In a previous posting, Usenet was endowed with the following text from
"ADC" :

subject says it all...we do have a fair amount of trees...

TIA



The LeafGuard product, as with most other cutter "hoods", are grossly
over-priced. That's because the dealer has buy an overpriced dealership
and MUST buy the product from a central source with outrageously high
prices, relatively speaking.

On top of that, they are over-hyped and simply don't do what they claim
to do.

With pine needles, a gutter hood will prevent more needles from entering
the gutter as compared to a mesh product, with caveats. Only a premium
mesh product, by the way, should be considered.

But, here's the rub(s). Even with gutter hoods, some pine needles will
still enter the gutters. The same dynamic that is supposed to cause the
rain water to go over the hood and into the gutter also causes the pine
needle to follow the water into the gutter. With some brands, the
needles will even block the water channel, preventing the rain water
from entering the gutter at all. Then, your gutters are useless. When it
gets to the point that the inside of the gutters need cleaning, good
luck getting in there! No such problem with the screens I use

In my opinion, no product will make your gutters 100 percent maintenance
free. So, in my view, you want a product that performs well, but at a
low cost. In my experience, the product that works the best is Steelco
gutter screens.

I have them on my house, and I have pine trees. The Steelco screens are
the highest quality mesh product I could find, after considerable
research. Some pine needles do get through, but has reduced the overall
problem by 95%. Instead of cleaning my gutters every 6 weeks, now I just
clean them once a year. And that's another thing... cleaning them is a
breeze. I just remove one 3' section of the screen and use my blower to
blow out any debris.

So, far, I think it was the right choice. It's not the perfect solution,
but the price is right. With me doing the install (pretty easy), it was
about $1.15 per foot, or less. This stuff is galvanized steel and, at
this point, should last longer than me!

The Steelco website is www.gutterscreen.net .


Mike