Are You In The Gutter?
Topics: real estate, home maintenance, water, gutters
Gutters are probably the most ignored item that home owners and real estate investors deal with. Yet I can’t recall anyone saying much about gutters at any repair seminar I have been to, and many rehab jobs omit gutter installation in order to cut the repair or maintenance costs.
Ironically, though everyone ignores their gutters, the fact is that gutters are one of the most important items found on houses in some regions of the U.S. such as northern Georgia, where I live, gutters are a critical part of long term home maintenance because of the damage that water can do to a home and it’s foundations over time.
In north Georgia, our soil contains large amounts of red clay. “Georgia Red Clay”, as it is commonly referred to in these parts. And red clay can absorb lots of water which it will then hold for days as it slowly evaporates or seeps away. When clay absorbs water, it actually causes the clay to expand. This expansion is called “heaving”.
Heaving is a very subtle but incredible force that can severely damage or even destroy your home over a period of time. When a home does not have an adequate gutter system, and water from rainfall is allowed to collect or drain down around the foundations of a house, heaving will literally force the house upward as the clay absorbs moisture, and then lower the house as the clay dries out. Some houses can move as much as an inch or more when the heaving occurs.
In the process of evaluating thousands of investment properties I have visited many homes that were severely damaged by lack of adequate gutters and improper water drainage. I have seen homes that looked completely normal from the outside, that were virtually about to collapse inside due to water damage.
I have actually seen two homes that were literally broken into two pieces from top to bottom, because the gutter system was ignored, and the water was allowed to flow around the foundations every time it rained.
These were both brick homes and were beautiful from the street, but a closer inspection revealed cracks running through the the masonry, from top to bottom, because one end of the home had been raised and lowered by the heaving process for many years. It loosened the brick from the house, and produced multiple cracks between the bricks that were more than an inch wide in some places.
The owner had attempted to plug these cracks with silicone but completely ignored the continuing drainage problems caused by the lack of gutters on the home. The result was that the entire structure was damaged, the brick exterior needed re-doing, and the house was abandoned to foreclosure when the damage became so severe that the 6 inch thick concrete slab front porch finally collapsed down into the basement from the constant heaving of the foundation.
Another time I inspected a home in which the entire top plate of the outer wall was rotted completely from long term water leakage caused by gutters that were outdated and crammed so full of items that trees were growing in them. The entire roof truss system sits upon the top-plate of the outside wall. These plates are wood, and they were so rotted that the entire roof system was dropping down and had already fallen about 8 inches. The entire roof of the home was slowly but surely lowering down the rotting walls, and would eventually just topple over if left untreated. The kitchen floor had collapsed from water seeping inside the walls, and the whole house was just ruined. All because the owners ignored their gutter and roofing systems.
I have also seen a wide variety of other problems that were gutter related but the homeowner had no idea. Once I went to a home and the seller was pointing out that the basement tended to flood when it rained heavily. They had tried sealing the wall, but with poor results. They thought they had a defective basement.
The basement was below the grade of the house. A quick inspection revealed that a downspout for one of the gutters up front was dumping it’s load of water right beside the basement wall. The owner did not realize that his basement flooding problem was really a gutter drainage problem. A $20 landscape drainage pipe, long enough to drain the water out, and well away from the foundation quickly and easily solved what could have been a severe problem later on.
My experience has been that gutters and water control are one of the single most important items you may need in your own home, rental properties or vacation home. If you have a lot of clay in your soil composition, as we do in metro Atlanta and northern Georgia, your home or investment properties may be facing unnecessary and expensive damage. Good water drainage is a big key to long term home maintenance.
Donna Robinson is a licensed agent, real estate investor and consultant, located in metro Atlanta, GA. She is a respected authority on the subject of real estate investing and property evaluation. Get Donna’s free newsletter for real estate investors at www.REIUonline.com
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