Where your roof water goes in Southfield

• No distance from the foundation. No Southfield page gives a downspout a required distance, slope or setback. The state’s rehabilitation standard puts the outlet at least three feet out (the standard (PDF)), and that is the state’s figure, not the city’s.
• A lot grading rule that does apply. The state’s adopted residential code requires the ground to fall at least six inches within the first ten feet from the foundation wall, and paving within ten feet to slope at least two percent away (the code section); the city’s building department lists that edition as in effect (codes currently in effect).
• A ten foot rule that is not yours. The city’s February 2025 plan review checklist sets a ten foot minimum for sump pump discharge on new construction (the checklist (PDF)). It is a plan review document for new houses and an engineer’s sheet, not a downspout rule for an existing one.
• No drainage charge on the water bill. The city’s water billing page and its storm water plan show no drainage or storm water line, charge, credit or rate (water billing). The water department can confirm it for your account.

Running a downspout into a buried line is drainage work, and the city’s fee schedule has plumbing lines that touch roof drainage: roof conductors $15, roof sump $15, site storm drain $50, sump pump $30, with a $40 nonrefundable application fee on every permit and a $50 floor on any one plumbing permit (the fee ordinance (PDF)).

The schedule defines none of its terms, and no city page says whether an ordinary exterior downspout counts as a “roof conductor”. The building department settles whether that line applies to your job, at 248-796-4100 (building department).

Burying a downspout runs $150 to $400 per downspout at one Metro Detroit contractor’s posted 2026 rate (source). Every range.

The state’s extension service is blunt about this: “The underlying problem leading to the formation of ice dams is undesirable attic heat. Either too little insulation or too little ventilation in the attic is generally the cause” (the article). The article does not use the word gutter once.

So new gutters will not stop an ice dam and neither will guards. What gutters do in winter is carry away the water when the dam melts, which is a different job. What guards do and do not do.

The metro remembers late June 2021, and that was somebody else’s week: the weather service’s nearest gauge, Southfield 2.8 NNE, recorded 2.90 inches over the three days in June, against 8.19 inches on the east side (the event page).

Three weeks later a different storm hit, and on August 2, 2021, the governor declared a state of emergency for Farmington, Farmington Hills and Southfield over “flooding and power outages cause[d] by the July 7th storm” — “an intense line of thunderstorms with high winds” that left “a large number of downed trees and electrical lines across homes” (the declaration). Wind and falling limbs are what tears a gutter off a house here, and that is a different repair from a summer of overflow.

This is not a gutter job and we are not the people to call. The city’s own instruction, in its order: “Any resident experiencing an overflow or sewage backup should contact the Water Department at 248-796-4850. After hours, the message will advise you to call 248-796-4899 or you can call the Police desk at 248-796-5500 to be put in touch with the supervisor on call” (the city’s backup page).

The city also publishes a clock: a written claim to the city within 45 days of discovering an overflow or backup of a sewage disposal system or storm water system, and it says failure to give that notice will limit your rights. For a claim to be viable the source must be the city sewer; problems caused by the property’s own plumbing are the homeowner’s (the city’s notice, February 2024). The office that takes it is at 248-796-5260.