All,
They had a Main Street fair here the other day and there were a
number of vendors selling all sorts of stuff. There were two vendors
selling gutter guard-type systems; one being the Gutter Helmet and the
other I can't recall the name, but it was interesting. I mention all
of this because I've been considering various options and I've tried
one that seems to work, but I have not really decided if I like it
entirely or not.
The Gutter Helmet is the type of system where the water runs down the
surface and roles under the end and drops into the gutter. The
competition claims you can still get the little bits and such in the
gutter and yes I am sure that's true, but I'm also sure water that
does come into the gutter will wash the junk out. The second system
was rather interesting in that you have a flat surface on the gutter
so nothing slips under the shingle as it does with the helmet type
systems. What made this other system different is that the plate that
covers the gutter has holes for the water to drop through, but in
addition it has a 50 micron screen that won't even let the sandy stuff
from the shingles pass. I asked the lady how would any stuff that
would collect on top of the gutter be cleared off and she said the
wind would take care of that. Okay well all this stuff sounds good,
but then the other option out there is the GUtter Brush which is just
that, a great big bottle brush that fits inside the gutter and it
looks like a bottle brush. I did get a sample of this and it seems to
work quite well. I did find a lot of really small stuff along with the
larger stuff backed up behind the sample. I only had a short piece so
put it closest to the down spout to see what collected. The only way
to know for sure is to purchase enough to fill an entire gutter and
see how it works. So, the point of all this is to see if anyone has
had experience with any of these systems and if they felt they were
worth the investment. Our gutters seem to primarily collect pine
needles from neighbors and junk from the roof. We don't seem to get a
lot of large leaves or as far as I know wasps and such living in
there, but you can bet they aren't welcome and need to stay away as
well.
tnx,
