How to clean my buried downspouts?

You may have downspouts that connect to drain pipes leading underground and draining elsewhere. These are also sometimes referred to as drain tiles, french drains, or downspout extensions. In every case, the goal is to take the huge amount of water your roof and gutter system collects and divert it safely away from the home without looking at unsightly downspout extenders sitting above ground.

Sometimes these extensions become clogged by debris, or they travel to an unknown spot in the yard where the cap has become covered over by the lawn. Without anywhere to go, this water may be diverted backwards into your basement, foundation or right back up and over the top of the gutter. Fortunately, Done Gutter is one of the only central Indiana companies equipped to clean these out, locate your drain caps, and return them to service — all without the need to dig them up or replace them. The process for doing this is called pressure jetting, and it’s the same method used to keep all sorts of other large diameter drains flowing freely.

Using specialized equipment, a high pressure line is snaked through the length of the buried downspout extension. The intense pressure and high water flow propels this line through while simultaneously cutting through roots and other debris and flushing all of this out of the end of the pipe. If a drain extension has been truly damaged, most often by extra large tree roots or by collapsed concrete, this can be determined as well.

Just because you have these buried extensions doesn’t mean you automatically need them cleaned, especially if you know the location of the drain cap where contents exit. The sign of a clogged downspout drain is water backflowing from the bottom of the downspout where the extension connects, or seeing dry drain caps after heavy rains when water should have been flowing through rapidly and pooled.

Downspout drain jetting is available from Done Gutter as a standalone service or as an addition to gutter cleaning. You can get your quote right here on our site with no visit required from us. We can usually test suspected drains to ensure the service is really necessary before beginning, and we don’t charge for drains we cannot successfully clear.