Said It Here

How to bury downspouts in a flat yard with no slope

Burying downspouts to direct water away from foundations becomes difficult when a flat yard lacks the slope needed for proper drainage pitch. This leaves homeowners stuck using short extensions that dump water too close to the house instead of moving it across narrow side yards.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    looking into alternative drainage options
  2. 2
    using a trencher instead of hand digging
  3. 3
    using a 6 foot extension into the side yard for dumping water

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/HomeMaintenance1 person · September 2026

“Planning to bury my downspouts to get water away from the foundation and driveway, but I'm struggling with the layout due to the slope of my yard.”source ↗

redyellowpotato · r/HomeMaintenance · 2 upvotes
r/HomeImprovement1 person · September 2026

“The downspout has never had a good solution at the bottom of it, and right now it just has a 6 foot extension into the side yard for dumping water.”source ↗

“This extension is a piece of downspout, not a flexible pipe. (The side yard is about 14 feet wide with my house on one side and my neighbor's 2 ft high block wall on the other, so this extension doesn't even get us half way.”source ↗

KidMcC · r/HomeImprovement · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised