Gutter guards in Lebanon and across Boone County, matched to your trees.

Four guard types, and the one job each is actually built for

Homeowners tend to shop guards the way they shop shingles, as one product with a few brand names attached. In practice there are four different mechanisms at work, and they solve different problems.

Micro-mesh is a fine stainless or aluminum screen stretched over a rigid frame that sets under the shingle course and over the gutter's front lip. The weave is tight enough to stop nearly everything, including small maple and locust seeds, which is why it is the closest thing to install-and-forget under mixed canopy. It still needs an occasional surface brush, since fine grit and matted seed husks can sit on top of the mesh rather than passing through it.

Reverse-curve covers, sometimes called hooded or helmet-style guards, are a solid metal cover with a curved lip that uses surface tension to pull water around the curve and into the trough while debris slides off the front edge onto the ground. They work well under big-leaf trees like oak, where whole leaves need to shed off a surface rather than be filtered. They depend on getting the curve's angle matched to expected rainfall intensity, and in a hard enough downpour water can shoot past the lip entirely instead of following the curve down.

Screens are a perforated aluminum or plastic sheet that snaps or screws onto the gutter's front lip. They are the least expensive option and stop full-size leaves reasonably well, but the holes are large enough that small seeds, pine needles and roof grit pass straight through or lodge in the holes, which means more maintenance over time, not less.

Foam inserts are a porous foam block wedged into the trough itself, letting water pass through the pores while leaves sit on top. They were common a decade ago and some Boone County homes still have them. We do not install them anymore, because the pores fill with grit and algae within a few seasons and the foam itself starts to break down and shed into the gutter, which is the opposite of what it was bought to prevent.

Matching the guard to what is actually falling on your roof

Central Indiana yards run heavy on silver maple, sweetgum, oak, black walnut, and honeylocust, and each one drops something a guard has to deal with differently. Silver maple and sweetgum shed helicopter seeds and seed balls in volume that a wide-hole screen will not stop and that can mat on top of a micro-mesh over several seasons. Oaks drop large leaves and acorns, which is the case reverse-curve guards were designed for. Black walnut drops husks and nuts heavy enough to dent a lighter-gauge screen. Honeylocust drops tiny compound leaflets that slip through nearly everything except the tightest micro-mesh weave, and even then some homeowners with a mature honeylocust overhead choose to keep cleaning twice a year rather than pay for the tightest mesh available.

We will not tell you a guard makes a heavily wooded lot maintenance-free, because it does not. What a correctly matched guard does is stretch the interval between cleanings and keep the debris that does get through from packing down into a solid mat. Under a mixed canopy of maple and oak, that is usually a micro-mesh system on the elevations that catch the worst of the seed drop, and a reverse-curve or straight micro-mesh on the elevations under the oaks.

The guard is only as good as the gutter underneath it

A gutter guard is not a fix for a gutter that is already pitched wrong. The trade standard is a minimum slope of about a quarter-inch of fall per ten feet of run toward the downspout, and hangers spaced no more than roughly 24 inches apart to keep the trough from sagging under the weight of water, wet leaves, or snow. If a gutter is already sagging between hangers or holding a puddle at any point along its length, putting a guard over the top hides the puddle, it does not drain it. We check pitch and hanger spacing before we quote a guard, and if the gutter needs to be reset or replaced first, we say so rather than installing a guard over a problem we know is still there.

Ice behavior in a central Indiana winter

Boone County winters run through repeated freeze-thaw cycles rather than one long hard freeze, which is exactly the condition that builds ice dams at the eave. Under an open gutter, water that refreezes forms icicles hanging off the front edge, which is unattractive but drains once temperatures rise. Under a solid reverse-curve cover, water clinging to the curve by surface tension can refreeze right at the lip, sealing the gutter's mouth shut and forcing meltwater from the roof above to back up under the shingles instead of into the trough. Micro-mesh sheds more evenly through the weave rather than relying on surface tension around a curve, which is why we lean toward micro-mesh on north-facing and heavily shaded elevations that hold snow and ice longest through a Boone County winter.

How a gutter guard job runs at your house

1. Free evaluation. We look at your trees, the existing gutter's pitch and hanger spacing, and which elevations get the worst debris and the most winter shade.
2. Gutter condition first. If the pitch or hangers are already failing, we address that before a guard goes anywhere near it. We will not install a guard over a gutter we know is compromised.
3. Guard selection by elevation. Different guard types on different sides of the same house is common and often correct, based on the canopy over each one.
4. Install. Mesh sets under the shingle course and clips or screws onto the gutter's front lip; solid covers and screens fasten by their own hardware, matched to the fascia and trim underneath.
5. Reveal check. We walk the roofline to confirm the guard sits flush with the roofline rather than pitched to shed water past the gutter's edge.
6. Water test. Each run gets hose-tested with the guard in place before we call the job finished.

Warranty

Every gutter guard installation carries our 2-year workmanship warranty.

Recent guard installs