Ugh. Gutter guard woes.

[arcas]

Okay. So my new house has 6 trees next to the house (as in intermingled with the bushes). 3 river birch, a magnolia, a hawthorne and a mulberry. My gutters clogged about once a month during summer...I feared what autumn would bring. So I got some of those vinyl snap-in guttar guard things at Lowes. They're about 3 feet long and have diamond-shaped knockouts. Problem is the diamonds seemed a little large and I figured that while they'd work during autumn, they'd clog pretty badly in the spring with all the seeds and stuff. So in my infinite wisdom I bought a roll of window screen and some weatherproof construction adhesive and went about gluing screen to the top of these gutter guard panels. Figured that it should keep the seeds and stuff out too and still let water drain.

So far, so good. Except when I finally started installing them. Seems the builders left quite a large shingle overhang into the gutters so that when you install the guards (which lifts the shingles a bit because you slide these panels under the bottom row of shingles), there's only a 2-3 inch opening for the water to drain into. Probably wouldn't be a problem if I didn't glue that damn screen on. With the screen, water doesn't drain fast enough to handle heavy downpours

Lemme tell ya, climbing up through a hawthorne tree (damn thorns..err..spikes are 3-4 inches long and could easily go entirely through your hand if you're not careful) is a pain in the ass. And the legs. And the back. And the arms. My legs look like they've been mauled by a rabid cat. And to think I'm going to have to climb back up there with a razor blade to cut the screen off. I think I'll wait until autumn when I can wear heavy jeans and a jacket.

 

[skriefal]

Can't you get onto the roof using a ladder? That'd be much easier -- and less painful -- than climbing a hawthorne tree!

I only have two trees in the front of my yard, however one of them is a huge silver maple. That tree makes a horrible mess in the spring with the enormous number of buds it drops into the gutters, and in the fall with the leaves. It can fill the entire front gutter until it's overflowing with buds. And it can even clog the back gutters if I'm not careful.

Argh! It provides a lot of nice shade, but I'm not convinced that it's worth all of the work to clean up after the tree.

 

[arcas]

Oh, I did use a ladder. But the hawthorne is at the corner of the house and blocks about 4 feet of gutter in each direction so I had to position the ladder so that I climbed up through the branches. The house's previous owners hired a landscape designer who must have had a fetish for planting trees up next to houses (isn't that supposed to be a big no-no?). And they used this brown powdery "mulch" that seems to drink more water than it lets pass through. I can leave a soaker hose going for hours and it's still bone dry less than 3 inches below the surface.

My parents have two big silver maples in the front yard. I agree, they're messy. One of them did provide a branch that I turned into a great hiking staff following a storm one year. I still keep it in my truck

 

[skriefal]

Ah, yes... I forgot to mention all of the stray branches that the silver maple "drops" following any sort of wind or storm. They're a fragile tree. I have a medium-sized pile of branches, twigs, etc from that tree sitting in the yard awaiting my first trip to the yard waste site.

You could consider using the ladder on the other side of the house, if possible. That's what I do, although my reason for doing so is because I have a deck in back and it's easier to reach the roof by placing the 8-ft stepladder on the deck.

Fall is approaching, so I'll soon get quite a bit of use out of that ladder...

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

that sucks dude.

i just bought a house and it had a square, 1/4 inch mesh rounded over the gutters. kept out the big stuff but the gutters were full of shingle gravel, dirt, seeds, and moss. the lady hadn't cleaned em since getting the gaurds put on!

anyways, moral of the story, even with gutter gaurds you need get up there once a year and wash em out.