How would you feel if your frustrated neighbor pounded on your door to complain that rain water was splashing from your eaves trough onto his property? In my case, I felt sick to my stomach. We live in a two-storey house. The rain water from the roof, instead of running through down-spouts to discharge onto the lawn, splashed off our lower roof and cascaded onto the ground like a small waterfall, spilling over onto our neighbor’s lawn!
At first we thought the down-spout was clogged by leaves, so we have all the eaves trough cleaned, but the problem remained. To keep the drain from being blocked again, we installed gutter-guards to keep falling leaves out. It was then the installer discovered that the upper down-spout was detached from the wall, so the water was spewing over the lower roof instead of running into the lower downspout.
And why was the downspout detached? When we switched our phone company from Bell to Rogers, the technician cut the old phone lines, which held the downspout to the wall. With the cable cut, there was nothing holding the downspout in place. The pressure of the rushing water pushed the downspout out, hence our problem! Reminds me of the nursery rhyme “For Want of a Nail“:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Some action may seem insignificant, but can have large consequences. In our case, it caused soured relationships and a tidy sum to fix. We tried a second solution which failed, and had just spent a significant amount in a third attempt to rectify the problem. Pray that it works this time!
RayKLiu 