Overshooting Gutter Covers & Leaf Guards

Overshooting is a subject that you will not see discussed by other gutter guard manufacturers. In fact what you usually see is a "exception" in the contract (the fine print) that they require you to initial before purchase which says that the gutter protector may overshoot for a period of time. And the truth is that that "period of time" could be forever.

Thus far I've discussed what type of designs contribute to overshooting on regular straight gutters and valleys.

There's one other situation that contributes to overshooting and that is when there is a downspout discharging onto a roof from an upper gutter. The water out of a downspout will overshoot any gutter cover (even when they are up to eight or ten feet away). One would think that the water from that distance would disperse and spread out across the roof, but it often doesn't.

The most effective way of making sure the water doesn't overshoot is to install a leader from the discharge of the upper gutter elbow direct into the top of the leaf guard. It just makes common sense, but often times I see that installers of other products have no common sense.

Yet there are some homeowners who object to having a leader extend downward across their roof--an aesthetic issue. For these homeowners, Waterloov has a patented device to spread the water out as it discharges the elbow.

In our next post, we'll look at the type of service calls a gutter cover company can get.