Gutter Guard Advice

Does Gutter Guard Work? Simple answer, No!

With 30+ years of experience working on over 320,000 buildings it’s our professional opinion that gutter guard does not work and we no longer install it.

All gutter guards require maintenance

The perception is that if you have gutter guard installed then you will never have to clean your gutters again – this is incorrect. With 30 years’ industry experience in Sydney, we have seen tens of thousands of buildings with gutter guard and all of them require maintenance.

Leaf litter will still build up on your roof, in your valleys and on top of the guard. Some companies will advertise that their product keeps out the leaves and sticks but fail to mention the silt accumulating in the bottom of the gutter. Over a period of 1 – 2 years, dust or fine particles from trees, city pollution and construction sites will settle on your roof. When it rains, this dust washes through into your gutters forming a build-up of silt. Small seeds make their way into this silt resulting in plants and moss growing in your gutters.

Gutter guards may increase the cost of your gutter clean

If you have a gutter guard installed, our pricing will normally be twice our normal rate. The reason why is that we have to complete 2-3 times the work, lifting the guard, cleaning the gutters and then placing the guard back down.
However, once your gutters are cleaned, you should get 2-3 times longer between gutter cleans.

We often receive calls that other gutter cleaners just clear the leaves off the top of the guard. We’ve been doing this for 30 years so know how to clean gutters with the guard. We’ll lift the guard, clear out the built-up silt and get your gutters working again.

In some cases gutter guard may prolong the time between cleans

It may increase the time between your gutter cleans but is it worth it?  Gutter guard may increase the cost of each gutter clean by 2-3 times and there is an initial outlay ($1,000 – $7,000 for a standard house) to install.

Our motive for this advice

Some may suggest we don’t recommend gutter guard to increase our business – not true, in fact quite the opposite. We receive loads of gutter guard enquiries and could make allot of money installing it. We’re in a fortunate position of having plenty of gutter cleaning work and have just added another 152 schools to our schedule. We just want to share our honest professional opinion from the experience we’ve had. We’re not making this up, these are just some of our gutter guard fail photos, we have hundreds more.

What to avoid

X Cheap plastic products commonly available from hardware stores: In a short period, it will perish and sag into the gutter adding to the problem you are trying to solve.
X Chicken wire: The aperture of the holes is too large letting seeds, sticks and small leaves into the gutter.
X A fixed leaf guard you can’t see through: If you can’t see through it then you can’t see the silt building up. This also makes it time consuming and expensive to clean out the accumulated silt.
X A fixed flat leaf guard installed inside the gutter: The leaf debris settles on the top and quickly breaks down through the guard, forming a thick layer of silt.
X We also don’t recommend having a permanently fixed gutter guard installation if you have unsealed concrete roof tiles, as these tiles shed a large amount of grit and it quickly builds up into silt underneath the guard.

A practical example

During the GFC a government funded stimulus program was instigated in 2009-11 to build school halls in public schools called The Building Education Revolution. Between 2014-18 we were engaged to remove gutter guard from these buildings (approximately 400 at a cost of $760,000) because it was creating more roof leaks than it was preventing.

Our final piece of advice

We suggest you walk down your street, find a property that has had gutter guard installed for 3 years and ask the owner if they would recommend it. If that’s not possible search ‘Gutter Guard Fails – Images’. Open some of the pages and see what other professionals have to say.

If you still choose to have gutter guard installed, request the installer provide you in writing a fixed price 5 year gutter cleaning plan in case your gutters have any silt build up. Some companies advertise just a quick rinse through every so often is all you need – Our experience is no it isn’t!

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