While gutters and downspouts make up the majority of your guttering system, you can also add rainheads to it. These accessories can make gutters and downspouts perform more efficiently.

How do rainheads work? What are their benefits?

What Is A Gutter Rainhead?

A rainhead is a water-controlling container that sits between the gutters on a roof and a downspout. This device has a hole at the top to take water from the gutter and a hole at the bottom to direct water down the downspout.

The container itself is bigger than the gutter feed and downspout holes. It forms a contained box on top of the downspout. This box can be square, rectangular, diamond shaped, triangular, or circular, depending on the head's style.

When water runs through a gutter into the downspout, it goes through the rainhead first. A regular amount of water will go straight down the pipe. However, if your system has to deal with more rain than can immediately flow down the pipe, then some of the water will collect in the rainhead. Once the flow decreases, it then moves on through the downspout.

What Are The Benefits Of Gutter Rainheads?

While gutters and downspouts are often enough to manage the flow of rainwater, there are times when they might not be able to cope. You might live in an area that has severe storms. These storms could create too much rain for your system to handle. Or, you might not be able to put big enough gutters on your home to manage high rainfall volumes. You might not have space to install a downspout under each stretch of guttering and might have to feed more than one gutter into a single downspout.

In these scenarios, your gutters and downspouts might overflow if they have to handle more water than their capacity allows. Water might pour over your gutters. Plus, if a downspout fills too fast, then it might fill up. Water might start to run down the outside of the pipe or back up out of it. This can damage your home's walls and, in extreme cases, its foundations.

If you install a rainhead on each of your downspouts, then you get a way to manage higher water volumes. The head gives you a short-term storage solution to hold water until its flow decreases. Plus, a rainhead expands the capacity of a downspout if you need to connect it to multiple gutters.

To find out more about rainheads and whether you should add them to your gutters, ask roofing contractors for advice.