Ask the Engineer: “Gutter Covers vs. Gutter Cleaning?”

You see ads for gutter guards everywhere telling you you’ll never have to clean gutters again, but think twice before you buy. In fact, don’t think; To do investigation. The cost of gutter protection can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars.

Since most gutter covers are notorious for underperforming, it might make more sense to hire a gutter cleaning service several times a year for $75-$100 or so. And if you can indeed find a reputable insured company to service you, that’s probably the best way to go. However, that can be a difficult challenge; and having someone else or yourself clean out your gutters may not be the way to go. Why? Answer: There are several reasons:

1. Not all gutter cleaners do a good job. Rosemary paid $75 to have her gutters cleaned and only three days later they overflowed. Did the contractor do a bad job or did enough leaves fall to clog the downspout? Answer: There is no way to know.

2. The guy Joe hired to clean his gutters didn’t have any insurance. Big problem! Unfortunately there was an accident with the ladder and the partner sued Joe; and Joe went through a nightmare with his partner’s doctors and Joe’s own insurance company.

3. Claire had a company clean her gutters at an advertised price of $75 but ended up paying $350. The company replaced end caps, drop tubes, elbows, and charged an arm and a leg for each additional service.

4. Jim always cleaned the gutters until his ladder slipped and he ended up falling out of his living room bay window and ended up in the hospital with a broken pelvis.

Yes, to avoid these problems, it seems like the smart thing to do is to install a gutter protector with the promise of solving clogged gutter problems. But buyer beware. If you choose the wrong product, it can also be a nightmare with flooded basements, mold, soil erosion, and worse, being totally dependent on the installing company as you can no longer access your own gutters to clean them.

So, let’s do some research. Basically, there are six different types of gutter protection devices:

1. Protective devices that are not really recognized as gutter protective devices. Made of wire, metal or plastic, they operate simply by gravity and require routine ladder maintenance.

2. Filters, membranes and brushes installed in or over existing gutters. They are basically no more effective than screens and require routine ladder maintenance.

3.Flipper type with rounded front tip and solid flat top. Your advertising graphics lead you to believe that debris is being dumped on the ground when, instead, in mid to high level debris areas, enough debris clings to the surface to clog gutters. Here you have to depend on the installation company for the service. See resource box for photos.

4. Solid flat top with rounded front tip and a channeled fin type. Since the basic fin type fails, the next progression was to add a channel. But it doesn’t take a college grad to figure out that debris that gets into the gutter (basic filter system) either clogs the gutter or breaks down and goes into the gutter and clogs it. See resource box for photos.

5. Rain dispersal units or flipping gutters. This requires removing the gutters and installing a gutter with a flip-up hinge or fins (installed horizontally to the faceplate) to disperse water. Both seem workable until you see them work. The rain dispersal unit does not work when it is raining slowly and debris accumulates on top of it preventing it from working. The flip clean gutter requires a rain coat for when the gutter is full of putrid debris. Flip clean gutters have also been known to warp and render them useless.

6. Rounded front nose with vertical louvered water collectors and a solid flat top. Whereas with the type of gutter cover flap that will let full size leaves through, the louvers discriminate the size of debris that the gutter cover allows into the gutter. This gutter guard is the only rounded tip type that limits the amount or size of debris that can enter the gutter.

This system has shown gutters to be free flowing under heavy debris conditions for twenty years; And it is not small thing. The only drawback is that in very rubble conditions, debris can collect on the shutters and block them, which means some maintenance is required.

While most other products require someone to climb a ladder and clean the gutter or deck, it can easily be done from the ground up using a telescoping pole and brush. Because it’s easy to see where cleaning is needed, there’s no guessing where to brush. No waterproof coats are required (as you might with the flip gutter) to do this simple task, as it can actually be done dressed in a suit and tie.

After all, telling someone who has to clean their gutters multiple times in the fall that they won’t need maintenance is like asking them to believe in Santa Claus.