My basement is wet. Could it really be the gutters?

Often, and it is the first thing worth ruling out because it is by far the cheapest. Three of the gutter jobs in our records came in described as a basement problem — standing water, damp, mold — and the cause each time was outside: a blocked gutter overflowing against a wall, or a downspout discharging a few inches from the foundation. A fifteen-hundred-square-foot roof moves around nine hundred gallons in an inch of rain and all of it leaves through two or three outlets, so where those outlets point matters more than almost anything else you could spend money on. If sealing the inside of a basement wall has been quoted to you before anybody looked at the roofline, get the roofline looked at.

How far from the house should a downspout discharge?

Four to six feet from the foundation is the usual minimum and ten feet is better, onto ground that falls away from the building rather than back toward it. The common arrangement — an elbow, a splash block, water landing a few inches from the wall — puts the whole roof into the soil directly against your basement, which is the one place you least want it. Above-ground extensions are cheap and are most of the fix. Burying the line into a dry well or a storm connection is an excavation job and goes to somebody licensed to dig.

Do you install new gutters?

No. A complete new gutter run, or replacing every run on a building, goes to a licensed gutter installer, and you get told that on the phone rather than after somebody has driven out. What we do is repair — clearing, re-hanging, re-pitching, sealing seams and end caps, replacing a damaged section within an existing run, and downspout work. Our records hold sixteen gutter repairs and no installations, so repair is what we can honestly stand behind.

How often do gutters need clearing around Lansing?

Twice a year is the honest general answer — once after the leaves are down, which in mid-Michigan is usually well into November, and once in spring for the seed and blossom debris, which arrives earlier and is finer and worse. The number that actually matters is how many mature trees overhang the roof: a house with none may go years, and a house under silver maples can block a downspout in a single season. The thing to avoid is going into a Michigan winter with a full gutter, because then it is ice rather than leaves.

Why does my gutter overflow at the back, between the gutter and the house?

Because the water is getting behind it rather than over it, which is a different fault from a simple blockage even though a blockage can cause it. Usually one of three things: the gutter has lost its fall and backs up at the high end; it has pulled away from the fascia so there is a gap at the top edge; or there is no drip edge, or the flashing behind the gutter has failed, so water running off the roof deck tracks down the fascia instead of into the trough. The third is the one that quietly rots the fascia board, which is why we look at that before simply re-hanging the gutter.

There is ice in my gutter and water coming in upstairs. Is that a gutter problem?

Partly, and it is worth being straight about which part. The ice dam itself is mostly caused by heat escaping into the attic and melting snow on the roof, which then refreezes at the cold eave — that is an insulation and ventilation problem. But a gutter full of debris freezes solid much earlier and gives the ice something to build on, so clearing it is the cheap half you can do now, and the attic is the half that actually stops it recurring. Anybody who tells you new gutters will cure ice dams is selling you gutters.

Do you fit gutter guards?

We will, and we will tell you honestly that we have never sold one — so that is a capability rather than a track record. Two things are worth knowing if you want them. A guard belongs on a roofline that is sound, so fascia, hangers and fall come first or you have fitted a guard to something that is about to move. And no guard makes a gutter maintenance-free; the good ones turn clearing from a necessity into an occasional check.

Not shingles and not steep slopes — those are a roofer's trade and we do not take them on. Two things nearby we do: the roofline, meaning fascia, soffit, trim, flashing, gutters and downspouts, which is where most water actually gets in; and repair to flat and low-slope membrane roofs, which has its own page. Where a job turns out to be a shingle problem you are told, and it is not billed as a wasted visit.

Your Wet Basement Might Be a Downspout: Three Gutter Jobs That Came In as Basement Problems

A gutter's job is not catching water. It is moving water somewhere the water cannot hurt the building.

Almost everything that goes wrong with a gutter is a failure of that second half, and the most expensive version of it is a gutter working perfectly — clear, level, firmly attached — that delivers the entire roof to a point eight inches from your foundation.

Here is the arithmetic that makes that matter. A roof of fifteen hundred square feet sheds roughly nine hundred gallons of water in an inch of rain. All of it leaves through two or three downspouts. Put one of those outlets a foot from the wall and you have built a machine for saturating the soil directly against your basement — several thousand gallons at a time, a few dozen times a year, every year you own the house.

Three gutter jobs that were booked as basement problems

This is not a theory. Going back through this company's own job records, three gutter jobs did not come in as gutter jobs at all. They came in as basements.

One is logged as “mold in basement / gutter cleanout and downspout inspection”. Another as “gutter cleanout / standing water / mold”. A third simply as “basement and downspout”. Same two words in a different order, three different houses, and in each case the thing that fixed the inside was found on the outside.

That is worth knowing before you spend money, because the two ends of this problem are not priced remotely alike. Sealing the inside face of a basement wall is a real job with a real number on it. Moving a downspout discharge six feet away from the house is an elbow, an extension and twenty minutes. If somebody has quoted you the first without having looked at the second, get the second looked at.

We wrote separately about what eleven wet basement jobs actually turned out to be, and the pattern there is the same one: the water is usually arriving from outside, and the cheapest fix is usually outside too.

The four things that actually go wrong

It is full. The obvious one, and the one with a twist — a blocked gutter usually overflows at the back edge, between the gutter and the house, where you cannot see it from the ground. That is the water that rots fascia board and runs down inside a wall.

It has lost its fall. A gutter is meant to drop about a quarter of an inch per ten feet toward the outlet. When a run sags in the middle it holds water permanently, the weight pulls it further out of line, and the standing water in it is what finishes off the fixings.

A seam or an end cap has opened. Then the whole run empties in one concentrated spot, which is far worse for the ground beneath it than if the gutter were not there at all.

The downspout discharges in the wrong place. The one above. It is the most common and the least looked at, because nothing about the gutter appears to be broken.

What you can check from the ground in five minutes

You do not need a ladder for any of this.

Are there plant seedlings growing in it? That is soil, not leaves. Soil takes years. It tells you how long it has been since anyone touched it.
Is there a dark vertical stain on the fascia board behind the gutter? It has been overflowing backwards, probably for seasons.
Is there a scour hole or a dead patch in the ground under a downspout? It is discharging too close and too fast.
Are there rust runs at the seams? On a steel gutter that is usually the end of the conversation rather than the start of it.
How far from the wall do the downspouts actually let go? Pace it out. Four to six feet is the usual minimum and ten is better.

And the single best diagnostic is free: go outside while it is actually raining and watch. Ninety seconds in the rain tells you what no photograph of a dry gutter ever will — which joint drips, where it goes over the back, and where the water ends up.

The Michigan part: it is not just a fall problem

Everywhere in the country, gutters clog with leaves. Here they then freeze.

A gutter holding wet debris in December holds ice in January. The ice gives meltwater something to back up behind, the water works its way under the lowest course of shingles, and the leak appears inside the house in February with no rain anywhere near it. People call that a roof leak. It is a drainage and a heat problem wearing a roof leak's clothes.

We should be straight about the limits of the gutter half of this, because the industry usually is not. Ice dams are mostly caused by heat escaping into your attic — warm air melts snow on the upper roof, the meltwater runs down to the cold overhang and refreezes there. That is an insulation and ventilation problem, and we have argued it at length in ice dams are an insulation problem and on the attic insulation and air sealing pages.

A blocked gutter is the half you can fix from a ladder this afternoon. The attic is the half that stops it happening again. Anybody telling you new gutters will cure your ice dams is selling you gutters.

What we do and what we do not

We repair gutters. Clearing and flushing, re-hanging and re-pitching a run that has lost its fall, re-nailing and re-bracketing a sagging run, swapping spike-and-ferrule fixings for hidden hangers, sealing seams and end caps, replacing a damaged section, and moving a downspout that has been emptying against your foundation for years. We also tie roof drains into downspouts on flat and low-slope roofs.

We do not install new gutters. A complete new run on a house that has none, or replacing every run on a building, goes to a licensed gutter installer, and you get told that on the phone rather than after somebody has driven out. The reason is simple enough to state: our records hold sixteen gutter repairs and not one installation, so repair is what we can honestly stand behind.

Two more boundaries worth knowing. Burying a downspout line into a dry well or a storm connection is an excavation job and goes to somebody licensed to dig — moving the discharge above ground does not. And bats are protected in Michigan; it is unlawful to seal them into a roost, so a suspected roost in a soffit stops the job and gets referred rather than closed up.

On gutter guards: we will fit them, and we will tell you honestly that we have never sold one, so that is a capability rather than a track record. A guard also belongs on a sound roofline — fascia, hangers and fall first, or you have fitted a guard to something that is about to move. And no guard makes a gutter maintenance-free. The good ones turn clearing from a necessity into an occasional check.

If you only do one thing

Walk outside and find where your downspouts let the water go. If any of them empties within a couple of feet of the house, that is the cheapest meaningful repair available to you anywhere on your property, and it is the one most likely to be behind a damp basement.

Want someone to look at it? Send photographs of the whole elevation rather than the damaged part, and tell us roughly how far your downspouts discharge from the wall. Those two things answer most of the question before anyone drives out. We will check the fall, the fixings and the fascia behind the run, and put a fixed price in writing. Coming out is free and there is no trip charge. Gutter repair and downspouts · Get in touch.