Don't let your guard down when the gutter guards go up.
Like many folks, I bought into the idea that I could eliminate the tedious task of climbing a ladder to clean my gutters once a gutter protection system was installed on my 1930s Cape Cod.
I was wrong.
When a good imitation of Niagara Falls cascaded over the doorway during a recent downpour, it was obvious something was amiss. A visual examination from an upstairs dormer window showed the gutter guards appeared to be clear of debris. But a trek up the ladder to look under the guards revealed they were hiding a very big problem.
Water was never going to find its way to the downspouts because the entire 25-foot span of guttering across the front of the house was crammed with a four-inch layer of soggy pine needles.
Once gutters become loaded with debris, water flows over the gutter's edge, potentially soaking basements, damaging landscaping, rotting fascia boards, saturating insulation and fostering the growth of mold and algae.
While gutters are designed to carry water to the downspouts, gutter guards are supposedly designed to deflect debris away from the gutters. They don't always work.
It wasn't that the rather affordable, simple gutter guards I chose were worthless. They were just the wrong style for my house and its setting underneath a towering white pine.
"The bigger stuff -- leaves -- are not the culprit," said Randy Spears, vice president of Action Sheet Metal Co., a gutter company in Alexandria. Most of the gutter protection systems on the market are effective in keeping those out. It's the small stuff -- shingle granules, pine needles, berries, nuts and seedpods -- that can build up over time and clog downspouts.
"Pine needles are the number one problem," Spears said.
Gutter protection system manufacturers have proliferated in the past 20 years, but there are still no established industry standards. While products may look the same, installation techniques, durability of materials and quality of warranties vary widely.
"There are a lot of similar styles with different names," said George Krilis of Annandale, who has 25 years' experience installing roofs and gutters.
Most gutter guard systems attach to existing gutters, but some, such as LeafGuard by Englert Inc., are one-piece styles that combine gutter and cover.
Broadly, there are two types of gutter protection systems, open and closed.
