Need experienced based reviews on gutter debris protection systems suitable for use in Pennsylvania’s climate/weather. My son and DIL are moving into their first house. It is a two story home with a very steep pitch to the roof. Because of the pitch, I am not at all comfortable with the notion of my son climbing up on the roof to clean the gutters. Some sections of the house would require an extremely long extension ladder to reach the gutters from the ground.
My concern about gutter guards is that leaves and debris can either clog the surface of the guard, requiring that the guard itself needs to be cleaned, or that the guards will allow a build up of shingle sediment and small debris requiring the gutters to be cleaned out anyway. In my own home, I have used clip on wire mesh guards which have worked ok because I can access my roof from my deck with an 8 foot folding ladder and the pitch of the roof is not extreme so it is walkable with care to get to all the gutters for perodic cleaning of the wire mesh guards and gutters. This simple solution is not suitable for my son’s house.
Any real world experiences out there with systems that have worked well?
We have gutter guards (not that brand name) because the back side of our house is three floors up from the ground.
We have never had issues with leaves clogging up anything. Ours are sort of rounded on the top, and leaves fall right off. Our house is surrounded by…trees.
The wire mesh guards are frankly not the best option. Everyone we know has replaced those with better ones.
First, there’s the debate about whether or not to have gutters at all. Lots of reasons not to.
Parts of our home have gutters and parts don’t. For the parts that do have gutter guards, we have the type built into the gutter when installed. It’s perforated metal, not rounded, and looks somewhat like this: https://www.guttersupply.com/p-Gutter-Guard.gstml
I just looked out of our top story window down on our garage gutter. I see a few pine needles here and there. No leaves, no other debris or sediment. Nothing major. Our roof is 20 years old but still in good shape. These have been up for around 8-10 years or so and I know no one has been up there to clean them since they were installed. Parts of our roofline are very steep as well as over 30 feet off the ground. So, no problems to report here with gutter guards.
I would think it might depend on how wooded the lot is and how close the trees are to the house. Our lot is very wooded but the trees are all a good 25-30 feet from the house.
Our last house had zero treees on our lot…zero. Our gutters were always clogged with leaves, and it seemed like we were raking our yard at least as often as the folks who HAD the trees. I never figured that out.
We are in the woods now…and really…leaves…about the same.
Our roof is also very steep and one length of gutter requires a very scary ladder climb. We opted for paying to get the gutters cleaned in the fall. A roofing company we have used in the past offers the service, as well as local landscapers and handymen.
There is a section of the roof where debris can collect against the house, and this usually has to be cleared if any small branches get stuck there. Gutter guards would not solve that particular problem for us.
“First, there’s the debate about whether or not to have gutters at all. Lots of reasons not to.”
Obviously, not a Seattle resident. :)) We lived without gutters for a month. Never again. That said, best “gutter guards” are those dudes that come and clean your roof, gutters and all.
The roofer putting the new roof on the kids’ house wants $900 to install Leaf Relief gutter guards. Trying to get a handle on how many years of third party gutter cleaning 2x a year that is. The 2 things I know for sure are that the roof is so steep, that trying to clean the gutters from on the roof is an invitation to falling off and cleaning the gutters from a ladder will require, for one section, an extension ladder that spans the rec room, living room and bedroom levels of the house from a concrete patio which is way too high to go up a ladder without a spotter on the ground.
We paid $200 a twice a year for gutter cleaning…once in the spring…and again in late fall after the leaves supposedly were all off the trees. YMMV on the costs. But for us…$400 a year paid for our gutter guards after just three years. Our house sounds bigger…and the cost for our gutter things was bout $1200.
We had gutter guards on a previous house. Birds built a nest in the gutter, using a tiny gap bwtween the gutter end and guard for access. Had to have someone remove the guard to clean out the nest that was blocking a downspout.
No guards on our present gutters. We are surrounded by “dirty” trees - pine needles, cherrry blossoms, cherry flower stems, maple seed whirrlies, you name it. We have a gutter cleaning company that cleans our gutters regularly, using magical equipment and ladders. It is worth every penny.
All gutters require some cleaning occasionally, even if they have guards.
Look at the particular trees in your yard and in neighboring yards. Pine needles, whirrly seeds, really long, thin leaves and other tree “droppings” can be harder to deal with because they get stuck in the slots or holes in the guards.
The bird nest in the gutter happened 19 years ago.
I’m sure gutter guards have evolved in the last twenty years.
Still, you can’t just throw up gutter guards and assume you won’t need some occasional gutter maintainance and cleaning. Guards can make it more difficult to spot problems.
I would ask what the neighbors are using because the type of guard that works in one area could be a major headache in the other depending on what the trees tend to drop in that particular area.
I was at Lowe’s today and saw a product I’d never seen before. Imagine a porous foam rubber insert shaped like the inside of a gutter. I guess what you do it place these inside your gutters, they allow water to flow through but since the gutter is filled with the foam object, leaves do not collect? I am skeptical–does this even work? When the rain is a deluge I would imagine water running over this insert and pouring over the edge of the gutter.
This stuff will work great until the pores get clogged with debris. If you have a composition roof, the little sand-like material that gets washed off that roof will clog the foam eventually. But in its fresh state it should work even when the rain is very heavy.
I have Gutter Helmet on a house I am working on. These gutters had been put on years ago by the previous elderly owner. Other people apparently damaged the clips that hold on the tops, so Gutter Helmet honored the warranty and came out and replaced them all for me, at least a decade or so since they were put on. Great service!
At any rate they told me to never, never, NEVER let anyone on the roof at all unless he has a standoff attached to his ladder, a device that lifts the ladder away from the house and distributes the weight widely on a base , so the gutters remain untouched. Just sharing that in case you decide to to get these. My gutters were still clear, by the way. The guy who fixed the clips checked them.
@MADad - I have something similar called Gutter Whiskers. Like a giant bottle brush you stick in your gutters so the leaves will land on top and then fly off in the next breeze.
I think they would work better with large leaves, but we have small leaves and lots of pollen droppings that get clogged in there. This is all for a low gutter that is only 20’ long, so I have one small length of Gutter Whiskers right over the hole to the downspout and that’s it. I have a rain barrel under the downspout so I’m trying to get less debris down there. Otherwise, this gizmo is pretty bad.
Surface tension pulls the water into the narrow groove, and everything else slides right over it. Anything small enough to make it through the groove will just get washed out. I’ve popped pieces off occasionally and the gutters are pristine.
My gutters are low enough that I could install these myself without being more than two stories off the ground anywhere. And the price is very cheap. They will last 15-20 years before UV takes its toll and they get brittle and need replacing.
There are metal versions of this system that will last forever but are 15-20x as expensive per foot because they are not DIY and are fairly complicated to install.
All the other systems I have seen or tried have issues IMO - the foam inserts clog, don’t fit exactly, don’t last long, and get moldy; the screens trap leaves vertically, creating leaf forests in your gutter (it’s amazing how many leaves will fall stem-first into a tiny hole); the micro-mesh systems get easily clogged with dirt and roof particles, etc.
I should add that my house does not have a steep roof, it’s only a 5/12 or 6/12 slope. This system can be harder to install on a steep roof, you may have to crease the pieces.