Fall cleanup is officially OVER! With that, I will do a Part 1 review of the Raptor Gutter Guards. I purchased half from Amazon and the other half from Home Depot. These are the guards I believe KAS originally posted on this thread awhile back. I settled on these because they had the best
reviews. We both, obviously, came to the same conclusion.
https://www.amazon.com/Raptor-Gutte...9Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=
I live among the trees. Red oak, white oak, poplar, maple, hickory, pine, sweet gum, ash, holly, on and on. My roof gets buried every fall with leaves. I get plenty of tree trash throughout the year. So, as usual the leaves fall on the roof and collect on top of the gutters. I have a ridge of leaves that range from a foot to three feet wide all around the perimeter of the roof and in the valleys. They remain there for the better part of two months before I clear them off in mid December when all the leaves have finally come off the trees. On occasion I get lucky and we have a big wind event and it blows most of them off. But that is rare. Without the guards, my gutters would get clogged and the rainwater would just cascade over the sides. The fascia is rotting and I have the makings of a river bed along the house. Cleaning gutters is nearly futile. Even in the summer they'd clog quickly rendering the gutters worthless. I cleaned gutters a good 8 times a year and it still was not enough. So I relented and installed these Raptor gutter guards on my house earlier this year. I must say, they have been very effective. I was afraid the leaves would still collect on the gutters (and they do) and the rainwater would cascade over the top of them. That does not appear to be the case. The rainwater still largely found its way into the gutters. And cascading was reduced to drips that never made its way to the fascia. So I give a thumbs up to these gutter guards based on my Fall experience. Nothing got in my gutters. They function as designed. Installation was easy. I did sweep/blow them off as there was some remaining debris. Also some roof granules. I had a new roof put on in April so there were lots of loose granules (seems to be subsiding). No gutter guard can claim you'll never have to clean your gutters. That's horsefeathers! But you certainly don't have to clean often, maybe once or twice a year. And more importantly, your gutters work the entire time! I suspect this will slow down the rotting of my fascia.
I have a problem with the front of my house. All the rainwater that falls on the front runs into two valleys and pours into only two points...outside corners. There are ways to rig inside corners (most common) but none I have seen for outside corners. Tree trash accumulates in these two points and makes these guards less effective. Not the guard's fault. It's the design of the house. So I have to clean these two points more often. Even then, it remains a challenge. I will continue to look for a solution for this problem.
Part 2 of my review will come in Spring, post-pollen season. We get huge plumes of mostly pine pollen and the crap gets over everything. When it rains, it becomes pasty. So I'm thinking this will be a challenge for those gutter guards. Stay tuned.
