Our Downspout Washout

August 17th, 2011

Since we move in a year ago, we’ve been having trouble with downspout washout.  The rain runs through all of our mulch bed and washes out a good deal of it onto our sidewalk.  After every rain storm, I’d have to spend a good 30 minutes shoveling mulch and sand back into the flower bed.  It was very pronounced in the front of the house.

Here’s a look at what was going on…

You can see the downspout the builder put in was basically blasting the flower bed.  During heavy rains, this gutter was essentially a fire hose.

To alleviate this near weekly aggravation, we installed this flexible downspout… thing, during our flower bed rehab.  This StealthFlow extension is exactly that, an F-117 compared to the normal straw type gutter extenders.  I’m pretty sure Lockheed Martin invented this product after millions of dollars of black budget research in some remote test facility.

Anyway, it installed very easily and was able to take the two bags of pond stones I dumped on it.  It hides pretty well to boot.

So, after our latest rainstorm, instead of walking out of the house to a mudslide, I walked out to a reasonably clean sidewalk.

There was a small amount of mulch washed onto the sidewalk from the rains, but nothing unexpected.  More importantly, there was no debris in front of the spout at all!  It looks clean!  Finally!

Two thumbs up!

 

 

 

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