Which Invention Will Make It?

I was watching a commercial for one of the invention service companies. The commercial showed a fellow with a successful invention and went on to say that prospective inventors should not expect the same successful results.

I realized that what they said about new inventions not necessarily being successful was true and then I thought about the field of gutter covers.

Its amazing how many patents are issued for different devices to keep gutters clean. It seems that no matter how stupid or ridiculous they are, someone will believe that some of them will work and will actually manufacture and market them. And homeowners are so desperate for a solution that they will often buy them without doing much research.

A new invention needs more than a different idea to be successful, it needs an idea that will actually do in real life what the inventor envisioned and do it economically.

An example of a patented invention that improved upon existing gutter protection technology and has proven inself for twenty years is Waterloov.

The Engineer asks: "Do Gutter Guards Need to be Strong?"

Someone told me about a video commercial that shows the manufacturer of an "all-in-one" gutter guard driving his jeep onto the product and it doesn't dent. I suppose he does this to demonstrate how strong the product is.

Let me ask you, when was the last time you drove your jeep on your roof? When was the last time you stepped onto your gutter? Is it even something you might want to do?

What do gutter covers need to be that strong for? Fat raccoons? Heavy leaves?

The only impact a gutter and gutter cover sees is from a fallen tree limb. And believe me, if the tree limb hits the "all in one" gutter and gutter guard any place except where the support fastener is located (the place where the tire of the jeep was on the product) it's going to dent the top of the "all in one" system. Absolutely! And you know what? The entire length of the "all-in-one" gutter needs to be replaced if you want it to collect all the water.

We've been manufacturing the Waterloov Gutter Protection system since 1989--twenty years . In the early years the only aluminum we could use was quite thin (.019"). A few years later in 1995 we developed methods that allowed us to use thicker material (.027" the same material gutters are made from).

We changed for two reasons:
1. We figured a thicker metal would be stronger and last longer.
2. It allowed us to expand to twenty different colors.

Twenty years later we find that the early .019" gutter covers are still in service and whether a tree limb damages the thinner leaf guard or the thicker gutter guard, it doesn't matter--either one can be easily fixed or replaced. Even .032" panels get dented.

The question to ask is not, "How strong is the gutter cover?"
but, "Can the gutter cover be easily and inexpensively repaired if damaged by a fallen tree limb?"

An even more important question is, "Will it keep my gutters clean inside?"

The "all in one" gutter protector can clog inside and once that happens, cleaning it is no picnic. You're totally at the mercy of the installing company.

My Gutter Covers Drip!

I had a customer who called to tell me that his front gutter drips so much that there's a drip line in the soil. He said that the Waterloov gutter covers around the rest of his house worked very well and that he thought it was a problem with how the Waterloov system was installed.

I asked him if there's any visible debris on the louvers and he informed me that he brushed the system and that it still drips. I was totally at loss as to why this would be happening and informed him that if there was a problem with installation (very very unlikely) that we'd fix it, but if after we did a water test and found nothing he'd be charged for the service call.

Upon arriving at his home it was evident as to what the problem was just by looking at the gutter. It was a first floor gutter and the louvers were completely covered with debris. He showed me the brush he used (a worn our house broom) which was totally inadequate. I showed him our inexpensive stiff bristle brush. My service man brushed his Waterloov Gutter Covers and we did a water test. Hardly a drop missed the Waterloov's louvers and after some basic education, we gave the homeowner his invoice as our reputation remained in tact and went on to the next service call who also had an overshooting problem.

Now you might think we do a lot of service calls, but we don't. Out of approximately two thousand installations locally, we only are called for service about twenty times per year--that's pretty good and only about ten percent of our homeowners actually need to brush their systems--for others it's completely maintenance free. This is why we say, "virtually maintenance free." It's like modern windows have become virtually maintenance free. It doesn't mean that the windows never need cleaning, it means that the homeowner no longer needs to climb a ladder to clean windows but instead simply flips them from inside to clean them.

No other gutter cover, foam insert or screen can be maintained this easily from the ground by the homeowner as Waterloov can.

More in the next post.

"There's a tree in my gutter!"

I went along on a service call today. The customer called to tell us that his newly installed Waterloov Gutter Covers of just two or three years were clogged and had a tree growing out of them.

Well, the tree part intrigued me and I wanted to see it for myself. My first thought was, "Sure, the gutters will clog when hell freezes over." But the way things have been going with the economy and all, well maybe, just maybe we have a first.

Sure enough when we arrived at the customer's home two miniature trees were visible, but they were not growing from the gutters. They were growing from the valley leading to the gutters. His gutters were clear and open.

Five minutes later we had used our telescopic pole and brush assembly to drag the debris from the valleys and gave his Waterloov gutter covers a brushing to remove debris from the louvers.

He tipped my service man and we left with our reputation intact. The Waterloov Gutter Protection System never lets a gutter clog inside.

Tomorrow another service call from a customer complaining of overshooting on one gutter to the degree that it's caused a drip line. He claims to have been brushing his gutter covers.

I'm Getting Water In My Basement!

A homeowner called last week to claim that his Waterloov covered gutters were clogged because he was getting water in his basement. My first thought was, "unlikely," and scheduled a service call. When I called to confirm the address and time the homeowner indicated that he didn't think now that the Waterloov Gutter Covers were clogged but would still appreciate it if we stopped by and would gladly pay for the service call.

Upon arriving at his home he told me that the gutter he thought was clogged was clear because he observed a lot of water coming from the downspout in the most recent rainfall.

He went on to say that he was thinking about having his roof redone within two years and asked if we should remove the covers before doing so. I informed him that based on condition of his roof, he had at least five years before he'd need a new roof and that his local Waterloov dealer was also a roofer. He was glad to hear that he'd have "one stop shopping," as he put it and that he had an additional few years.

He was still confused as to why he was getting water in his basement from the gutter he thought was clogged.

Upon investigating I found that the end of the leader went into an open four inch pipe which was about 8 feet long. What was happening was that water was flowing into the large pipe with some of it was flowing back to the foundation since the connection between the discharge leader and pipe was open.

The problem was fixed by shortening the leader to raise the discharge elbow and replacing the large open pipe with an eight foot leader stretching through the shrubs and then encasing the leader with the 4" pipe to protect it from any accidental crushing.

As we left, the homeowner gave us names of two neighbors who needed our gutter protection services.

Tomorrow we have another service call from a customer who claims that his newly installed gutter covers of two years ago are clogged. Although it's almost impossible that the Waterloov Gutter Covers are clogged, we'll investigate anyway and report

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.

Gutter Guards and Gutter Covers "Collecting Valley Water"

This is the fifth post regarding overshooting. In the last post I discussed a patented device used by the Waterloov Gutter Guard System for collecting water in short valleys.

For longer valleys the Valley FallTM Panel is installed catty-cornered in the valley. It's stacked on top of the regular panels that are installed in the valley. Water flows down the valley and onto the valley fall panel where it is spread out across the front collectors of the Waterloov® panel. The water drops down into the gutter and any residual water is collected by the gutter protectors installed on the gutter.

The openings of the Valley FallTM panel are likewise in the vertical surface and can then easily be cleaned from the ground by the homeowner with a telescopic pole and brush assembly.

In the next post we'll discuss overshooting from gutter leaders discharging on an upper roof.

Gutter Guards and Leaf Guards "Collecting Valley Water?"

This is the fourth post regarding gutter covers collecting all of the water. In the last post I discussed the challenge of collecting water from valley configurations. Most installers of gutter guards do nothing or they are limited to installing diverters to distribute rain water. Usually within two years diverters become clogged with debris resulting in water overshooting valleys. The problem is that it's a challenge to clean from behind diverters without going up a ladder.

The manufacturer of the Waterloov Gutter Protection System has invented and patented two different devices for collecting valley water. For shorter valleys a stealth like dome diverter triangular in shape is used causing the water to be dispersed across the top of the gutter cover enabling it to be collected with the openings in the vertical surface of the gutter cover.

In the next post, I'll discuss the solution to collecting water in longer valleys.

Gutter Covers and Gutter Screens

Basically there are six types of gutter covers and gutter guards. Two of the types are gutter screens and gutter filters.

However, if you look at gutter filters you'll see that they essentially are a gutter screen of some nature. Gutter screens have their openings to allow water into the gutter on the horizontal surface. While most of them are flat, some are not.

Many manufacturers make no claims whatsoever about their gutter screens and sell them usually for less than $1.50/ft. However, some manufactures of the filters (from what I see it is just a new way of referring to screens) can sell for up to $7.00 per foot for just the material and as much as $20 per foot to have them installed.

Of course with the more expensive ones, this is where the manufacturers begin with their claims of maintenance free guttering. These systems might use a micro mesh that keeps out particles as small as roof grit or multi layered plastic upon which they show how a sewing needle will bounce off of it. Their graphic and physical displays make their systems look impervious to debris.

It's refreshing to see one writer, tell the truth about screens. Dennis Montgomery writes, "The idea seems pretty simple, but the biggest problem with some, but not all, screens is that they themselves get covered up with debris and won't allow water to pass through. Many people choose gutter screens because they figure that installing them will save quite a bit of money and/or time. After all, it is far easier to brush debris off of a screen than it is to clean the gunk out of gutters."

Click here for Dennis's full article. What he overlooked, is that depending on the design of gutter screen you choose, i.e. the type of mesh, you may have to remove them to clean the gutter inside because they will still pass enough debris to clog a gutter.

They say the definition of "Insanity" is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. And over the course of twenty years, I've seen inventors try to reinvent the screen type of gutter cover over and over and over again and they are still screens whether they be called screens or filters and will be subject to the same laws of physics. They will require maintenance on the part of a homeowner or a service man to go up a ladder and brush them off, or remove them and clean the clogging gutters.

In a light debris environment it might not be much of an issue, but in a mild-to-heavy debris environment it will be an issue.

In subsequent posts we'll look at other types of gutter covers and gutter protectors.

The one that does keep out all types of debris from getting into the gutter has openings in the vertical surface which, as they might become obstructed, can be cleaned via Gutter Maintenance ("Suit and Tie").

MEMA hurricane tips - keep your gutters free flowing

Another reason to keep your gutters free flowing is to lessen the damage the from hurricane rains.

During this year’s Atlantic Hurricane Season (June 1-Nov.30), the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) urges homeowners to protect their property from strong winds, damaging rains, and flooding that hurricanes or tropical storms can bring to New England. Click for full article

It's time to prepare for hurricane season. How do you keep your gutter free flowing?

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?

The Folly of Gutter Guard Inventions - Part Three

Back to the fin and trough system--it doesn't take an MIT graduate to see that all the debris that follows the fin downward will also go into the trough. I suspect the reason the inventors use the trough is to keep full sized debris from entering the gutter. But what do you think will happen with this debris? Will it stay in the trough and clog it or break down into the gutter where it also clogs? You get the picture?

Twenty-five years ago one inventor decided that the answer was to do away with the gutter completely. He invented a rain dispersal system. It definitely looked like the solution to the problem. But what do you think happened to leaves and debris that accumulated on top of the rain dispersal unit? What would keep it from just laying there? What do you think happened with slow rain falls where the kinetic energy of the rain dripping off the roof was insufficient to disperse the water? Do you think there might end up being soil erosion all around your roof line?

Fifteen or so years ago another inventor just figured he'd put hinges on gutters and use a pole from the ground to detach and flip them. What do you think happens to all that putrid debris that accumulates in the gutter when they are flipped? Can you imagine dumping this putrid mess from an upper gutter onto a lower roof? I’d suggest wearing a rain coat and hat.

When I invented a double row louvered system twenty years ago I wanted to make sure it worked. Instead of one long fin, I used two rows of louvers to collect the water. The louvers actually limit the size of the debris that can enter the gutter. The first two years was limited to installing it in the local NJ area. My hope was that it collect all the water, keep gutters clean and free flowing and be maintenance free.

Every six months I personally inspected a dozen homes in high debris areas to make sure that the gutters were clean and free flowing--they were.

Yet, after eighteen months I had my first disappointment--we found that the louvers on the front visible vertical surface in heavy debris conditions clogged. I almost abandoned the product. Fortunately I found that a strong bristle brush on the end of telescopic pole easily knocked the debris off. Next we were pleasantly surprised to find that brushing the louvers was not a dirty or difficult job--in fact one could do it dressed in a suit and tie.

We asked ourselves, what options do homeowners have? Install one of the other products--all of which clog in the gutter or are just plain silly, or use our system with suit and tie maintenance?

Ultimately we found that 85% of all our customers never have to do any maintenance whatsoever--some only need brushing once every year or two. We realized the reality early on that asking someone who has to clean his gutters several times in the fall to believe that any gutter protection product would be maintenance free is like asking them to believe in Santa Claus.

This is the last of a three part blog series. If you would like to read the article in its entirety. Click on Gutter Guard.

What is the Job of a Gutter Protector?

Being a gutter cover is pretty tough work--24 hours a day, 365 days a year, year in and year out, the gutter guard has to defend your gutter, in all kinds of weather and wind storm conditions, against an assault of leaves, blossoms, twigs, birds, squirrels, balls, toys, and so on.

With all of this to do, it’s amazing that 90% of the homeowners with Waterloov® protecting their gutters never have to do anything to maintain their rain gutter systems.

However, there are some homes located under a canopy of trees--no daylight to be seen from late May to the end of November. It’s these homeowners who would normally have to clean their gutters 5-to-6 times in the fall and another 3-to-4 times in the spring to keep their seamless gutters clean and free flowing that find Gutter Maintenance ("Suit and Tie") a welcome alternative to cleaning seamless gutters..