Front Gutters Re-Visited

When our front gutters were installed I spoke to the installer about burying the drainage. He said he could do that but it would cost more.... OR, he could tell me how to do it and where to go for the parts and I could do it myself. Even though the condo association was footing the bill, I voted for the second option - why turn down a learning opportunity?

Maybe because he would have done it same day in September where it took me until mid-October and 2 trips to the store before I got it right? :-) learning opportunity! Above picture is parts needed: 25ft of corrugated tubing with no perforation and end caps to transition from the square gutter to the round tubing.

Here is where the gutters leave off and you can see - even in the short time they've been left - how much mulch and garden dirt the water has moved. not good. especially like below where it is almost pointed directly at the shrub.

End caps on all 3 downspouts and then time to stretch out the tubing..... all 25 feet of it!

Since we have three downspouts, before I left I had measured that the two porches needed 7ft to get to the garden edge which the center needed 10ft. instead of buying all separate lengths, I opted for one 25 footer and then measure and cut what I needed for each one.

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Once each drain was placed, I dug a shallow trench (using a trowel) and placed the tubing in the trench

filling back over it with the mulch. The idea is for the tubing to disapear in the garden bed

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And done! Our fall clean-up crew will rake the garden bed which will make it less obvious. I might go back and trim the one of the far right a bit but we'll see how it drains first.

Ta Da! not bad for about an hours worth of work and a learning experience :-)