GutterShutter
This is the Bradley Tank of gutters. It is insanely engineered and overbuilt to last a lifetime without clogging with leaves, pollen, pine needles, twigs, etc. Like several other brands of gutters it ingeniously uses water's natural surface adhesion to bend rainwater around its blunt edge and into the drain. The water drips in upside down, but the leaves and gunk do not. This idea really works, even in very hard rains. I've spent some soaking wet time closely inspecting how well this clever system works in the worst downpours of the winter, and the physics caught about 98% of the rain (and zero debris).
GutterShutter distinguishes itself because of the quality of their build. They use 0.032 inch aluminum which means that you can hang from the gutters, or throw a heavy ladder on it without fear of denting it. I was very impressed with the solid construction details because of previous experience with wimpy metal gutters that bent or rusted. They also use heavy duty internal braces to screw in the gutter not just to the fascia board but to the roof rafters themselves. There's no doubt in my mind these will outlive me. Finally, the company guarantees there will be no debris in the gutter ever -- and will come clean it out themselves if you do find any. That's a promise hard to beat.
So far I've found none. Which is amazing. We live directly under several 100-foot Pine and Redwood trees that drop leaves and pollen cones year round. I would spend a weekend twice a year cleaning out several inches of crap, and the rest of the year knowing I should do it more often. I tried all kinds of gutter guards but without success.
The downside of GutterShutters is their very high cost. They are expensive, no way around it (and they have heavy duty sales pitches). Probably $30-40 per foot installed (in San Francisco area). Because of that cost we limited where we put them -- wherever I was tired of hanging off a 30-foot ladder several times a year.
So far, I've had zero work to do on the gutters, so their cost has been worth it. I'd recommend these for homes with a heavy load of leaf debris and/or high or hazardous roofs. Or if you simply want gutters you don't ever have to worry about again.
Other systems that work on this same principle, such as Gutter Helmet, and Leaf Guard, are a whole lot cheaper and probably just as effective, although I found them to be less substantial, and presume them less long-term. Some pop on top of existing metal gutters. They just were not built like tanks.
Favorite (15)
Matthew
These look great. They seems to be available in the SF Bay area only though. Does anyone know of equivalents elsewhere - Virginia to be specific? Thanks
BarelyFitz
I've been pretty happy with my GutterHelmets - but I was installing over existing gutters. These sound great if you can lean a ladder up against them - I have dented my existing standard gutters doing that.
Steve
Search for "guttershutter va" in google, or whatever your state is, to find your local reseller. Since they are locally owned and operated, experience may vary. Recommend checking local BBB or other reviews on your local installer first.
Frank Ch. Eigler
How well does this widget work with torrential downpours, where the surface tension of the water may not quite carry it back over the hump and into the real gutter?
Tim
Living in the midwest, my concern is this: when it is 33 degrees and raining, then freezes overnight, then the next day it is 33 and raining, will I have to worry about ice dams on the gutterguards forcing water up under my shingles?
Matthew--I think they are nationwide as I just saw a booth of theirs at my county fair.
Kevin Kelly
@ Frank, as I say in the review, I inspected it in torrential downpours and they work fine.
@ Barely, yes as I say in the review, they are incredibly rigid, and hard to dent.
John Hritz
We seem to persist in having trouble with the mission of this blog. It has become Cool Tool where Cool and Tool are very very small values. Much of this is because the items are on a macro scale. Some of the best in my recent memory have been:
The Superior Nail Puller: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001231.php
Heavy Duty Band Maker: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000731.php
Clamp-tite: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000715.php
Please work on finding new multipurpose tools and materials instead of refined, single-purpose devices.
Wes
A couple caveats. First the curved part needs to be cleaned periodically. Primarily spring when tree pollen abounds and fall when leaves turn to debris. If it is not clean then the water tension will not carry it around the curve. So at least twice a year plan on blasting them clean with a nozzle that creates strong pressure. A power washer is not necessary. You may also need a bit of detergent and brush in shady areas where algae may grow on metal.
Second, valleys present a problem and over run will happen in the V so make sure they offer some kind of diversion option to spread the water out a bit before it reaches the gutter guard. Also leaves will collect in the debris and you will have to get them off. I like my guards better than mucking out gutters, but they do need some maintenance so don't sell your ladder. Mine are gutter helmet. I originally installed a different brand, but the edge was too angular and not curved enough and all the water did not go in the gutter so make sure the curve is nice and smooth. This brand on Cool Tools looks like it has a good gentle curve that will carry as much water as possible.
c-dub
@Tim,
I don’t see any reason why ice dams would be more of a problem here than with any other kind of gutter – they might actually be less likely. Ice dams form when snow and ice that’s melted by heat from inside the house refreezes along the eaves or in the gutters. With a shielded gutter, I suspect the dam might be less likely to form, since there’s less for the ice to “catch” on.
In any case, I’ve used shielded gutters on a number of buildings, and they’ve all performed well. They haven’t created any problems with ice dams, but I’ve never had a problem with conventional gutters in that regard, either, as long as the roof is properly vented and insulated.
Mark
Just to clarify, the gutters are 0.032" thick, not 32 gauge thick. 0.032" is considered the premium thickness, but it is not unusual. 32 gauge Aluminum means something entirely different - about 0.008" thick.
LeafGuard is also 0.032" aluminum. I'm not sure about GutterHelmet, but they mention 0.032" as being the desired thickness.
Charlie
I've used three different brands. They last a few years then they get glogged up with pine needles. It's not the torrential rains that are the problem, Kevin, any old gutter is self-cleaning with water rushing through it like a fire hose. It's the two-month long drizzle every other day that gets them eventually. Any gap that will pass reasonable amounts of water will also take half a pine needle pair.
I hope these are different, but I doubt it. Tell me in four years how they worked out! :)
Kevin Kelly
@Charlie, what were the three other brands you tried but didn't work?
My "any old gutter" would fill up to the top with pine needles no matter how much rain came through, so they were never self-cleaning. Now they are.
Moon
I saw somebody demonstrating a product like this (on This Old House??) and during the demonstration, several leaves followed the water right around the curve.
They ignored that on the show, of course, but I thought that eventually you WOULD have to clean these gutters (although, it would be far fewer times than a regular gutter) AND it would be a real pain to clean these. You'd have to remove the top of the gutter to clean it, wouldn't you?
Moon
The crazy people at iRobot have invented an robot gutter cleaner!
http://store.irobot.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3398094&cp=2804605.3334470.2878870&sr=1
It looks insane, but wow, talk about one-upping your neighbor - "Yeah, yeah, I USED to have those Gutter Shutter deals, and it was OK, but NOW I have a ROBOT to clean my gutters!!" Ha!
Mike Starinsky
This is similar to a product we used on our colonal...the product is "leafgard". It was very effective ..we had two large oaks. This product is one piece ,formed on site. We had them for 5 years before we moved & experienced no clogging or problems with ice, in that time . We live in the Cleveland, Oh area.
The leafgard folks promise to come clear them if they clog.
Mike
Kevin Kelly
@Moon: When a leaf does go into the gutter, it flows out down the drain. If over time, a bunch of leaves get stuck, and it begins to clog, GutterShutter is contracted to send out a crew to clean the gutter for you. As I said in the review, that's the warrantry.
Wes
Moon, The gutter guards I am familiar with come in 4 foot sections and you generally only need to remove one to get a hose inside for cleaning. I have had gutter guards for 10 years and I have never had a clog. The company that did mine advertises they will come out and clean clogs. They have been in business 40 years and the son now runs the business so I guess they don't get too many calls. I did have to remove a two sections when I reworked a valley to handle the water better, and I had to remove two or three screws to get the guard off the gutter. Their solution to the valley rush was to cut a hole and screw on hardware cloth. They came back and replaced those sections and I designed my own deflector that works much better. There are now gutter guards that use a fine stainless steel mesh attached to aluminum frame that look promising. Here in North Carolina though I think the pine pollen might do them in or require more maintenance. I think oak tags would be about as bad. If I ever needed new guards I might consider them, but I would get some kind of guarantee on switching back to a solid guard or only try part of the gutter for two pollen seasons. Just had a shower come up and from here I can see the guard on the garage working just fine.
todd
Hi there. Does anyone have experience with the foam that you can get to put in your gutters, like this one? http://www.gutterstuff.com/
I'm considering getting either the metal guard type or foam insert type for my existing gutters.
Tom Buckner
I find all these devices outside what I can really spend (overtime is way down!) and am in the process of scrounging old window screens, cutting the bug mesh into 5-inch wide strips, and sticking that in my gutters. Might work, and it's free.
Charlie
Sorry, Kevin, I don't know what the brand names were on the gutter guards I used, and I don't want to slander the wrong product by guessing. If I knew for sure I'd happily spill the beans. The first type I tried was basically just a perforated screen - it immediately got papered over with sycamore leaves and then is was like I had no gutters at all. The next two kinds were similar to what you've purchased, only without the offer to come clean the gutters if they clogged (which they did, repeatedly, but not as fast as an uncovered gutter).
The pine needles that gave me fits mostly came from an eastern white pine about 65 feet tall. The needles grow in clusters of five, and they often drop in two- or three-needle clusters. During rainfall, one needle will stick in any gap that is big enough to allow water into the gutter, the other needles in the cluster hang out. The pine's habit of dropping golf-ball size blobs of wonderful-smelling impossibly sticky resin once a year didn't help any, but the accumulation of needle pairs was what always ended up clogging the gutter guards.
I have an iRobot looj now. It's not a very good robot (it's version 1.0, I don't know if the new one is better) but I use it on a surf-fishing rod and reel it in when it gets itself completely FUBARed. I cut a door from the attic so I don't have to use a ladder to access the roof.
You can't see my house on Google earth because of the trees completely overshadowing it. I like trees, but I hate gutters. I wish my house could function without them (it can't for architectural reasons).
FriedGeek
I looked into every type of leaf guard on the market. I have three trees that drop leaves or twigs and one in a neighbor's yard that dumps helicopters by the bucket load and each winter we get serious ice dams.
The issues I found with these re-curve style guards is that they do clog and do require you to clean them out at least twice a year. Many times they will even state in the warranty that the warranty is only good if they are maintained this way. I also didn't have bad gutters to start with when I bought my house two years ago so I didn't want to pay for new gutters that I didn't need. If I was going to spend the money to put a system on my gutters I didn't want to have to mess with them again... EVER.
I went with a product called LeafFilter (google it). It is installed on my existing gutters and adds stronger brackets to strengthen the gutters as well. The surface is a stainless micro screen, like what you'd find in a fancy coffee perma-filter. The mesh is so fine it actually actively wicks the rain down into the gutters like a fabric. Even fine shingle sand rolls off of it and won't clog it.
They have been on the house for months now and have made the gutters almost musical since we only hear water dribbling down the gutters.
Kevin Kelly
@FriedGeek said: "The issues I found with these re-curve style guards is that they do clog and do require you to clean them out at least twice a year. Many times they will even state in the warranty that the warranty is only good if they are maintained this way."
GutterShutters do not require this type of maintaince. If after a few years with LeafFilter you have problems with clogging of the screen, you might try the GutterShutters.
SMP
Installed less than 2 years ago, my GutterShutter gutters are clogged with leaves and overflowing. Virtually impossible for me to get my hand in the gutter to clean them out. The local company who sold me the gutters are no longer licensed to sell the product, and I haven't been able to get in touch with them about cleaning the gutters out (i.e. they have not responded to my e-mails). I spent a lot of money to avoid the leaf issue, but here I am a few thousand dollars poorer with clogged gutters. What a rip off.
Kevin Kelly
@SMP, did you try calling their HQ at 877-677-4888? Let me know what they tell you.
Charlie
Kevin, I spent a day last weekend helping my brother-in-law in Greenbelt, MD clean his gutters. It was quite difficult because of the gutter guards, which had to be partially removed and then replaced.
The gutter guards he has are very similar to the one pictured above, except that the supports are metal instead of plastic and there is a large top flash extension that laps under the second row of shingles, presumably to guard against ice dams.
His gutters were also "guaranteed forever" with a "fully transferable warranty" and the installers promised to come out and clean them if they ever got clogged. He has this warranty and promise in writing, I saw the pink "customer copy" with my own eyes.
The gutter installers are of course out of business. They mysteriously folded up their tents and disappeared as soon as they'd sold everyone in the neighborhood that was likely to buy the product. My friend Pedro the Cruel laughed when he heard about it and said "that's how it works, compadre".
Incidentally, what clogged my sister's gutters were maple helicopters. My brother-in-law says it took more than twice as long as usual for them to clog up once he had the gutter shutters installed, so he's going to keep them. He is, however, going to have to replace the 250+ painted steel screws since the paint has oxidized off and a galvanic reaction has started with the aluminum gutters and guards. That'll be part of the cleanout job next year; we'll use aluminum screws to solve the problem.
I'm still looking for a permanent solution, although I've given up on these types of things. Physics seems to dictate that they can never work for me; if water can get in, so will debris, and co-laminar flow will make leaves stick to the water just like the water sticks to the gutter lip as it rounds the horn.
I'm thinking of trying these Gutter Dogs:
http://www.plowhearth.com/product.asp?pcode=10879
I don't think they will stop the gutters from clogging, but they should be easy to pull out and hose off, unlike gutter shutters. I might try the LeafFilter things if the gutter dogs don't work, but stainless steel for the length of my gutters sounds punishingly expensive.
Kevin Kelly
@Charlie: It would be great to know the particular make of the gutters your brother-in-law had so that we can avoid that brand. (GutterShutter is a national franchise.)
MPaul
Kevin, I've been doing a good deal of online research, as well as getting actual estimates from many of the manufacturers being discussed, e.g., Gutter Helmet, LeafGuard and Gutter Shutter. You seem suspiciously determined to defend the Gutter Shutter brand and other similar designs, ignoring some very valid comments by Charlie and SMP about gunk buildup and cleaning. Maintenance -free should mean maintenance-free, not "we'll come back and clean them when they DO clog." Are you attempting to conceal some kind of bias? You might review actual product tests that have been described on the AskTheBuilder blog. They found that the micro-screen concept was the most effective in removing water and preventing clogging. I'm having Mastershield of Minnesota come out and give me an estimate next. I'll let you know what I find out.
MPaul
Oh, and Charlie — Gutter Dogs? Check out askthebuilder.com. They don't work at all. Think about it . . . a hairbrush in your gutter? Talk about a maintenance nightmare!