It's true what they say about eavestrophes

When I lived in the city, I lived in an older area of town. The houses are mostly semi-detached, and even the detached homes are a mere 8' apart (at most). The front and backyards are often micro yards, and most of the backyards even further reduced by garages or parking pads. Extending a downspout more than 2' in any direction is often very tricky. I guess I didn't ever connect our damp (but not flooded) basement with our eavestrophe drainage - I just chaulked it up to age.
Here in our house atop clay soil, however, it is impossible NOT to make those connections. Even with our downspouts drained up to 4' away from the house, we still had a wet basement during the melting months. I've really learned the physics of water travel, though, during the last week while our front eavestrophe has, unfortunately, been off the house.
To explain how this happened: the front eavestrophe has always leaked, and so our cold cellar has always been wet. My guy took the eavestrophe down to replace it, and in trying to remount a new one discovered that the wood holding the soffits / flashing was rotted. Before he could repair / replace the whole run of wood, the weather turned on us and it's been raining non stop for a week. Consequently, the water runs off the roof onto the garden and then seeps down alongside the foundation... finding every miniscule flaw in the concrete and forcing it's way through, ending up in a puddle in the basement.
In our basement, we can see evidence in the foundation of the shifts in the cinder blocks due to the years of freeze / thaw cycles. While a structural engineer told us that such shifting is normal (especially in this area), those shifts have clearly opened up cracks in the mortar, providing an easy route for water to find its way inside. The leaking wasn't noticeable last summer, despite the never-ending rain. So the fact that we've had water in the basement this year goes to show how much more water is running alongside the foundation, now that the eavestrophe is missing.
The "Do It Yourself" books tell you to run your downspout away from the house as far as possible. Before this week, I have been a lot more cavallier about that distance. Now that I have the 'before' and 'after' evidence, I'm planning on aiming for 8'. I hope that will tide us over until we can deal with waterproofing the basement (about a $10k investment).
It's been another hard, but helpful, lesson in homeownership.