Last fall I cleaned the back gutters around October 25 and again on November 8, and both times the scoop came up full of the same black, leafy paste that smells like a pond in August. The silver maple in our back corner drops its leaves over about three weeks, so one cleaning never finishes the job. This year I wanted to try something before the leaves start.
The maple problem, and two quotes
The maple hangs over two runs of gutter: the back of the house, about 32 feet, and the 20-foot run on the garage. The front gutters collect a handful of leaves a year and stay clean. In June the same tree fills the back gutters with helicopters, and in the fall it fills them again with leaves. The arborist's pruning in February took out the deadwood, but a healthy silver maple still sheds plenty.
We got two quotes in August. A big-name gutter guard company came out with a sample kit and a polished presentation and quoted $3,900 for the whole house. A local gutter company quoted $2,400, also for the whole house. Both looked like solid products, installed by people who do this every day, and both were priced for every foot of gutter we own. Our question was narrower. We didn't need guards on the front. We needed them under the maple, and that's 52 feet.
Picking a guard
I ruled out foam inserts and brush-style guards, which from everything I read tend to trap seeds and fine debris, and the cheap plastic screens, which sag. That left stainless micro-mesh: a fine stainless screen on a stiff frame that sits over the gutter, so water passes through and leaves stay on top. Some styles slide their back edge under the first row of shingles. I didn't want to lift shingles on the garage roof we put on in June, or reach under the main roof's shingles from a ladder, so I picked a style that screws to the front lip of the gutter and fastens its back edge to the fascia without touching the roof.
They come in 4-foot sections. I measured 52 feet, bought 13 sections and a box of stainless self-tapping screws, and felt very efficient about it.
Installing 52 feet
We started Saturday, September 19, at 7 a.m. First we cleaned and flushed both runs, which still held a summer's worth of helicopters, and ran the hose down each downspout to make sure it flowed. Then Tessa took the garage from the stepladder, since its eaves are low, and I took the house from the extension ladder with a standoff. The back eave on a Cape is low enough to keep me inside my 12-foot comfort zone. Each section got set to the pitch of the roof and screwed to the gutter lip about every foot, with the impact driver on its lowest setting so I didn't crush the aluminum.
Here's the mistake. I'd bought 13 sections as if they butt end to end. They don't. Each joint overlaps by about an inch, and the corner and the end of the garage run eat a few more. Tessa ran out of guard with about 30 inches of garage gutter still open, and she pointed at the gap without saying a word, which was worse. Sunday morning I went back for one more section. Fourteen at $11 apiece came to $154, plus $14 for the screws, for $168 total.
With everything on, I laid the hose on the roof edge from the ladder for a test. Water sheeted through the mesh almost everywhere. Below the dormer valley, though, it came down fast enough to skip over the first inch of mesh and spill past the gutter. I'll watch that spot in a real downpour before I decide whether it needs anything.
What I'm watching for
Micro-mesh isn't zero maintenance. Maple flowers, seeds and pollen can form a mat on top, so a couple of times a year I'll brush it off with a soft broom on an extension pole from the ground. Winter is the bigger unknown. Snow and ice can sit on top of guards, and I don't know yet how ours will behave under lake-effect snow on a roof that still builds a little ice at the dormer. The insulation has helped a lot with that, and the roof rake still comes out after big snows.
A few leaves at the very top of the maple have started to turn yellow, which in my experience means about four weeks. We'll see in November.
Trip count: 2.
