Do you mean to the left of the fence? That’s where it will be when I get the new fence installed. (The new fence will form a rectangle rather than this weird narrow angle.) Then the rain barrel (if I get one) would stand to the left of the downspout.
Or did you mean to completely reverse the gutter so the water flows away from the patio and the garage? Unfortunately, that would be even worse – the house forms an L there, so water would spill out onto the driveway in the L.
The latter was what I was going for, but yeah, that won’t work if there’s no clear flow path on the other side.
I think the rain barrel could work, but it will be constant maintenance to drain it and keep it from freezing. Installing an underground pipe that routes the flow to the back yard is a pain (and expense) initially, but then it’s done.
We are in western Pennsylvania. Our rain barrels fill up, but we constantly use the water also. As winter comes, we stop collecting since we don’t want a barrel of ice. By stop collecting I mean raising the diverter:
If I understand the OP’s situation correctly (always a dicey proposition), the rain barrel would be needed in winter as well, so diverting the flow for the season wouldn’t work. I imagine there is runoff during the day, then freezing temperatures overnight. So that means frequent adjustment of the diverter and regular (daily?) draining of the barrel.
We raise/lower the diverter as needed. If the barrel is filled/overflowing we raise it. We use water daily during the summer.
Before placing the rain barrels we sometimes had water entering our basement. The rain barrels really make a difference.
If we didn’t need water, I could hook up a longer hose to the bottom outflow and just dump water away from the house.
Most barrels have a lower drain plug. Remove that plug and the barrel drains away leaving an empty barrel.
But it sounds like the OP wants to divert all drainage far away from the concrete areas.
Yep, just hook a hose up to the lower drain, dump the water wherever you want.
That is a tricky setup. I assume the reason you don’t want a hose going into the yard is because you’ll use the gate to get to the garage each day and you don’t want to trip over it?
What is on the other side of your driveway? The neighbor’s yard or driveway?
Yeah, that’s the problem. To drain the barrel’s water away from the house, my choices are:
In both situations, I’m concerned that there would be no way to prevent the hose from freezing up and staying frozen – and thus being completely useless – while the snow on the roof is melting.
I assume any modest length of hose would freeze up if the barrel is left open. If I understood @chela correctly, (s)he drains directly into the ground with a minimal hose and then the steep slope takes it away from the house. You don’t seem to have that option.
You don’t have a lot of good options short of running a drain underground or re-routing the downspout. An underground pipe needs enough of a grade so that it doesn’t ice up.
You could try the rain barrel and manually drain it. It is a hassle, but I feel like we don’t have too many winter days where it is both sunny and there is snow on the roof.
In any case, once you get the fence replaced, I would make sure the gutter downspout drains as far from the house as possible. You could try one of those downspout extenders that unfurls when it is draining.
Which I really don’t want to pay for, if I could even find a contractor to do it.
You know, that’s not a bad idea. As it is, with the diffuser, water hits ground about three feet from the foundation (right under the gate). Extending that another four feet would have it pouring onto the patio or driveway, where sure it would form a sheet of ice but at least it wouldn’t be destroying anything.
You can rent a ditch-witch for one day or half a day and make a trench fairly easily. Better yet hire a pair of teens to help.
But I’d also be ripping up patio or driveway, and need to replace those. Nope, this is not an Akaj-level project.
You mentioned trouble finding contractors. Permaseal and US Waterproofing, who advertise like crazy in our area, provide those services.
Interesting. I hadn’t really thought of this as a waterproofing problem, since my basement is dry, but I can see where it’s an adjacent issue. I’ll look into it. Thanks!
Clearly you need to extend the house gutter to the garage gutter and then construct an elaborate archway between the two buildings to hide the unsightly gutter extension. 
What is the pipe coming out of the house and going into the larger, light blue pipe? If that’s part of a sump system, then maybe the blue pipe could be utilized in some way.
A squirrel gym!
The pipe coming out of the house is a drain from a washing machine set-up I don’t use. (The actual washer is in the basement.) Which means the blue pipe may lead to a storm sewer. I’d much rather drain water onto the soil, but since that’s not practical I might have to utilize that storm sewer (if that’s in fact where the pipe goes).
The storm sewer would appear to be the answer to all your problems !
What am i missing ?
You could divert the flow to that pipe just for the winter and then back to normal the rest of the year.
