Going on with the downspouts

downspoutgutters

Most of the downspouts on my house (built in 1951) are routed into the foundation, like this:

enter image description here

My questions about this situation:

  1. Why on earth did someone do this? (I just bought the damn thing and now I have to deal with it.)
  2. How big a deal is it to fix? Unless otherwise advised, I would cut away the lower foot or so of downspout with a hacksaw and mate it with new stuff from Home Depot that drains to the outside of the house. Will that do, or should I replace the whole thing?
  3. I assume I need to stop up the pipe at the bottom of the photo. Do I need to use cement or something, or can I just cap it somehow?

Best Answer

If you want to repair the leaking pipe where it enters the foundation, I'd use hydraulic cement to seal it. As for the downspout into the cast iron pipe, there are transition pieces that should tie them together more cleanly and tightly - or you could fashion something from ABS or PVC sewer pipe/fittings and downspout fittings. Otherwise, my thought on this one is: "If it ain't broke (or not causing any major problems), don't fix it"!

As DaveM stated, it appears that water from your downspouts is flowing into the sewer system. Although generally not allowed today, it was apparently legal when the house was built, so I'd leave it alone - unless you have flooding problems in your basement or crawlspace. Making any changes to this system would typically require you to follow current codes which could end up being very costly - or at the very least, time-consuming.