Gutter Covers "Inspected after Twenty Years"

In several of the last posts we looked at the folly of the various gutter protectors or gutter covers that have been invented. What it shows is that everything ever invented looks like to someone it will work. And with the tools that video and animations offer us, almost any product will look like it will work.

But the truth of the pudding is actual service. For instance if you follow "ask the builder" Tim Carter has been looking for a gutter cover that will work for years. His criteria initially was that it be a device that doesn't have to be installed by a professional which leaves out several basic types of gutter guards and gutter covers. The other thing is that he uses only his own house for testing and is basically limited to screen type or some filter type systems.

Recently Tim indicated that he found a gutter cover (which he had professionally installed) that he believes will worked based on the fact that he tested it on one side of his home and after going through a spring season (which for most gutter covers is the most challenging season) it didn't collect debris on it.



From his description he has mostly oak trees around his home. But, how will this system work with locust trees, pine trees, hemlock, ash...? What about wind currents? Will the wind currents one year be different from another year? What about rain fall? Will the rain fall quantities affect debris conditions differently from year to year? And what about the combination of rain fall and wind storms? Will a severe rain/wind storm that occurs the third week of the spring season have a different effect than one on the sixth week?

In my opinion, a lot more data is required than the results on one home on one side and in one particular season.

I invented the Waterloov Gutter Protection System and for the first five years we inspected more than a dozen installations under the heaviest of tree debris conditions with all kinds of trees (pine, oak, ash, maple, locust, elm...) twice a year. We removed the panels and looked inside and never found any significant accumulation of debris.

But did we stop inspecting after two years? Absolutely not. In fact twenty years later we had the opportunity to inspect fifteen to twenty year old installations. Whenever homeowners call us to repair their system from fallen tree limbs or when they want to have a new roof installed we get to open up the system and every time we find the same incredible results--nothing of significance accumulates in the gutter.

In fact even in situations where the gutter can not be pitched correctly to drain free of water because of building irregularities, we find that the fine fine debris that enters through the louvers builds a false bottom in the gutter such that it does drain free. In fact the false bottom looks and appears to be solid as opposed to mucky and or granular as one might expect.



Rather than rely on two seasons of experience and considering that the investment for most gutter protection products is within ten or fifteen percent, does it make sense to rely on anything but fantastic long term results?