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Letter to the editor

The dirty truth about gutter guards

By Tim Carter, Special to the Times
Published October 6, 2007

A: I have been testing gutter guards for years. Some have done well, others not so well, and quite a few have failed miserably. Small debris, such as tree blossoms, seedpods, pine needles, twigs and pieces of bark, chokes the guards. Even if the gutter covers don't get clogged, debris often gets carried into the gutter, where it turns into layer after layer of organic muck.

Inventors of gutter protection products bristle when I point out their false "no maintenance" claims. They say that once their product is installed, a homeowner will never have to clean the gutters, get up on their roofs or other such nonsense. In my opinion, such claims are 100 percent false.

No matter what gutter guard you install, you will have to maintain it. The hardest part of the job is keeping muck out of the gutter. This means you either have to completely stop the small organic debris from getting into the gutter or you must install a gutter protection product that allows you easy access to the inside of the gutter.

For years I was a fan of an inexpensive plastic gutter guard that had small diamond knockout holes in it. This design was not bad, but it did allow some debris to enter the gutter, and maple seedpods got stuck in the holes. It was a nightmare cleaning thousands of these out of the gutter guard.

The holes did allow me to spray water into the gutter to get rid of the muck, but I had to do this standing on the roof or on a ladder. There are tools that spray water into gutters from the ground, but you do so blind, not knowing if the gutter is really clean.

I also tested the large plastic-mesh gutter guards. These were easy to remove, but they required too much work to remove, flush the gutter and then reinstall. Once again, I was on the roof or on a ladder.

The kind of gutter guard that works best for me is made from 1/8-inch-thick extruded aluminum topped by a stainless steel micromesh screen. The gutter guard is practically indestructible.

No organic debris can get into the gutter because the micromesh openings are smaller than the tip of a needle. Even so, the mesh easily permits large amounts of water to flow through it into the gutter.

Last fall I got up on my roof, washed all debris out of the gutter with a garden hose and installed the mesh guard. After 10 months, I am proud to say my gutter is still perfectly clean.

The manufacturer tells homeowners that periodically they will have to clean dried organic debris from the top of the gutter guard. A scrub brush on the end of an extendable fiberglass or aluminum pole allows you to do this from the ground without having to get on a ladder.

Mesh guards are usually installed by a professional dealer. The guard slides up under the first row of shingles and the front edge is screwed to the front lip of the gutter. It is invisible from the ground.

I took monthly photographs of the organic debris that started to pile up on the gutter cover. In many areas, the debris got worse and worse. But every now and then a strong wind would blow a small amount of it off the gutter cover. My best estimate is that 80 percent of the debris that has dropped onto the roof and gutter guard since it was installed is still there. But even with this debris on the cover, rain water flows under it, through the mesh and into the gutter. For testing purposes I did not brush off the debris from the ground, although I could have at any time.

Tim Carter is a licensed contractor. To view previous columns or tap into his archive of information and sources of building materials, visit Ask the Builder at www.askthebuilder.com. You can write to Tim Carter at P.O. Box 36352, Cincinnati, OH 45236-0352.

[Last modified October 5, 2007, 10:59:36]