Is something bad about to happen?

[dandarc]

So, we have an old house that we bought a couple years ago - built in the '50s.  One of the long-standing issues that I haven't done anything about yet is the driveway.  Any time it rains, the driveway floods.  Until this weekend.

It absolutely poured on Friday, and no puddles.  I have kept the driveway cleaner this year than any time prior - weekly leaf blowing / weed-whacking of the stuff coming up through the cracks.

Could this be a symptom of something bad developing, or should I just consider us lucky to have the whole driveway usable during the rain?

[forummm]

Why does the water normally accumulate on the driveway? Where is it draining from, and what normally keeps it from draining away? Did any of those things change recently?

[Bracken_Joy]

If it slopes toward your house at all, check your basement!

[zolotiyeruki]

It puddled before, but doesn't puddle now?  Sounds like your driveway settled, or something happened under the ground (sinkhole about to open up?).

[dandarc]

It puddled before, but doesn't puddle now?  Sounds like your driveway settled, or something happened under the ground (sinkhole about to open up?).

That's what I was worried about, living in Florida.

Bracken - no basement.

Basically the puddle would start at the output of the downspout that was at the front corner of the porch and pours out onto driveway, and there would be a good chunk of the driveway in fairly deep water - maybe ankle deep.  Nothing in contact with the house or foundation, unless the front porch is on same foundation as the rest of the house.  When I get home I'll take pictures.

[Rezdent]

Have there been any changes to the neighborhood?  As in, new construction upstream, improvements to downstream drainage?  We got new neighbors downstream who cleaned their ditches, and it improved our drainage.

[aFrugalFather]

Photos would help

[dess1313]

could you grab a hose and hit the area with some water? watch where it goes? did something settle that let it run down the driveway instead of pooling?  is it sinking through cracks or angling off somewhere else?  Photos would help us understand better

[big_owl]

Gutter clogged?

[Le Poisson]

Are you in Florida, or another area where sinkholes are common? Personally, If I were worried, I'd be out there with a garden hose trying to see where the water is going. If it isn't into a drainage system, I'd want to know.

[Lulee]

Anyone else but me worried that we haven’t heard back from dandarc?  I haven't heard anything on the news about any recent sinkholes in FL swallowing up houses but it might not have reached NH, especially with all the political fools cluttering up the airwaves these days.  Hopefully the OP has decided that the ground has just settled in a way that allows the water to drain away from the driveway.

[Metric Mouse]

No.

[dandarc]

Terrible timing by me to start this thread.  Was out of town most of last week and just got back last night.  I could have taken pictures before leaving, but I didn't.  If it is light out when I get home tonight, I will.  Will even try and flood the area with the hose and see what happens.

[dandarc]

Well, it was raining last night.  And closer inspection shows the puddle has just moved toward the street a bit.  I don't know, maybe it wasn't raining as hard as I thought when I first noticed the "problem"?  Maybe I just managed to get out of my car without stepping in the puddle and didn't really look?  Have a picture but it is pretty lousy.  Driveway dry this morning - it always has drained pretty quick - just kind of sucks for 2nd car in the driveway, particularly if you're getting anything out of the trunk. 

Also good to see the flow - the downspout discharges into the driveway, the water flows from there away from the house around the edge of a brick surround of some bushes that juts out a couple feet.  Then the puddle forms - maybe 15 or 20 feet long, more or less entire width of the driveway.  Then the water seems to flow off the other side of the driveway at a gap in the monkey grass along the edge.  If we have the thing re-done to maybe drain better during the rain, we'll want to be careful to keep everything flowing away from the house as it is now.

It was good to go out and look during the rain - one part of my gutters is pretty clearly clogged - water just streaming over the edge.  The roof over most of the house is about a foot higher at the edge than over the porch on one side, so there is a long run of gutter, with a tiny drain pipe that goes into a second gutter along the lower roof line, then the main downspout on the edge of the porch.  Appears to me that there is a clog at the short drain between the 2 gutters - water starts coming over the edge about halfway of the long-run of gutter all the way up to the junction.  The short run seems to be draining well - nothing coming out over the edge of it, and there is a pretty good flow coming out of the downspout.  So going to get up there and clean that out this weekend.  I get on the roof about once a quarter to blow the pine needles and leaves and what not off, and just hadn't noticed the clog before - most of the gutter does look pretty clean when I'm on the roof.  We have the gutter covers, but I imagine any crap that gets into the gutter tends to flow towards the drain.

[Le Poisson]

Well, it was raining last night.  And closer inspection shows the puddle has just moved toward the street a bit.  I don't know, maybe it wasn't raining as hard as I thought when I first noticed the "problem"?  Maybe I just managed to get out of my car without stepping in the puddle and didn't really look?  Have a picture but it is pretty lousy.  Driveway dry this morning - it always has drained pretty quick - just kind of sucks for 2nd car in the driveway, particularly if you're getting anything out of the trunk. 

Also good to see the flow - the downspout discharges into the driveway, the water flows from there away from the house around the edge of a brick surround of some bushes that juts out a couple feet.  Then the puddle forms - maybe 15 or 20 feet long, more or less entire width of the driveway.  Then the water seems to flow off the other side of the driveway at a gap in the monkey grass along the edge.  If we have the thing re-done to maybe drain better during the rain, we'll want to be careful to keep everything flowing away from the house as it is now.

It was good to go out and look during the rain - one part of my gutters is pretty clearly clogged - water just streaming over the edge.  The roof over most of the house is about a foot higher at the edge than over the porch on one side, so there is a long run of gutter, with a tiny drain pipe that goes into a second gutter along the lower roof line, then the main downspout on the edge of the porch.  Appears to me that there is a clog at the short drain between the 2 gutters - water starts coming over the edge about halfway of the long-run of gutter all the way up to the junction.  The short run seems to be draining well - nothing coming out over the edge of it, and there is a pretty good flow coming out of the downspout.  So going to get up there and clean that out this weekend.  I get on the roof about once a quarter to blow the pine needles and leaves and what not off, and just hadn't noticed the clog before - most of the gutter does look pretty clean when I'm on the roof.  We have the gutter covers, but I imagine any crap that gets into the gutter tends to flow towards the drain.

Great news!

I make it a point to get out in the rain and see what's going on both in early spring and late fall. Winter is hard on houses around here.

[dandarc]

Thinking some more - I bet the clog means a lot less water is coming out of the downspout and cutting down the supply to this puddle, so the puddle is smaller and starts further from the house than it had been.

So, not expecting a sinkhole to swallow my house anymore.  Hopefully right on that.  I also looked at a map showing all of the known sinkholes in our county, and was relieved to see that within about 5 miles of our house, there are only a few small ones documented, and none in our neighborhood.

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

You may simply need a bigger gutter. I had to get one recently for one strip of gutter that pretty well drains my entire house. Upgraded from a 4-inch to a 6-inch, and now it's not a moonscape underneath it after it rains.

It's surprisingly easy to dig a trench and put in PVC pipe to get water further away from your house, or in your case off of the driveway. It might cost you $80 in materials (I got 4-inch PVC because I did not want to mess around) and a day's labor if you have any elevation variation in your yard at all. I did that recently with the new downspout off my new gutter - like yours, it had been going through a tiny drain into another gutter, and that wasn't any good.

[WhoDey]

Based on what you described, it sounds like you might need to trench and extend your downspout further into the yard/into the street if need be.  Whatever is away from your house/sloping away from your house/driveway.

[Fishindude]

Drainage is pretty simple, it runs downhill.
If it's all dry now and you weren't around to see what was going on while it was raining, get the garden hose out and see what happens.

[dandarc]

So, gutter indeed was clogged at the junction.  Will see what happens next time it rains hard - betting everything is back to normal in the front of the house.

Cleaned out the front gutter, so I decided to clean out the rear as well.  On the back of the house, we have a screened-in porch that has an integrated gutter.  The porch roof is pretty leaky, particularly right where  the roof meets the house, and I believe I know why now.  See picture.

. . . waits for you to look at the attached picture . . .

Increasing the problem is that the rear of the house gets more debris and gutter guards won't be effective due to the geometry - just pushing the problem up the roof a bit if I can even get them to attach at all, so this thing clogs a lot faster than the front-of-house gutter.  Thinking a two-pronged approach will help:

1.  Clean out more frequently.  Have cleaned out twice now since we bought the house - clearly annually isn't enough for this task.

2.  Cut notches into the gutter to create spill-ways for those times when it rains and I haven't cleaned out recently enough.

Clearly I might be creating sharp edges that could be problematic.  Will this be compromising the strength of the gutter?  Suggestions on dimensions?  The face of the gutter is about 6 inches high, and is attached to the standing-seam metal roof from the top-edge about every 3 feet.

[Le Poisson]

We need to know if there is winter where you live to answer this.

If your gutter is high to deal with tropical rains, you may be flooding the basement by cutting notches. If you get Ice damming today, this could be a bigger issue than I realized earlier.

My suggestion is that you keep things clean and watch what happens. If you continue to have issues, then you need to spend money. If not, you need to find a gutter cleaning schedule and procedure that works well for you.

Finally - be careful up there. We lost a neighbour to a ladder accident this past weekend.

[dandarc]

We need to know if there is winter where you live to answer this.

If your gutter is high to deal with tropical rains, you may be flooding the basement by cutting notches. If you get Ice damming today, this could be a bigger issue than I realized earlier.

My suggestion is that you keep things clean and watch what happens. If you continue to have issues, then you need to spend money. If not, you need to find a gutter cleaning schedule and procedure that works well for you.

Finally - be careful up there. We lost a neighbour to a ladder accident this past weekend.

North Florida - no real winter, but it does usually get below freezing overnight a few days per year, although I don't think it did this year.  No basement.  This is also a solid 10 feet from the edge of the actual house, being at the edge of the porch.  The water backs up the porch roof, I think all the way

Terrible about your neighbor.  Luckily, ours is a single-story house, so relatively low.  Still get pretty nervous if I'm on the roof near the edge, as I pretty much have to be to get at one section of the gutters.  Falling from 3rd or 4th rung of ladder or a ~10 foot roof is still a recipe for a very bad day, so yeah - everyone stay careful up there!

So voting no to the notches, at least for now?

Just for clarity - the initial question was regarding the front-of-house gutter, and that appears fixed to me after clearing out the clog - was up there with a hose after unclogging the thing and it looks to be flowing pretty well now.

The back of the house is quite different - the screened-in porch covers most of the length of the back of the house, and has this strange geometry.  Neighbor says that a prior owner of our house that bought back in the late 80's worked in a metal shop, so a lot of metal appendages to the house like this porch-with-integrated-gutter that look pretty good, but don't strike me as very well engineered upon closer examination.