Maintaining Your Home
Septic System Maintenance
Well Water Treatment
Rain Gutters - You Need Them!
One of the most common questions I get is “Does the house need gutters?”. The answer is yes! Many of the defects found on and in a home during a home inspection have to do with water intrusion – and, more often than not, the absence of rain gutters is a contributing factor. An inch of rain running off the roof of an average-size house is almost 1,000 gallons of water. Don’t believe that number? Here’s the equation:
1 cubic inch = 0.004329 U.S. gallons. One square foot = 144 square inches. At one inch deep, this becomes 144 cubic inches of water. 144 multiplied by 0.004329 is 0.623376. This is how many gallons of water per square foot, per inch of rain. Multiply this by the average house footprint (we’ll say 1500 square feet), and you get 935.064 gallons of water.
(Footprint Square Feet) x 0.623376 = Volume In U.S. Gallons Per Inch of Rain
Now imagine that much water running down the face of your foundation, or splashing up onto the house at driveways, decks and steps, and it’s easier to see why water intrusion is an issue at basements and doorways and why wood rot occurs more often at lower locations on the exterior. Poorly managed runoff water can also cause erosion beneath the building’s foundation, driveways, walkways, patios and garage floors. Properly installed and maintained rain gutters, with downspout extensions that get the water away from your house, really are necessary for the long-term health of the building. And they do help in the winter too – splash-up from snow melting on the roof can keep surfaces near the ground constantly wet, especially over hard surfaces like decks, steps and driveways.
