I'm selling my house and have cleared up most problems that the home inspector will be looking at. There's one outstanding problem, dealing with the gutters. Here's an overhead drawing of the back of my house. The dark gray is the roof, the red is a downspout . the light gray is poured concrete sidewalk, the brown(ish) is dirt. the black is a short, 1' high railroad tie wall holding back dirt. Unfortunately I bought the house like this. So when it rains, the downspout drops directly over the concrete, and with no where to run off, the water pools. I could lead the downspout to the dirt, on the left side of the house, but that's right up against the foundation. I ended up putting one of those patches in the gutter so all the water drains to the other (right) side of the house, where it eventually leads about 6' away from the house onto the lawn. This actually works fine. So my question is: what's going to be least offensive to a home inspector: 1) just make the downspout lead into the dirt next to the house 2) remove the downspout - I can't remove the drop part, it's rivetted on, and hope the inspector sees the patch that forces the water to the other side. 3) any other ideas? [IMG]https://docs.google.com/drawings/pub?id=1HFHH5HBRabmqkbToSeq_31drMjBQkSID97MTAleKRIo&w=480&h=360[/IMG]

With all of the rain we have been having lately, I have noticed that the gutter on the front of my townhouse is clogged. It is a 4 story townhouse, with the 4th floorin the roof trusses and a large dormer on the front and rear. The gutter is just below the 4th story window, atthe top of the 3rd story, so it is about 30-35 off the ground. I shop vacc'ed what I could from the window, but it appears as though the downspout is clogged (with straw, bird's nest or something) and I can't physically reach it from the winodw, and there is not much (about 2') of roof to climb out on (so I am not attempting it....). Any ideas on how to get the clog out from the top of the downspout? My only thought at this point is getting a 50 foot drain snake and going up from the ground, but I am not sure if it will get though the S-bend where the downspout is against the house and then swings out to the edge of the roof line. I constantly see water filling up the gutter and then spillng over down to the ground 3 stories below. I am concerned that water might start to rot the board behind the gutter and infiltrate into the house, causing more issues. Thanks, Neil