Working on a house starts from the ground up, literally…
If you have an older home, it is likely you are experiencing what many home owners have, some type or “what do we do first” paralysis. Let’s see if we can help with some advice.
Let’s assume, since you’re here, that you have a flooding problem perhaps it’s next to the house. So you want to put in some drainage. OK. You also don’t have any gutters where the drainage problem is, and you have some rotten siding, fascia board, and soffits. See what I’m getting at? What’s the order of operations?
If you’re anything like me you want to ease through things over time and any one thing is not going to fix the whole problem. So if you hang gutters, you’ll have to go back later and take them down to replace the fascia board. Dropping downspouts will have an immediate effect of eroding your spoil in weird ways right near your foundation, so you need to run your whole drainage pipe. If you replace the fascia board and soffits, you have to paint then you may as well hang the gutters…And if you replace any rotten siding without fixing the drainage problem you will ruin your new siding.
If you’re looking to do this piece by piece, start from the ground up. Dig your drain pipe and run it to a good drainage location. This is a great stopping point since your perforated drain pipe will still soak in some of that flood water in a big rain and run it away from your house. Also while you have the ditch open, go ahead and add some T connectors for a gutter to plug right into. Bingo you have a good stopping point.