Shared Knowledge

 

“Mounts for Gutter Guards Where There is No Roof”

 

1 August 2006

 

 

 

 

Perhaps you do not have the situation and if so, good for you and read no further. I however, have 4 sections of house gutter where the gutter is simply attached to fascia board and is used to channel water to a downspout.

 

Perhaps your house sits out in the open with nothing ever dropping into your gutters and your gutters never need cleaning and, if so, good for you. I however have the problem of being surrounded by large, always dropping something, trees and thus gutter guards are mandatory.

 

When we remodeled the house in 1991, I made sure that all gutters had gutter guards on them but little did I know that at the time, wire mesh gutter guards was the only guard type available and where there was no roof for the rear of the guard to be shoved up under, the installers simply cut the guard and had its back edge sitting on the back edge of the gutter itself. Well this arrangement lasted about 3 weeks, as the back edge of the gutter is so thin that the gutter guard rear fell into the gutter and in no time at all, the gutter was clogged.

 

Several years went by and the next time I did a whole house gutter clean, I replaced all the old wire mesh gutter guards with the newer vinyl type. Seemed to make since to me as old metal rusted quickly and I had these ugly streaks down the sides of my gutters. Where there was a roof, installation of the vinyl gutter guards was not a problem at all, as the rear of the guard got shoved up under the shingles of the roof and then the front clipped over the gutter itself. Well, that was true for everyplace except where I had no roofline and so once again, I cut the vinyl gutter guards so they would fit from gutter edge to gutter edge and went on my merry way. No good. Once again, the gutter guards would eventually fall into the gutter and become clogged in no time.

 

Well the moral of the story is this. This year, watching one of my gutters overflow during a particularly heavy downpour and thus realizing I needed to clean all the gutters again, I found at Home Depot the latest in gutter guards, which is not a mesh at all but rather a solid piece of vinyl expect for a drip edge at the front where water and nothing else, hopefully, can make its way into the gutter, or so the claim on the gutter guard.

 

Now out with the ladder, take out old vinyl mesh gutter guards, clean out bottom of gutters, and install new vinyl, latest, high tech gutter guard. Fine and dandy but when I came to the first section of gutter without a roof line of singles to shove the back edge of the gutter guard under, I stopped and decided it was time to fix these problem areas once and for all, but how?

 

Seemed to me, that all I needed was some sort of thicker back edge for the gutter guard to rest on. The back edge of the gutter itself is nothing more than very, very thin sheet metal and is up tight against the fascia board in places and bowed out in others. The only places that the old gutter guards where actually being held was where the rear of the gutter bowed away from the fascia board. 

 

A back edge? Could go and buy some pressure treated wood but that would mean ripping out some small, thin, strip as the weight of the gutter guard is next to nothing. Perhaps some of that new decking material made out of recycled plastic or whatever? Again, that meant buying a piece and cutting strips out of it and that just seemed like a waste and more work than was needed. Suddenly, it occurred to me, the perfect solution or so it seems to me: use a piece of PVC pipe. I had PVC pipe as I always have PVC pipe for one project or another and all I need do is cut a piece the length of the section that has no roof, shingle line, drill mounting holes in it, 2 minimum at each end and perhaps one in the center of a long run and then mount it just along the back edge of the gutter. With the PVC pipe in place, I could sit the back edge of my new solid vinyl drip edge gutter guard on the nice, fat PVC pipe and no more gutter guard falling into the gutter.

 

And so, that is what I did. In my case, I used 3\4 inch PVC as that is what I had and 2 & 1\2 inch decking screws, as again, that is what I had. I drilled mounting holes at either end of the PVC pipe, inserted the deck screws and aligned the screw such that its tip was sticking out the back of the pipe, held it in place, just above the back edge of the gutter, used my cordless drill to drive in one deck screw and then to drive in the other mounting screw. Amazing or so it was to me, that the new, solid vinyl drip edge gutter guards had 2 raised lines running the length of the gutter guard section and when I cut at the second of these lines to loose some width so it would fit over my PVC pipe, when I finally took the gutter guard up the ladder to install it, it installed perfectly over the back and front edge of the gutter.

 

Perhaps a nagging problem finally solved. Perhaps my solution will work for you.

 

Oh, one more thing. As the open ends of the PVC pipe might look like the perfect home for bees or other pesky insects you do not want to invite having around, I plugged each end of the PVC pipe with electrician’s hole filler compound. For you that do not know this stuff, it is used by electricians to seal around wires going through exterior walls and is sort of like clay to start with but hardens to become like rock. No insects in my gutter guard tubes.