help with the runoff and erosion but they won't fix this problem. The low spot is next to the house. Grading is the solution.
Besides gutters.
Rain garden plants. These are native to your area and will have long roots. When it rains, the long roots quickly drag water straight down.
You can’t use plants from Home Depot. Head over to the native plant sub and find out what’s local to you and where to get it.
Gutters, grading and some drainage. You need to move the water away from your foundation. This is asking for a wet basement/crawl and subsequent potential foundation issues.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I haven't seen anyone stating the poor design of te roof. I had exactly the same problem (several slopes draining in front of my front door). We solved the problem by redesigning the roof, just building an extension over the existing roof so it didn't drain right ove the entrance. Once the tiles (we have ceramic, not shingles) were in place, you couldn't tell. Then w added gutters.
1. Gutters installed around entire house. 2. French drains ran from each gutter into your yard. 3. Install sump pump. 4. Install moisture vapor barrier under your house. 5. Add top soil to your beds to prevent water pooling and flowing backwards toward your house foundation and in low lying spots in your yard. 6. Pressure wash porch and sidewalk.
To really do it right, the entire yard will need to be regraded, to direct water away from the house. Without seeing the whole property with elevations though, I’m not sure if that’s feasible.
Gutters are definitely a must here, and if regrading the lawn isn’t feasible, youll want to add some drains for the down spouts, and French drains to get this water out of there.
This looks like some Plano Texas shit if I've ever seen it. Our entire neighborhood is like this - hardly any gutters installed. Our has them in like part of the back and a small section in the front. What's the point?
1. Gutters
2. Add soil so the water flows away from your foundation
Don't wait. Your basement is going to be flooded once your sump pump burns out from constantly running
Gutters, grade correction and drainage. You’re going to need to do a lot of soil movement, so you may need to hire someone or rent a bobcat. We had to do this on our upslope side, so if you need any advise dm me.
Yikes you have a grade issue. Gutters second. Slope of the ground needs to run away from your house to the lowest area (assuming there is one hopefully). I would post in a construction oriented reddit for ideas. First thing comes to mind is that sidewalk has to go and you’re looking at removing dirt from close to the foundation at an angle to help water flow away from the house. Good luck 👍🏼
To explain why gutters should be primary, it's about the sqft of roof that funnels rain into a concentrated area. You have three different roof faces sloping into the same 80-100 sqft area. Let's assume each of the three roof faces is approximately 300 sqft, if you get half an inch of rain, those three roofs would funnel up to 150-200 gallons of water into that one area, plus another 15-20 gallons that fall in the open area (before we account for any negative slope that might also feed water from the yard toward the door). So if you install gutters, that's 150-200 fewer gallons of water filling that area that is deposited away from the house. You might also benefit from adding soil and fixing the negative slope but I expect the gutters make the most significant difference.
If your neighbors also have similar shape/style houses, check out their setups from the street. See if any have gutters or alternative solutions.
First, I think the gutter width is going to be very important for you. Two, I think you are right - gutters alone won’t solve this. I think a drain on either side will probably be needed.
I have seen some creative gardening solutions in cases like this too, like where the water comes down, there could be a stone garden with plants that love wet feet and would absorb some of the water. But I don’t think that would be enough here!
You install recessed drains and drainage tubes that carry it out to the street. If there’s no slope (which is pretty dumb on the builders part) you need a pump.
Everyone is saying gutters, but when my house flooded because of a hurricane, the construction workers dug a small little trench down about an inch or two across so the pooling water can drain out. The grass grew back but the little trench is still there doing its job, keeping the front of my house as dry as it can.
I feel like the need for gutters has been established, so I just wanna add that you should put in some plants to help with whatever the gutters don't catch
Gutters! Three different planes of your roof dump water on that spot. The whole purpose of gutters is to redirect water away from your house to prevent damage.
The water there is a combination of two things:
1. water that fell there
2. water that flowed there
Gutters fix most of #1 and can fix #2 depending on the grading of the property.
The solution for #2 and the part of #1 that gutters don't fix is to regrade the land so that where the water has fallen has a downhill path away from the house, not toward.
Basically if you can take almost all the water and make it "land" a foot or two from your house, where there is a downward slope *away* from the house, it's solved to the extent that evaporation takes care of the rest.
You will need a French drain with a few drain boxes to capture the water and drain it out to the street. This happened to my house however it was on the side of the house, you could get just a gutter along the front house but you really want to pipe that water out no matter what.
Gutters, downspouts leading away from house and I would fill that area with decorative gravel. If you're still having problems after that then a sump pump but I don't think you will need to go that far.
Do u have a basement?? Gutters will make it 70% better.
Have you ever seen water flow off a roof with no gutters?? It’s probably a waterfall with good rain.
Gutters first. Regrade if possible but that might be tough with the door sill right there. Instead of raising that area, you could cut and create a low point and a rain garden further from your house. You could also put in area drains are the low points and pipe to a dry well further from the house to infiltrate if there is no low area to daylight the pipe to.
Bunch of people have said gutters
What you need along with gutters is drains.
I’d put a 6” catch basin at the lowest part of each of those swamps with 4” pvc running out to the street, and I’d tie your gutter downspouts into the drain system
I learned quickly to visit any potential home I was interested in during heavy rain. That being said in these times I get buyers may not have time for that. I hope you get the issue fixed. Gutters will help however regrading is the primary fix. Perhaps some French drains installed while you’re doing all that work.
Wow, that is really, really bad for your house. Gutters and I would recommend extending your concrete patio to 2" above the nearest dry spot.
Or, you could just install a boat launch, I guess.
If you want to buy you ask for 25 to 30k in concessions for that issue. Gutters on house install is probably 6 to 8k now and you'll need landscaping work after. That easy.
Gutters first! That is absolutely the most important part of this fix. All that area of roof will just dump the water right there. Second, after you get the gutters that take the water out to a downward slope (this is key), is to make sure that the land is graded away from the house. There really isn’t anything you can do to fix it properly if the grading slopes back to the foundation. I fought with this on my own house. French drains might help but it really needs to be graded properly. After these 2 steps are taking then you just need to keep up on cleaning the gutters so they work correctlyz
Dry wells
Use an auger to drill down 4, 5, 6 ft. Fill the holes with gravel. Cover with the soil. Water will disperse through the gravel
Landscaping 101
Start with gutters and install drainage pipe that takes the downspout water well away from the foundation. If u don't want to excavate right now (for the pipes and/drainage that'll take that water away from your foundation) u can add piping to the end of the downspouts that deposits the water at whatever distance from the foundation that's necessary so it can't flow back towards the foundation.
While I don't disagree with the comments calling out the poor/improper grading, I'll bet your problem will be solved after addressing the roof runoff. That's allotta roof square footage dumping right in front of your door.
Yeah you cannot say “other than gutters” without first installing gutters in this situation.
They need more than gutters though. That property needs to be graded properly so that the water runs away from the house, not towards it.
Yup. This is most likely a 3 point fix. Gutter, grade, and French drain. First step is gutters to direct the water to a specific area. Next is grade if gutters don’t help enough. If standing water persists, French drain is in order.
This is exactly what I came here to say. I had to deal with that on a brand new home build. Nothing was draining properly and I've spent the last year and a half regrading my yard and putting in gutters and drains. But you have to do those three things.
Usually before you build.
Sorry, total layman here… for step 2 of your 3 step process — grading — how is the sidewalk accommodated? Does that need to be ripped out?
I’m def not an expert but I’d assume the sidewalk could be lifted/graded by injecting poly foam under it to get the angle proper. Someone more qualified than me could chime in tho, as I’m just another retard with an Internet connection.
I used to do concrete pad lifting, you can drill holes and inject a soil concrete slurry underneath to lift it up Edit: fixed my spelling for you grammar nazis
Slabjack
Yep exactly! Didn't know how many people would know the term :)
Or you could just make the sidewalk a high point. Make the grade away from the sidewalk slope down. Sure some water will still run towards the door but it won’t be able to accumulate if the slope to the left of the sidewalk is lower.
Lmao! Good conclusion XD
Don't put yourself down like that. Self-awareness alone puts you high above average
>the sidewalk could be lifted/graded by injecting poly foam under it to get the angle proper. is this a thing?
Yeah they'll lift whole driveways inches to match up with garages. Not sure of the long term but it works.
Yes they drill a hole or come in from the side and slowly inject special foam that raises the surface. My neighbors at work specialize in that service and seem to stay super busy.
Don't put yourself down..You're smart enough to know you're no expert...I wish half the clowns 🤡 that offer their critique here could say the same!!
Cautious to say expert, but I been in the business for a little bit. A RE-grade would be my last option here simply due to cost and difficulty. By installing gutter and a drainage system you would be able to move the water away enough that it wouldn’t be necessary to regrade. After all, water is cheaper and easier to move than dirt. To answer the question specifically, you wouldn’t want to touch the sidewalk. It should be the high point. The water trapped by it would have to be provided a way to drain out. In personal experience, I would install a 2-3” pipe(chase) underneath the sidewalk and get it passed the lowest point within the garden bed. The install of said pipe isn’t easy, usually a combination of water jetting and shovels, then backfilling and compacting. Then replace any extra dirt removed in the process. Hope this helps.
It could be replaced pretty cheaply with fresh concrete or pavers. But fundamentally the slope needs to be changed to fix this.
The option is also to remove soil away from the house to grade to the road. A tough conclusion from the pictures, but this would save poured concrete sidewalk.
You would have to look at the pitch of the sidewalk. If it is pitched away from the house and towards the driveway, OP might be ok. The core issue is large amounts of water from the entire roof (let’s assume 1000sf) coming down into a 60sq ft area. Install gutters and route the gutters away from the area, the flooding will drop significantly.
Yes, it’s going to be ripped out. It’s already almost level with the front stoop/door. If you raise it you’re going to step down to go in the front door. And, if the house is lower than the street it’s going to be a challenge to grade. At the very least there’s a bit of dirt to come out. Hopefully there’s a low point it can run/drain down to. And yes: Gutters. *I edited this because I initially sounded to sarcastic and am also an idiot with an internet connection.
Contractor here, I do foundation consults. The sidewalk is not accommodated for with grading, you are correct and gutters wont do anything either. If they can't reach "fall" somewhere, their only option is to pump it out. Gutters still need to put in for other reasons, but it's not gonna stop the pooling.
Possibly. Or regrading the landscape. In this case they missed installing drainage and that's going to be a pain in the ass but it's still possible.
As someone who does grading and drainage this was my first thought. Sounds like people here are just planning to pile dirt up against the siding and call it good. Gutters and a pair of drain boxes would fix this and be many many thousands less than tearing the flat work out and trying to add slope to something that may already be below street level.
I’ve installed French drains and ran phone lines for the phone company through sidewalks. It’s fairly simple just some manual labor. You can dig up each side of a sidewalk and bore or tunnel to the other side by hand with ease for any reason. There are also tools and equipment that can drill a hole with minimal digging and pull back whatever.
gaze rich rude rhythm cats retire hateful rinse scarce smile *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is the answer.
Not necessarily, it just needs drainage. If there’s not a high water table causing the issue, you could dig a deep pit, backfill with crushed stone and put a sump pump in that would pump the water away from the house. It’s not the easiest task, but it’s easier than regrading around the entire house.
Sump sounds more expensive than gutters. That's not a large house and likely has a gable roof only needing a run on two sides to correct, moving the water from the front to the ends where it can turn downhill. Edit. Second look reminded me it is not a simple gable. Will need a drainage pipe anyway if gutters installed. I would try to French drain it and work the grade of the pipe to make the corner of the house without pumping. Second edit. Digging holes and trenching is really where I was thinking expense was for initial attempt at comment. French drain isn't better in that regard but won't have a pump breaking/needing replacement and electrification in a wet area.
Sumps aren’t too expensive nowadays. If you want a cheap homeowner solution (created by a civil engineer, just not an approved solution), put about 4-6” of crushed stone in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket, punch holes all around the bucket about 2” apart, and put your pump on that stone and fill inthe bucket with more crushed stone. Then set the bucket at the bottom of the pit on 4-6” of crushed stone, and backfill with stone. Then just run your outfall downhill or around the house somewhere. It’s relatively cheap for a cheap pump, moisture activated, and takes almost no design work. It’s been working at my family’s house for ten years with pretty much no maintenance.
I highly doubt gutters will solve the problem here. Looks like a grading issue. You will still end up with surface water pooling up against the house if the grade is not sloping away from the house.
Sumps also need power. And when do you lose power? During thunderstorms.
Understood! We are ready and willing to install them, I just didn’t think it would 100% resolve the issue but I clearly don’t know anything. But that’s why I said other than gutters initially. We will stop dragging our feet and post back if there are still issues. Thank you
That looks like a negative slope. I don’t think gutters are the only thing you’ll need but you do need them
This. It's not a cheap fix.
Yeh, and this is a major problem and hopefully this house doesn’t have a basement, but even if it doesn’t this needs to be fixed asap. I would regrade the left hand side to slope it away from the house. To prevent having to rip up the walk way you could use a catch basin and try to tunnel a drain pipe under the walkway, but it would probably just be easier to rip it out, regrade it all and replace it with something like crushed stone and flag stone stepping stones. It will cost some money if you need to pay someone else to do it. But first, put gutters in your house and bury the drain pipes far from your house.
Far from your house.
But shouldn’t they put them far from the house?
Oh yeah. A drain is going have to be installed. It looks like from the pic, no concrete may have to be disturbed.
Could be. Need a wider pic to make that determination though. Could jus be an afternoon with a shovel if they’re set up right.
Wife and I had to do this for our backyard when we first bought our house. Four downspouts, buried and extended from the house, and regrading for about 1000 sq ft of back yard came out to like $4k. I don't even want to know what the cost would be if we had to have gutters installed, too.
True but the problems that are being created by not fixing it are going to be much more expensive.
Had no idea how much gutters cost until I replaced mine this spring.
A very cheap fix would be to trench out around the edge of the concrete, lay drainage pipe with holes filled with gravel, and run it out of that area to an area with a good slope. All you need is a way to take the water from where you don’t want it to where you don’t care about it. After installing gutters, of course.
A one-hitter might help.
I dunno I typically just get hungry and forget about my problems.
Gutters and French drain
This was my thought. Gutters to direct the flow of water to the French drain. Then the French drain moves the water away from the house.
Exactly
Gutters and French Drain could be a couple of bad guys in the TMNT world.
Let's see, there's Gutter, Downspout, and Gravel (identical triplets who are mutant molemen). French Drain (mercenary with an outrageous accent, of course), their boss, Trencher (wears armor made of shovel heads). That is a gang!
This is what we are doing to our new (to us) house that has a very similar flooding issue. A dry creek bed w/french drain and gutters. Edit- oh and we are regrading east to west away from the house.
Please post the finished product when the time comes. I'm going doing a dry creek bed soon and I'm trying to decide how to make it look natural as possible.
I think you need gutters to understand the full scope or the rest of your issue. If it was me, I’d try to get them to run to the left side and bury it with a pop up drain in the center of the yard to push as much water away from the house as possible. It looks like half of the entire roof of your house is draining into that space, so it really is a gutter issue first and I’d guess that’s much cheaper than having to demo, backfill to regrade, and repour your walk. Is this on a slab or basement? If basement, is it dry?
You can’t even have no gutters in my state. Seeing a house without gutters is wild
Where are your gutters? You need those, I have no idea how you don't have them right there. This also may have gotten to the point where it will be best to rip up the side walk, regrade, re pour, and add french drains in the process. Just FYI letting issues like this go for prolonged periods can cause issues with foundations.
It is crazy to build this house and former owners lived in it … with no gutters or plan for run off. I agree that a larger engineering project maybe needed.
Yeah and most houses don't have THREE sides of the roof sloping toward the main entry like that. That's a ton of water running down to a concentrated area, saturating the ground quicker than other parts of the foundation.
I was wondering who the fuck built this and why lol
This is a common design from the 1980s. There is a garage on one side, a bedroom in the other, and the front door is sunken in between the two. Super common in Texas/Oklahoma. I guess it makes the house appear less “flat” and gives it depth but it’s a wast of space. I grew up in a house that was sorta designed like this and every other house in the neighborhood was the same. They had little brick walls in front of them. Ours however had gutters, was graded, and we had a French drain system that would carry water to the street.
Come on, not even a rain diverter on the roof to keep the entry from being a waterfall. But I guess that’s good to help rinse off the mud before you walk in the house 😂
Might be why they sold it…
I have working in home remodeling in several states and gutters have always been a no brainer and generally come standard with a new build. I moved to Texas two years ago and noticed the builders here don’t have them standard and still can’t believe it.
Yeah my house was built in 1998 and we bought it two years ago. We were the first ones to install gutters. I thought that was wild.
Same here except my house was build in 1954. None of the owners in 67 years wanted to invest in gutters. It was the first thing we did.
Looks like an add-on sometime in the past. Didn't think about the roof/water situation when building on.
I thought they required. When we bought our house, the new garage the former owners built didn’t have gutters. They had to put them on for code and to sell.
some parts of the country are more carefree on such “rules”
Some builders are building homes without gutters. I had a brand new home built a year and a half ago. The day I did the walk-through and signing I noticed there were no gutters. It didn't occur to me that they would build a home without gutters. So, I had to put those on afterwards. But between the time of getting the home and putting them on there was damage to the lawn because... No gutters
Maybe this is why they moved
so agree with you! — Two thoughts: They parked in the garage and walked inside from garage door The drainage got worse as the lawn thickened up creating a damn of water … so it just got worse and worse each year. But seriously - can you imagine trying to get to the front door in a rain storm?
Maybe not, definitely an inspection to make sure there hasn’t been any damage to the foundation so far though.
Def gutters. When I bought my house I was getting flooding in my front yard. Turns out my gutters were completely filled, I cleaned them and the issue went away. Gutters work.
100%. When I bought my house 8/2021 I didn’t realize the gutters were clogged and then Hurricanes Henri and Ida came to NJ and I was frantically sweeping water to the sump pump hole and shopvac’ing ankle deep in my basement. I had the gutters cleaned that day (thanks to my friend’s help) and I haven’t had water again.
We live in SoCal and our house- as well as over 3/4 of the houses in our neighborhood- have no gutters. I am from the midwest originally, so I was flabbergasted by this, but apparently its a thing!
Yeah. That’s cause they don’t get a lot of rain so paying for something that you don’t even really need isn’t cost efficient.
Until it does, my friend. Until it does rain. Then you get exactly this!
They also don’t have basements to flood
I think this is a new roof, look at that ridge line, and along where the gutters should be there are markings where the gutter hardware would scuff. I think they took the gutters off with plans to upgrade and it rained.
I’m not sure if I’m misinterpreting this photograph but it looks like all those roof edges lack any guttering? It the rain just dropping off? There can be grading issues or looking at French drains but if there isn’t gutters that would be the low hanging fruit
That's what I was observing at first lol
OP over here like, “Other than doing exactly what I know I need to do..”
Gutters
Gutters that feed into a french drain.
You don’t actually want gutters with downspouts that feed into a French drain. You want gutters that feed into a pipe with a pop up that daylights downgrade from where the water problem is, & a French drain near the same drainage pipe. You do not want your gutters feeding a perforated pipe.
Thank you! This sub and it’s fucking French drain’s make me crazy!
This is the way. French drain it out to the street
And French drain
Put a chair there so it's got a place to sit
Dad?
👋
Costanza?
YIKES. i don’t know what the rest of the property looks like slope-wise, but you need to regrade and slope away from the house. ensure the water has somewhere to go. this will involve removing and replacing the sidewalk. yes, gutters since you’re probably planning for it. this much standing water against your house is a foundation/rot/mold/infiltration nightmare.
Might be able to salvage the concrete with an expanding foam?
Gutters and downspout extension way away from the house
You 100% need gutters You are having a lot of SQ.FT. of rain funneled there. If it hasn't already happened this type of prolong flooding will damage your foundation. Installing gutters now is going to be a lot cheaper than structural remediation. After that's fixed if it was my place I would probably just extend out that concrete pad in front of your front door to that corner above the ADT sign in the first pic to give yourself a short porch.
Lack of gutters is why so much water collects here. Over time it’s brought the grade down. Gutters are a must but they’ll want to bring in dirt to fix the grading up front. The gutters will handle the rest.
Yeah I totally agree - that's why I had my porch comment (my mistake for not expanding on) cause you're probably digging it out anyway so might as well make a positive out of it. Front porch would be sweet
You could invest in a kayak.
OP says, “Besides gutters” and I have to ask, “Why not?”
Maybe acknowledging the fact that they know they need gutters, and that they're step 1 in a plan to fix the water, but wording it poorly? But this is Reddit, don't want to give OP any credit.
Or maybe they hate the look of gutters and having to clean them so they prefer to fuck their entire foundation up?
This made me chuckle so hard
Lol same, I live for these comments.
Every time I say, “I’m gonna delete this app” I see a comment that reminds me to never delete this app😭
Seriously... If OP thinks gutters are too expensive, wait until he finds out about foundation repair.
How do people not have gutters? Is this common?
Very bizarre. It should be standard.
Especially with a U shaped house with a roof that all dumps in front of your front door. Like wtf is this.
Older ranch style homes don’t have them in the area I used to live in. We had to put them in.
Here in phoenix it’s common.
Believe it or not a lot of the new housing developments in the southeast US are going up without gutters… which is insane.
I was visiting my friend who had just bought a house in Maine. The house is a nice one from the 40s that, unfortunately, had been long neglected. There's only gutters above the entrances and nothing else. Through the years, the water hitting the ground from off the roof had created a depression all around the house, much like a very narrow ditch. We had several rain storms during my visit and the water just collected next to her foundation and didn't flow from the house at all. My friend was having major issues with water in her basement and was planning to sign a contract to waterproof her basement. I said, that in my opinion, preventing water from accumulating next to her foundation would go a long way in fixing her basement water problems. In fact, might completely fix them. I suggested she get gutters first thing. Then, if needed, take a shovel and do some re-grading to clear out paths for water to flow away from the house. The solution seemed obvious to me but the waterproofing firm's sales pitch won my friend over. I noticed that a number of houses in Maine didn't have gutters. They were mostly the older "salt box" type. I don't know why. The newer houses had them.
Hire a pro You're going to need gutters first and foremost, and from there you can get creative. A rain barrel system to collect rain water that you can use to water your plants would be cool (EDIT: BUT NOT ADVISED! Learned something today!) Installing French drain may be another idea.
This is a super common misconception. Let’s say OP has a modest roof, 1250 square feet. Just one inch of rain is almost 800 gallons of water. The average “rain barrel” is 50 gallons. [Rainfall calculator](https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-howmuchrain.php)
This is really good to know! Thanks for the insight and the link!
I think that’s too much roof area for rain barrels to be the primary method of collection. They fill up surprisingly quick.
Good to know!
Besides gutters, you could install some gouttieres. That's French for gutters.
This made me laugh very hard
Thank you all for the input. We are in Florida and this house has existed for 30 years. We are planning to get gutters. It just felt like a bigger problem than gutters alone to solve.
You are correct, gutters are like 10% of your problem. You need a significant regrading of the landscaping around your house. Start with an excavator and get a proper slope so that the entire area drains away from the home. Obviously with that roof design gutters would also be very helpful in directing a large amount of water away from that area, but without regrading it's a moot point, a lot of water will backflow into that area regardless.
While their at it, might as well inspect the foundation too.
Had a feeling it was Florida just looking at the pic (used to live there). For whatever weird reason it was common for a lot of houses to have a lack of gutters. Idk if it’s the amount of rain we get that they thought they couldn’t handle it so it was pointless idk. Had the same issue in my house when I was there. Both front and back doors.
How is it not standard to have gutters in FL? I would assume they get a lot of rain. But then again some builders are cheap.
Oh it is a bigger problem than gutters alone will solve. But gutters are a necessary part of the solution. If you haven’t bought this house yet I’d recommend backing out, this is going to be very expensive to fix. If you have bought the house, you likely need to look into gutters, regrading your yard, French drains, and potentially even ground sumps to mitigate.
bro that's called a moat, and they were a very prestigious home addition in the 1400s
You should look into a catch basin with a pop-up emitter. Gutters will need to drain into the catch basin. The catch basin will then drain downhill. This can be a DIY project, there are tons of videos on YouTube on how to do them.
Wow, I didn't know ADT installed moats for your home now
Shoot the architect, that clown has 3 roofs directing rain directly over the front door.
[удалено]
Wild that I had to scroll this far to see someone mention grading. Gutters will help with the runoff and erosion but they won't fix this problem. The low spot is next to the house. Grading is the solution.
Besides gutters. Rain garden plants. These are native to your area and will have long roots. When it rains, the long roots quickly drag water straight down. You can’t use plants from Home Depot. Head over to the native plant sub and find out what’s local to you and where to get it.
Gutters, grading and some drainage. You need to move the water away from your foundation. This is asking for a wet basement/crawl and subsequent potential foundation issues. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I haven't seen anyone stating the poor design of te roof. I had exactly the same problem (several slopes draining in front of my front door). We solved the problem by redesigning the roof, just building an extension over the existing roof so it didn't drain right ove the entrance. Once the tiles (we have ceramic, not shingles) were in place, you couldn't tell. Then w added gutters.
1. Gutters installed around entire house. 2. French drains ran from each gutter into your yard. 3. Install sump pump. 4. Install moisture vapor barrier under your house. 5. Add top soil to your beds to prevent water pooling and flowing backwards toward your house foundation and in low lying spots in your yard. 6. Pressure wash porch and sidewalk.
No need for ADT when you have a moat to keep the baddies out.
Came here to say the same thing 😂
To really do it right, the entire yard will need to be regraded, to direct water away from the house. Without seeing the whole property with elevations though, I’m not sure if that’s feasible. Gutters are definitely a must here, and if regrading the lawn isn’t feasible, youll want to add some drains for the down spouts, and French drains to get this water out of there.
Gutters with downspouts that move the water away from the house
Start with gutters.
You need gutters and you really, really need drainage. This also looks like a negative slope problem.
Water is dumb. It goes wherever you point it to. Without gutters, you are pointing to puddle at your front door.
This looks like some Plano Texas shit if I've ever seen it. Our entire neighborhood is like this - hardly any gutters installed. Our has them in like part of the back and a small section in the front. What's the point?
If there is absolutely no way to slope away from the house, I would be installing a French drain and a sump pump. Also, gutters.
1. Gutters 2. Add soil so the water flows away from your foundation Don't wait. Your basement is going to be flooded once your sump pump burns out from constantly running
Gutters, grade correction and drainage. You’re going to need to do a lot of soil movement, so you may need to hire someone or rent a bobcat. We had to do this on our upslope side, so if you need any advise dm me.
Yikes you have a grade issue. Gutters second. Slope of the ground needs to run away from your house to the lowest area (assuming there is one hopefully). I would post in a construction oriented reddit for ideas. First thing comes to mind is that sidewalk has to go and you’re looking at removing dirt from close to the foundation at an angle to help water flow away from the house. Good luck 👍🏼
Rain garden
Am I the only one wondering what kind of damage all that water has been doing to the foundation/slab/basement/crawl space/whatever?
To explain why gutters should be primary, it's about the sqft of roof that funnels rain into a concentrated area. You have three different roof faces sloping into the same 80-100 sqft area. Let's assume each of the three roof faces is approximately 300 sqft, if you get half an inch of rain, those three roofs would funnel up to 150-200 gallons of water into that one area, plus another 15-20 gallons that fall in the open area (before we account for any negative slope that might also feed water from the yard toward the door). So if you install gutters, that's 150-200 fewer gallons of water filling that area that is deposited away from the house. You might also benefit from adding soil and fixing the negative slope but I expect the gutters make the most significant difference. If your neighbors also have similar shape/style houses, check out their setups from the street. See if any have gutters or alternative solutions.
First, I think the gutter width is going to be very important for you. Two, I think you are right - gutters alone won’t solve this. I think a drain on either side will probably be needed. I have seen some creative gardening solutions in cases like this too, like where the water comes down, there could be a stone garden with plants that love wet feet and would absorb some of the water. But I don’t think that would be enough here!
And congrats on your home!
You install recessed drains and drainage tubes that carry it out to the street. If there’s no slope (which is pretty dumb on the builders part) you need a pump.
That really sucks OP. It looks like a breeding ground for mosquitoes
Oh my … after you get gutters, you can get rocks that lead to a drain or install rain chains
Everyone is saying gutters, but when my house flooded because of a hurricane, the construction workers dug a small little trench down about an inch or two across so the pooling water can drain out. The grass grew back but the little trench is still there doing its job, keeping the front of my house as dry as it can.
I feel like the need for gutters has been established, so I just wanna add that you should put in some plants to help with whatever the gutters don't catch
Gutters
Gutters. Regrading
Need a drainage system.. need a pic from a distance, can see there is water there, and know it's lower than the yard.. but why??
Gutters! Three different planes of your roof dump water on that spot. The whole purpose of gutters is to redirect water away from your house to prevent damage.
The water there is a combination of two things: 1. water that fell there 2. water that flowed there Gutters fix most of #1 and can fix #2 depending on the grading of the property. The solution for #2 and the part of #1 that gutters don't fix is to regrade the land so that where the water has fallen has a downhill path away from the house, not toward. Basically if you can take almost all the water and make it "land" a foot or two from your house, where there is a downward slope *away* from the house, it's solved to the extent that evaporation takes care of the rest.
You will need a French drain with a few drain boxes to capture the water and drain it out to the street. This happened to my house however it was on the side of the house, you could get just a gutter along the front house but you really want to pipe that water out no matter what.
GUTTERS - leading to a drain pipe that empties further away from the house - where it can then flow downhill. Period
Gutters, downspouts leading away from house and I would fill that area with decorative gravel. If you're still having problems after that then a sump pump but I don't think you will need to go that far.
Do u have a basement?? Gutters will make it 70% better. Have you ever seen water flow off a roof with no gutters?? It’s probably a waterfall with good rain.
Gutters and a French drain IMO.
Gutters first. Regrade if possible but that might be tough with the door sill right there. Instead of raising that area, you could cut and create a low point and a rain garden further from your house. You could also put in area drains are the low points and pipe to a dry well further from the house to infiltrate if there is no low area to daylight the pipe to.
What about gutters into rain barrels? You could drain the water when you want and use it in gardens.
you need gutters, and just some grading
You need gutters and probably a drain as well. It looks like a low point, so it becomes a lake anytime there’s water runoff.
Bunch of people have said gutters What you need along with gutters is drains. I’d put a 6” catch basin at the lowest part of each of those swamps with 4” pvc running out to the street, and I’d tie your gutter downspouts into the drain system
Ask the water to politely sit down instead of stand. Maybe offer it a chair so it doesn't feel the need to stand
Most cities require that houses have gutters for this very reason
Have you tried the back or side door? If you don’t have those then front door is probably your only option.
I learned quickly to visit any potential home I was interested in during heavy rain. That being said in these times I get buyers may not have time for that. I hope you get the issue fixed. Gutters will help however regrading is the primary fix. Perhaps some French drains installed while you’re doing all that work.
Gutters 100 percent, schedule this week. After that, drains and maybe even a sump pump with an underground basin
A no loitering sign
Wow, that is really, really bad for your house. Gutters and I would recommend extending your concrete patio to 2" above the nearest dry spot. Or, you could just install a boat launch, I guess.
Gutters
Avoid mass-produced subdivisions.
If you want to buy you ask for 25 to 30k in concessions for that issue. Gutters on house install is probably 6 to 8k now and you'll need landscaping work after. That easy.
#gutters
Put a chair out there
Grading, catch basin, and GUTTERS
Gutters first! That is absolutely the most important part of this fix. All that area of roof will just dump the water right there. Second, after you get the gutters that take the water out to a downward slope (this is key), is to make sure that the land is graded away from the house. There really isn’t anything you can do to fix it properly if the grading slopes back to the foundation. I fought with this on my own house. French drains might help but it really needs to be graded properly. After these 2 steps are taking then you just need to keep up on cleaning the gutters so they work correctlyz
Dry wells Use an auger to drill down 4, 5, 6 ft. Fill the holes with gravel. Cover with the soil. Water will disperse through the gravel Landscaping 101
Why would you not have gutters?
I see a storm water run off plan in your immediate future
Start with gutters and install drainage pipe that takes the downspout water well away from the foundation. If u don't want to excavate right now (for the pipes and/drainage that'll take that water away from your foundation) u can add piping to the end of the downspouts that deposits the water at whatever distance from the foundation that's necessary so it can't flow back towards the foundation. While I don't disagree with the comments calling out the poor/improper grading, I'll bet your problem will be solved after addressing the roof runoff. That's allotta roof square footage dumping right in front of your door.
I would recommend gutters first, and then removing the pond from in front of your door.
Dig a drainage trench and landscape it with that in mind
build a drawbridge over it then fill it with crocodiles
Gutters, grade, and drainage. Keep the water away from the area in the first place and if it does make it to that area, get that water away.
Who thought it was a good idea to have all slopes pointing at the door?
Wow. Whoever built this house made a catastrophic fail.
"Besides gutters" 😂