A Flex-a-Spout on Your Downspout Just Might Save your Foundation

Amerimax Home Products Flex-a-Spout

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Your average homeowner learns to hate water, often within the first year of home ownership. When you aren’t fighting to keep the water within your pipes in the home's interior, you find yourself battling to keep other water away from where it doesn't belong on the home's exterior. That’s why a house or other building has gutters and downspouts: they direct the rainwater that lands on the roof away from the foundation, the farther the better. If too much water gets too close to the foundation in homes with a basement, it often causes moisture problems. If the building's on a slab, an uneven distribution of moisture around the perimeter may cause cracking, even damage all the way to the partial collapse of exterior walls. The flatter the land around your house, the farther away you want that water sent.

Given some slope away from your foundation, splash blocks are often sufficient to move the water away from the foundation, but where the terrain is flat you’ll need more that two or three feet. On our flatter house corners, we’ve chosen to install Amerimax Flex-a-Spouts because their 55” reach is more than double that of a splash block.

Amerimax can supply a Flex-a-Spout in any of four colors (white, green, brown and gray). The extender is crafted from a heavy-weight polystyrene, and rather resembles a rather large concertina. Most of the product is fashioned with accordion pleats,which lets the spout to expand from 25 inches when collapsed to 55 inches when extended. It can also form a curve where necessary. A rectangular coupling is molded at either end, so it will fit either 2"x3" or 3"x4" hardware. If you need a secure installation, self-tapping screws will fasten the Flex-a-Spout to the downspout. If you need more length, two or more of them can snap together. You can bury the product, which will retain its round cross-section under pressure. The diameter of four inches is sufficient for a 3"x4" commercial gutter discharging 400-plus GPM.

We've used Flex-a-Spouts in both hot and cold climates (Texas and Illinois), and they've been dependable and pretty much indestructible. Take notice that they aren’t very pretty, and the tough plastic is stiff enough that it takes quite a bit of effort to bend. Bottom line, though, a Flex-a-Spout’s 55-inch length is great for protecting a home’s foundation. 

Summary

Plus: The 55-inch reach, can be buried, connects together, fits standard downspouts

Minus: not really pretty

What They’re Saying: When it’s important get water farther from your foundation, the 55-inch Amerimax Flex-a-Spout might be just what you need.

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