So I’m getting really sick of cleaning my gutters between two and four times per summer and I’ld like to do something about it. The problem is, my neighbor has a HUGE freaking tree that just rains down little tiny leaves and branches everytime the wind kicks up and they all seem to land on my roof. On my very simple research, there’s seems to be two basic methods for this. There’s the variations on the one we’ve all seen. It’s the kind with a solid piece of alumninium that covers the gutter and the water follows the curve into the gutter and the leaves and sticks go off the edge of it. The second one is this and I was wondering what everyone thought of these methods, or any others for that matter.
Oh, and if you have either of these, can you give me a basic idea of what it should cost per foot.
Thanks, in advance.
Moving this to IMHO, where shared opinions are better served.
samclem GQ moderator
Gutter Guard Gutter Helmut all work in similar ways and are all quite effective. To give you an idea about cost, I purchased gutter helmut 2 years ago and it cost me $1100. I do not know how big your house is or what Gutter Guard costs but it is well worth it. The way I know it is working and doing it’s job is by the amount of water coming down my down spouts. No clogs mean clean gutters…
About how long are your gutters?
We had LeafGuard gutters installed at our last house. They worked beautifully, and the company that installed them told us if they ever clogged, they would come out and clean them for us. That never came even close to happening. The gutters were also screwed in instead of nailed in, so they stayed put and worked very well.
We don’t have a need for them in our current house (not enough large mature trees), but if we did I’d put them in again for sure.
We have a multi-level home with 4 distinct roofs. We opted for full gutter helmut on all the gutters, I think we ended up with 160’ of gutter helmut, and of course they left the extra, and there wasn’t much. It’s quite expensive and can be a lot more than we paid…I took advantage of an online coupon and didn’t place a rush order. We also bought in the late winter, not in autumn where prices are sure to be alittle higher.
Our gutters get filled up with leaves in the summer and the ice/snow pulls 'em off the house in the winter. Our solution? Get rid of the gutters. Now we have no problems.
We’ve just had the steel mesh on both our current and past houses. Works fine. Both houses had overhanging maple trees. Once a year or so I get up on the ladder and brush/pluck off the “helicopter” seed pods that get stuck in the mesh, so they aren’t completely maintenance free. But a far cry short of mucking out gutters.
A lot might depend on how high your gutters are, how steeply pitched your roof is, and the type and location of nearby trees.
Sorry - don’t remember the cost. Both times had it installed when we put in new gutters, soffit, fascia, etc. I’m sure it is way cheaper than the other options.
Our gutters are low (one story) and not very pitched. I can hop up on the roof and clean them out in about 45 minutes. I just get sick of having to do it 3 or 4 times a year.
BTW did anyone take a look at that gutter glove link I posted?
Well, like I said, IME the screens make it so it is more like 1-2 times a year for maybe 15 minutes, and only because the trees around me are maples that drop those little flowers and then seeds. Leaves are no problem.
The house we put the LeafGuard on was a ranch, so it sounds like your situation is similar. I looked at your link but I’ve never seen those before, so I don’t know how well they’d work. I would wonder how well rain gets through those in a downpour.
About $6.75 a foot.
No wish to hijack, but I have been considering the question of leaf protection myself. I, however, live in the sub-tropics with regular summer storms that are utter gotterdamerung downpours. No snow problems at all. The types of guard you have linked too are not types I have seen in my travels - Do any of you have any experience with any of them working with a) intense rain events, b) steep roofs? I fear that the gutter helmet- type arrangements would not cope with serious downpours, nor would RainFlow, but I might be wrong. They would, however, guarantee a better leaf protection than any model I have seen on the market here, which amount to the equivalent of mesh of varying porosity over the top of the gutter.
Thoughts?
The house we put the LeafGuard on was coastal Virginia, and we’d get thunderstorms sometimes that would dump a ton of rain in a very short time (as in, I couldn’t see the houses across the street because the rain was so heavy). That wasn’t a problem. For monsoon-type rains, though, where it rains heavily for a long time, I could see the water backing up and then overshooting if you’ve got corners you need to go around.
LeafGuard claims to actually work better on steeper-pitched roofs, so I’d guess that wouldn’t be a problem either.
I can’t give you an exact quote, but we only have one gutter we were concerned with, and it is only about 24 ft long. They wanted like $1500!!! We’re SO not going to go that route!
On review, it wasn’t the Gutter Glove. It was the other kind. I’m sure the Glove costs even more!
Kalhoun, if they’re charging $1500, I’ll drive to Chi and do it for $1400, and still make out like a bandit. That’s 62.50 a foot. Almost 10 times what I charge. Unless it is 10 stories up in the air, and gutter looks like a maze, get another bid.
I (and some friends) installed gutter screen on my (ranch style) house.
It was just rolls of 6" x 20’ aluminum screening. Installed in an hour or 2 (w/ 5 people).
The screening itself was pretty cheap - like $5 / roll:
http://www.hardwareandtools.com/invt/6743249
(I used 4 rolls IIRC)
the screening doesn’t completely eliminate the need to clean the gutters, but it does drasticly reduce it.
The maple seeds do get caught in the screening and may evetually work through.
Brian
I hope you have a lead foundation or very deep eaves.
It looks like all the solutions I’ve seen have been mentioned (and/or recommended) except for those blade style ‘gutters’. Basically, they’re a leader-less system, with aluminum blades projecting off the fascia that disperses the water outward and away from the house as rain rolls off the roof.
That’s exactly what I put up near the end of the season last year. it seemed to work pretty well for the leaves that came down after I put it in. I have well over 100 feet of gutters, so this was pretty cheap. I didn’t get the brackets you’re supposed to put under this, since I couldn’t figure out how to install them on my gutters, but I have a one story house, so it seems to be fine.
I’ll never really know, since my neighbor two houses down bought the house between us and took down the giant tree responsible for most of the leaves in my gutters, so the situation would have improved even if I did nothing.