Tuesday, August 13, 2013
August 2013 Waterloov Gutter Guards Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Waterloov® Gutter Guard Co. Provides Homeowners Important Information Regarding Gutters and Gutter Guards With the Release of 2013 Buyers Guide for Gutter Guards
OAKHURST, NJ, Aug 1, 2013
With heavy rain falls though out most of the country the importance of getting water away from foundations of homes is of foremost concern. Two main factors contribute to foundations being deluged with water:
1, Poor landscaping resulting in rain water draining to the foundation.
2. Poorly operating gutters caused generally by clogging from leaf and tree debris.
To correct the first is to employ a professional landscaper. To correct the second is to have the gutters cleaned and protected with gutter guards to keep gutters and leaders free flowing.
With over one hundred different gutter covers and gutter guards from which to choose, many homeowners are overwhelmed Waterloov® Gutter Protection, the nation's leading gutter protection company, has released the 2013 Buyers Guide for Gutter Guards to provide homeowners the important questions to ask any contractor who may install gutter protection on their homes.
With release of The 2013 Buyers Guide for Gutter Guards, Waterloov® Gutter Cover Company has provided homeowners with a guide that contains vital question every homeowner should ask of any potential contractor. Homeowners will now have a resource to aid in understanding how to choose the most effective gutter guard system.
There are four basic designs from which to choose when selecting a gutter guard system. Most work well in light debris conditions, but are not a good fit for heavy debris conditions.
“With over a hundred different gutter guards from which to choose, it can be very overwhelming to choose the right to get the job done. The good news is that 98% of them fit into four basic design types,” states Richard Kuhns, President of R.K. Industries, manufacturer of the Waterloov Gutter Guard. “We compiled a list of questions every homeowner should ask of any company representing gutter protection.”
The 2013 Buyers Guide for Gutter Guard provides the eight most important questions to ask, which are:
• Everyone says you get a Life-Time Warranty, but what does that actually mean?
• Are there any hidden fees later down the road?
• Will this system work in all kind of conditions?
• Will this system fit any kind of roof?
• Will this system actually collect my valley water or will it fall onto my head as I go in my home?
• Is my roof warranty void once you put your system on my roof?
• Does your product guarantee that I will never have to climb a ladder again?
• If for any reason the gutter cover itself gets clogged, will you come out to clean it and how much do you charge?
• What maintenance should I expect with gutter guards and who does it?
The 2013 Buyers Guide for Gutter Guards can be easily downloaded by going to the Waterloov.com website.
To discover the differences between the four basic designs a detailed analysis of each is at www.leafguards.com
About Waterloov Gutter Cover Co, Div of R. K. Industries Inc.
The Waterloov Gutter Guard system is one of the top rated gutter guards by a Consumer Reports.
The Waterloov Gutter Protection system is one of two systems available with two rows of louvers in the front vertical surface. The size and amount if debris that can get into the gutter is limited to the size of the openings. Whereas most gutter guards have openings in the horizontal surface that actually attracts debris, the openings in the Waterloov design are in the vertical surface so gravity works for you instead of against you.
Twenty four years of service has demonstrated that gutters protected by the double row louvered system never clog inside and any maintenance that may be required in heavy heavy debris conditions is done by the homeowner with a telescopic pole and brush—never a need to call for servicing.
Hundreds of thousands of homes have been installed through out the country with Waterloov. For more information about Waterloov Gutter Guards visit the website or call (800) 841-RAIN (7246).
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Contact:
Michael Nicolosi
Waterloov® Gutter Cover Co.
div of R. K. Industries
Oakhurst, NJ 07755 USA
732-531-1123
michael@Waterloov.com
http://www.waterloov.com
Thursday, August 8, 2013
What to do before and after getting a new roof on your home!
Getting A New Roof Can Cost Thousands in Gutter Guard
Damage!
Or
Can Your Roofer Destroy Your Gutter Guards and Cost You
Thousands of Dollars
Like they say oil and water don't mix, often times roofers
and gutter guards don't mix either. In fact, roofers can do thousands of
dollars of damage to gutter guard systems.
Many gutter guard systems such as the Waterloov Gutter Cover
system can cost several thousand dollars to protect gutters from clogging with
tree debris.
Often when the homeowner asks the roofing contractor about
what to do about the gutter protection system on their home, the roofer will
say, “Don't worry about it, we'll take care of it—we know what to do.”
What they are really saying is, “If you don't call your
gutter guard contractor, you're taking a crap shoot with us because we don't
know diddles about how to replace the system so it will work properly.”
What kind of mistakes can roofers make? The better question
is, “What mistake will they make?
“With over twenty years of experience, I've seen all types
of mistakes, says Richard Kuhns, President of R.K. Industries manufacturer of
the Waterloov Gutter Guard.
Some mistakes are made because roofing is laborious heavy
work. A pack of shingles weighs nearly seventy pounds per bundle. Sometimes,
the shingles are lifted onto the roof with a spider (special fork lift).
Sometimes a conveyor belt is used to get them onto the roof and the sometimes
they have to be carried up a ladder which is leaned against the gutter.
When they are carried up by hand, gutters and gutter guards
suffer. The gutters get dented and the gutter guards can easily get squashed.
If the roofer is not removing an old roof and simply going
over the first roof, a mistake often made is that the roofer nails the under
course of the roof through the shingle, gutter guard and into the roof. Of
course if no damage or crushing of the gutter guards occur, there's no problem,
but if the gutter guards are crushed or the gutters damaged, the gutter
protectors won't work—tree debris will enter through the flattened louvers and
clog the gutter. Additionally crushed gutters covers are rather ugly with a new
roof.
Result: Depending on how the gutter covers were nailed into
the roofing, the gutter guards have to be sheared in order to remove them. In
this case, the gutter guards are totally destroyed and complete replacement is
necessary at a cost of over $20 per foot. Often times the roofer has already
been paid and getting reimbursement for the destroyed gutter covers is a
challenge.
Sometimes, using a pry bar, the nails can be removed from
the shingle and gutter guard in order to remove it and fix it or replace it.
While not cheap, it's a better alternative to replacing the entire gutter
guard.
Typically roofers will install the under course of the new
roof at the same position the roof being covered is. However, in a rare case
the roofer installed the under course of the new roof at the top edge of the
gutter guard leaving the old roof and gutter guard to protect the first ten inches
of roofing above the gutter.
Result: Water got under the gutter guards and old shingles
and rotted out the entire fascia board. The rotted fascia boards had to be
removed—very laborious since the rotted wood had no integrity making its
removal very time consuming. A full width of gutter coil has to be installed
beneath the new roof as flashing as an option to feathering in roofing
shingles. The homeowner had a major expense to replace fascia, install
flashing, new gutters and new gutter guards simply because of an ignorant
roofing contractor.
In many cases, the old roofing has to be removed in order to
install a new roof. In this case, roofers often remove the gutter guards.
Sometimes they don't have the right tools and simply rip them out—not easy to
do and it totally destroys the gutter guards.
Often times a lot of roofing debris gets into the gutter and
instead of cleaning out the roofing debris, the roofer re installs the gutter
guards. Again, sometimes the nail the gutter guards to the roof making it very
laborious to remove them and clean the gutters of roofing debris. If the
homeowner is lucky, the gutter covers are not nailed into the roofing and
removing the debris left in the gutter is fast and simple with a small trip
charge and a half hour or so of labor.
Another mistake roofers make when reinstalling the gutter
guards is that they don't install the end-caps correctly.
Result: the following spring gutters are overflowing because
birds have gotten through the end-cap and built a nest. Again, if the gutter
protection system is nailed into the roofing, it can be very laborious and
expensive to have the bird nests removed. Other wise, it's a small trip charge
plus a half hour or so of labor.
Another mistake roofers make is that when they reinstall the
gutter guards, they overlap them too much and end up short a few feet. One
roofer, rather than purchasing more gutter guards, wanted to finish the job and
get paid right away so what he did was to bend a piece of aluminum to look like
the gutter guard. And where there were supposed to be louvers to collect the
water, he took a permanent black magic
marker and drew in louvers. The homeowner had no idea as to why water was not
being collected in that section of gutter.
Another mistake roofers make is the same mistake that
Consumers Report made when they first tested the Waterloov gutter guard and
that is they install the front lip of the gutter guard on top of the lip of the
gutter instead of under the front lip of the gutter. This causes massive
overflow of water.
Again, if the gutter guards are nailed into the roofing,
it's laborious and expensive to fix. Otherwise, it's a trip charge and up to
about 5 hours of labor to remove and reinstall the gutter guards.
Another mistake roofers make is that when they reinstall the
gutter guards, if the home has valleys, they don't reinstall the water
diverters or install them incorrectly. Usually this isn't a big problem and at
most it's a small trip charge plus a half hour of labor to install diverters.
Yes, just as oil and water don't mix, roofers and gutter
guards rarely mix. The best advice for the homeowner is to call the gutter
guard contractor to remove and reinstall the gutter guards.
Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E. Engineer and inventor of good gutter
guards at http://www.niagaraguttercover.com better gutter guards at
http://www.carefreegutters.com/ and the best gutter guards at
http://www.waterloov.com and http://www.NumberOneGutterProtector.com
Monday, July 29, 2013
The Truth About Gutter Protectors and Leaf Guards
All leaf guards and gutter guards are not created
equal. A gutter cover or gutter protector has to do three basic tasks:
1. Catch all the water.
2. Keep leaves and debris out of the gutter.
3. Be able to be maintained easily by the homeowner.
In mild-to-heavy debris conditions all gutter covers except one fail to do all three tasks effectively.
The principal of surface adhesion is what makes all gutter solid top gutter protectors work. There all have a solid top and a curved front surface that leads the water downward and into the gutter.
Before investing in gutter guards it makes sense to do some research. After all a product that really does its job can cost thousands of dollars. However when it comes to gutter guards, more money doesn't necessarily mean a better performing product. Remember that salesmen are good at telling you what they think you want to hear.
Yet choosing the wrong product can be a night mare; you could end up with birds and animals living in your gutters and if they clog, you’ll have no way of getting into your gutters to clean them; or worse yet your roof could start leaking. And worse yet overflowing gutters could leak into your basement providing a fertile environment for toxic mold.
Basically there are six different types of gutter protection devices:
1. Screens-the basic ones are flat and made of plastic, metal or wire with square openings, round holes, and louvered openings. More sophisticated screens have steps, rounded tops, or troughs. Debris lays on the top of the screen, dries, and is then pummeled by rain through the openings to clog the gutter inside; or the debris clogs the screening device keeping water from getting into the gutter. Basically they work if the homeowner is willing to go up the ladder to clean them and replace the ones blown out by storms or hijacked by squirrels.
2. Membranes, filters, and brushes installed in or on existing gutters. One of them has a solid top with a filter strip in it. It requires replacement every few years (sometimes the squirrels help with the job). Others are basically brushes or meshes installed in the gutter. Essentially they clog like screens. One manufacturer advertises that the benefit is that the brush can be removed and cleaned. Can you imagine removing a brush full of mucky debris and shaking it out? You'll need to wear a rain coat and then power wash your home.
3. Flat solid top with rounded front nose--fin type. It's one longitudinal fin along the entire length of the gutter-more about them later.
4. Flat solid top with rounded front nose and a trough--fin type with trough.
5. Rain dispersal and flipping type of gutters. Leaves lay on top of the rain dispersal system and it also fails to disperse slow rain fall. The flipping gutter seems a good idea until you realize that gutter may be full of putrid debris and water being flipped on top of you and that the gutters warp rendering the locking mechanism ineffective and what about downspouts—they still clog?
6. Flat solid top with rounded front nose and a double row louvered front vertical surface such as the Waterloov Gutter Protection System.
Which gutter covers may not collect all the water—the first task? Answer: Those that have a series of bends on the nose of the gutter guard or have a very tight radius. The larger the radius and the smoother the radius, the more water that the gutter cover will collect, otherwise the water just flies off onto the ground in heavy rainfall conditions.
More importantly, if your roof has a valley there is little likely hood that rain water can be collected unless you use gutter screens (the first type) or the sixth type of gutter guard--more later.
The next job a gutter cover has to do is keep the gutters clean. Most any leaf guard will keep gutters clean in a light debris environment. However, in mild-to-heavy debris conditions—especially in the spring time--debris will adhere to the rounded front surface of the third type (fin) and fourth type (fin with trough) of gutter guards and go into the gutter and or the trough.
The last concern is about the ease of maintenance of the gutter leaf guard. Truth is that most manufacturers will either tell you out right that no maintenance will ever be required or they will infer that none will be required. But think about this a moment. If you need to clean your gutters several times during the fall, would you honestly believe that you'll never have to do anything to maintain your gutter guards? Asking a homeowner to believe that there is no maintenance required is like asking him to believe in Santa Claus.
The reality is that all six types of gutter protectors will clog in mild-to-heavy debris conditions. The important question is, "Where"?
The third and fourth types of products require the gutter to be cleaned inside. Another downfall of one of them is that it’s held in place with clips that work loose causing the cover to collapse into the gutter. Because patents have expired, you'll also notice that many of third type are very similar in design and appearance. One of them actually has sieve type openings on the top of it. But isn’t that a screen and won’t it clog just like screens? Of course it will.
To maintain all the system so far mentioned means that someone has to climb a ladder and clean the gutter and or the gutter cover. Also some fin types are nailed into the roofing which means that nails need to be removed from the roofing to remove the product which could contribute to roofing leaks.
All products thus far mentioned have to be maintained by having someone climb a ladder and clean the gutter or the openings in the gutter cover. With some of the fin type products, nails need to be removed from the roofing to remove the product which could contribute to roofing leaks.
Yet there is one gutter protector that does live up to all its promises--the Waterloov® Gutter Protection System, manufactured by R. K. Industries of Neptune NJ., which uses two rows of interspersed louvers in the front vertical surface to collect rain water and limit the size of the debris that can enter the gutter. R. K. Industries also is the only company that manufactures the patented ValleyFall™ product for collecting water in valley configurations.
Fortunately the Waterloov® Gutter Protector (with a twenty year track record since 1989) in heavy debris conditions has been found that gutters never clog inside; and when the front vertical louvers clog, the debris can be easily brushed away with a telescopic pole and brush by the home owner. They call this "Suit and Tie" maintenance because the homeowner can literally wear a suit and tie while doing it as it's not a dirty job. In fact 85% of homeowners never need to perform any maintenance and of the other 15% many only need to brush their systems every year or two.
1. Catch all the water.
2. Keep leaves and debris out of the gutter.
3. Be able to be maintained easily by the homeowner.
In mild-to-heavy debris conditions all gutter covers except one fail to do all three tasks effectively.
The principal of surface adhesion is what makes all gutter solid top gutter protectors work. There all have a solid top and a curved front surface that leads the water downward and into the gutter.
Before investing in gutter guards it makes sense to do some research. After all a product that really does its job can cost thousands of dollars. However when it comes to gutter guards, more money doesn't necessarily mean a better performing product. Remember that salesmen are good at telling you what they think you want to hear.
Yet choosing the wrong product can be a night mare; you could end up with birds and animals living in your gutters and if they clog, you’ll have no way of getting into your gutters to clean them; or worse yet your roof could start leaking. And worse yet overflowing gutters could leak into your basement providing a fertile environment for toxic mold.
Basically there are six different types of gutter protection devices:
1. Screens-the basic ones are flat and made of plastic, metal or wire with square openings, round holes, and louvered openings. More sophisticated screens have steps, rounded tops, or troughs. Debris lays on the top of the screen, dries, and is then pummeled by rain through the openings to clog the gutter inside; or the debris clogs the screening device keeping water from getting into the gutter. Basically they work if the homeowner is willing to go up the ladder to clean them and replace the ones blown out by storms or hijacked by squirrels.
2. Membranes, filters, and brushes installed in or on existing gutters. One of them has a solid top with a filter strip in it. It requires replacement every few years (sometimes the squirrels help with the job). Others are basically brushes or meshes installed in the gutter. Essentially they clog like screens. One manufacturer advertises that the benefit is that the brush can be removed and cleaned. Can you imagine removing a brush full of mucky debris and shaking it out? You'll need to wear a rain coat and then power wash your home.
3. Flat solid top with rounded front nose--fin type. It's one longitudinal fin along the entire length of the gutter-more about them later.
4. Flat solid top with rounded front nose and a trough--fin type with trough.
5. Rain dispersal and flipping type of gutters. Leaves lay on top of the rain dispersal system and it also fails to disperse slow rain fall. The flipping gutter seems a good idea until you realize that gutter may be full of putrid debris and water being flipped on top of you and that the gutters warp rendering the locking mechanism ineffective and what about downspouts—they still clog?
6. Flat solid top with rounded front nose and a double row louvered front vertical surface such as the Waterloov Gutter Protection System.
Which gutter covers may not collect all the water—the first task? Answer: Those that have a series of bends on the nose of the gutter guard or have a very tight radius. The larger the radius and the smoother the radius, the more water that the gutter cover will collect, otherwise the water just flies off onto the ground in heavy rainfall conditions.
More importantly, if your roof has a valley there is little likely hood that rain water can be collected unless you use gutter screens (the first type) or the sixth type of gutter guard--more later.
The next job a gutter cover has to do is keep the gutters clean. Most any leaf guard will keep gutters clean in a light debris environment. However, in mild-to-heavy debris conditions—especially in the spring time--debris will adhere to the rounded front surface of the third type (fin) and fourth type (fin with trough) of gutter guards and go into the gutter and or the trough.
The last concern is about the ease of maintenance of the gutter leaf guard. Truth is that most manufacturers will either tell you out right that no maintenance will ever be required or they will infer that none will be required. But think about this a moment. If you need to clean your gutters several times during the fall, would you honestly believe that you'll never have to do anything to maintain your gutter guards? Asking a homeowner to believe that there is no maintenance required is like asking him to believe in Santa Claus.
The reality is that all six types of gutter protectors will clog in mild-to-heavy debris conditions. The important question is, "Where"?
The third and fourth types of products require the gutter to be cleaned inside. Another downfall of one of them is that it’s held in place with clips that work loose causing the cover to collapse into the gutter. Because patents have expired, you'll also notice that many of third type are very similar in design and appearance. One of them actually has sieve type openings on the top of it. But isn’t that a screen and won’t it clog just like screens? Of course it will.
To maintain all the system so far mentioned means that someone has to climb a ladder and clean the gutter and or the gutter cover. Also some fin types are nailed into the roofing which means that nails need to be removed from the roofing to remove the product which could contribute to roofing leaks.
All products thus far mentioned have to be maintained by having someone climb a ladder and clean the gutter or the openings in the gutter cover. With some of the fin type products, nails need to be removed from the roofing to remove the product which could contribute to roofing leaks.
Yet there is one gutter protector that does live up to all its promises--the Waterloov® Gutter Protection System, manufactured by R. K. Industries of Neptune NJ., which uses two rows of interspersed louvers in the front vertical surface to collect rain water and limit the size of the debris that can enter the gutter. R. K. Industries also is the only company that manufactures the patented ValleyFall™ product for collecting water in valley configurations.
Fortunately the Waterloov® Gutter Protector (with a twenty year track record since 1989) in heavy debris conditions has been found that gutters never clog inside; and when the front vertical louvers clog, the debris can be easily brushed away with a telescopic pole and brush by the home owner. They call this "Suit and Tie" maintenance because the homeowner can literally wear a suit and tie while doing it as it's not a dirty job. In fact 85% of homeowners never need to perform any maintenance and of the other 15% many only need to brush their systems every year or two.
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