How to Protect Your Home's Foundation From Water Damage

By Ryan Dallas

Ryan Dallas is a central Illinois native who grew up immersed in the home building business and a culture of service.

One of the biggest threats to your home isn’t something big or dramatic. More often than not, it’s water. We recently visited one of our new-construction homes in Behringer Commons with Jordan from SK Exteriors, our trusted partner for gutters, to talk through something most homeowners rarely think about until it becomes a problem: how a little preventative gutter maintenance can save thousands of dollars in repairs down the road.

The whole job of your gutters is to keep water away from the house. As Jordan put it, the goal is to keep your house watertight, and gutters exist to direct all that roof water away from the home. When gutters get clogged or downspouts aren’t attached properly, water ends up where you don’t want it, causing damage inside the house.

There’s a reason the downspouts are turned away from the foundation. That angle keeps water from entering your basement, crawl space, or foundation. Some homeowners reroute their gutters because they don’t like where a run crosses the yard, but those pieces are placed the way they are for a reason.

A few simple checks tell you whether your system is working. The easiest one costs nothing: the next time it rains, step outside and watch your downspouts. Water should be coming out at a pretty good clip. If it isn’t, one of a few things is going on. The downspouts may be plugged, the gutters may be clogged, or the gutters themselves may have been knocked out of pitch in a windstorm.

No water coming out during a steady rain is the first red flag. The second is water flowing over the top of the gutters and splashing out. Most standard residential gutters handle everyday rainstorms just fine, so consistent overflow usually means something is blocking them, the gutters aren’t sized right for the area, or there aren’t enough downspouts to move the water.

How often you check depends on where you live. For a newer home without many trees nearby, once a year may be enough, since there simply aren’t many leaves finding their way in. Older properties with mature trees are a different story. Jordan mentioned that his own house has older trees and those pesky little helicopter seeds, so even with gutter protection installed, he still gets up and inspects a couple of times a year to make sure nothing is building up and working its way into the downspouts.

Twice a year is a good rule of thumb, and here in Central Illinois, where we get all four seasons, spring and fall are the natural times to look. Debris that collects in the fall can trap water that freezes, damming it up and backing it up onto the roof, so staying ahead of it protects more than just your foundation.

Gutters are easy to overlook, but they do one of the most important jobs on the house. Protect your landscaping, sure, but more importantly, protect your foundation, because water intrusion and foundation damage are among the most costly repairs a home can face. A few minutes of attention a couple of times a year is genuinely half the battle: check the downspouts, make sure water is moving out at a good pace, and confirm everything is attached properly.

If you’d like an easy way to connect with SK Exteriors or any of our trusted local home pros, our exclusive Kiey app gives you direct access to our full network of vetted vendors. We built it to make caring for your home simpler at every stage.

If you have questions about your home, whether you’re maintaining it, improving it, or thinking about a move, we’d love to help. Call or text us at 217-351-4900, email us at homes@ryandallas.net, or visit ryandallasre.com.