Gutter Guards
GUTTER GUARD INSTALLATION
Includes material and labor. We will be installing an aluminum commercial product to perfectly match the existing gutters. The gutter cover that we will install is called “real cover“ by the company Raytec. It is one of the leading gutter cover products across the US, and Raytec is one of the leading manufacturers of all commercial gutter products.
How and why did we choose Real Cover?
I’ve installed almost every gutter cover you can find, and we've even subcontracted for premium patented gutter cover products and companies such as leaf filters.
But "Real Cover" is still best. I really believe in the product and we switched over exclusively two years ago.It has an attractive design and it’s one of the most functional covers I have found. Most importantly - it works, and I don’t have service calls or frustrated customers. There are a lot of gutter covers that do not work. In order to explain the issues I've seen in the field, I've categorized them into two groups.
There’s kind of two categories to gutter covers.
1. There are mesh products that usually have threaded wires.
Costco sells the most common of these products and calls it the "easy-on gutter cover". They spend a lot of money on advertising, and Home Depot also offers this same product. The product is manufactured by a company called gutter glove. It’s no good.
It fills with bits of needles and clogs the top over time. And it doesn't take long before it becomes a solid ramp and the gutter covers need to be serviced, at the extreme version of this, we would need to scrub the tops of them with a hard-bristled scrub brush to try to open the spaces between the mesh again.
The greatest problem with this product is found on inside corners where excessive debris gathers and where a greater amount of water travels. The gutter covers can't keep up and water quickly pours over the top edge even if installed perfectly. Even with custom modifications to the inside corners, it's just an inferior design and it's nearly impossible to make it function as good as the "real cover".
Personally, I've installed this product for a year. We had to stop. I must have installed approximately 500 homes and had to remove the covers off of at least 200 of them because they did more harm than good.
Overall, the wire mesh is too fine and it does not give enough time for the water to sift through. The other problems are that it’ll easily fill the voids with tiny little bits of particle and even sap from pine needles and it essentially becomes a ramp. Inside corners fail quickly, and sometimes the product won't work from day one.
2. I’ve completely switched to the other cover design.
It’s a product that’s more like a colander or strainer for your kitchen sink. Similar to what you would use to drain your noodles. The maintenance is incredibly simple because it’s in an aluminum product which matches a 5K gutter perfectly, and while small little bits might get in the gutter, the water should wash it through.
This is similar to the best practices from the high-end friction/surface tension-based products such as "leaf guard" and "gutter helmet." They keep all large debris out of the gutters and the small bits get in as they travel within the water. With the correct gutter installation and gutter alignment, all of that small debris will travel through the gutter with ease and through the downspout. The real cover is different from the higher-end products though, and water won't cascade into the gutter from a large opening on the upper front face. Rather, the water will find small holes on the top and because of the pathway of the water, much less debris will enter, even when compared with the patented products that cost 20x-50x the amount.
The product “real cover” has a recessed design where the front lip would catch water during heavy downpours. That’s what makes this design unique and special. Water will actually travel from side to side on the front edge of the gutter covers out of sight. Also, if the water hits the front edge, it disrupts the surface tension between the water and any needles being carried down from the roof. Almost all of the small debris that would have traveled into the gutter for the high-end products will be stopped at the edge of the real cover prior to the water entering.
It’s a product made by a company named Raytec which is the largest metal manufacturer for all gutter products as well as the coil used to build the gutters themselves. They produce nearly all of the gutter coil for Washington state. Almost all distributors sell their coil exclusively.
