DIY Home Improvement Forum banner

Using my gutters as an irrigation system for landscape beds?

14K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  joeyboy 
#1 ·
I have 2 landscape beds that are half covered by my roof's soffits/eave. Both of these beds have gutter downspouts that land right outside the beds themselves.


I got to thinking that maybe I could rig up something so that, instead of the water just pooling on the ground at the down spout, I could have it water my beds. I'm thinking of something along the lines of a 90 degree elbow at the bottom of the down spout, and run a new piece of gutter along the length of the landscape bed, with holes so the water will be evenly pumped through my bed.


Any ideas or tips? I'm guessing this has been done before and there may even be products, but so far all I can think of is ghetto-riggin up an extra down spout and cutting holes in it, and that'll just look tacky imo.
 
#2 ·
Here's a horrible drawing of what I'm talking about, the arrows show the two downspouts that I want to basically feed into that red horizontal line across the back of the landscape bed, so that all the water hitting my roof will go directly to my landscape bed. My only real idea on how to do this now woudl be to use an extra downspout piece to connect the two, and put holes in it so the water can get out evenly through the bed.

Any tips or suggestions on products that achieve this w/o looking horrible (like my proposed idea would) would be greatly appreciated!
 

Attachments

#3 ·
I think that would work. Actually they might have some black drain pipe that has holes already in it. If you get actual downspouts you'll pay more than if you get the plastic drain pipes.

There are also drain pipes that have mesh netting around the outside. They are used at the bottom of retaining walls.
 
#7 ·
Maybe you don't have this concern where you live, but here, that would be a very bad idea as it could cause flooding of the foundation/basement if you had a big downpour (since the whole point of gutters and spouts is to get water away from the house as I understand it). If it isn't an issue, then yes, those plastic extensions are simple and work really well and you could just rig it so it goes on your beds.

An alternative is to get some form of rain barrel you can collect the water from the spouts in (must be covered with wire grate or something so kids and animals can't get in). Then you could use it as needed, where needed.
 
#8 ·
Thanks a ton for the tips guys! I'll show you how it came out once I get it up and going, but that'll be at least a week or two because I'm doing the lawn and other projects currently.


It's okay if it hits next to the house (as far as I know anyways) as it's a concrete block house with no basement (i'm in FL, like 5 minutes from the beach; they seem to build them to withstand water well).
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top