Brad Staggs: Are you one of those people who hates getting up on your roof and maybe afraid of heights, so I can understand that. You feel like you’ve got to get a manual on rock climbing to get up there and then take care of the problems. Well, this could become your new best friend, you know what this is? This is a gutter guard. It keeps trash from getting into your gutters, stopping them up. That way you have to get up there and fix them. Well, our DIY expert and fearless ladder man himself Joel Schmarje has some pointers on installing this little jewels.
Joel Schmarje: Gutter systems are probably one of the simplest things on your house. But don’t be fooled, that simplicity pales in comparison to the importance. Badly running gutter systems can actually cause damage to your house. For instance, it can ruin the face, the direct, behind the gutters, it could destroy the east, it could even destroy some of the plants directly around your house. But the worst damage it can do to your home is actually cause basement flooding. Now, one of the leading causes of gutter system failure is clogging due to leaves. For those of you who have a lot of trees in your yard you know exactly what you do every spring, every fall, you get up there and you clean out the gunk.
But there is an easy solution to this. Keep the leaves and gunk out of the gutters in the first place. And that you can do with gutter guards, gutter filters. Made of materials that won’t rust like vinyl or in this case aluminum. And they are easy to cut too for installation. Just use a regular pair of snips like this. And in addition to these shears, you only need a couple other tools. You’ll also need something to scoop out the debris that’s in the gutters. You’ll need a needle-nose pliers and a speed square. Now, if you have any damage to the gutters, you’ll need to make sure you have the proper tools on that site for repairing them.
Now, let’s talk safety, hands down. If you can do this job from the rooftop, you will get done a lot faster. If you’re that sure footed do it with the utmost care. Now, if you’re not so sure then by all means just use a ladder. And if you’ve got a steep pit roof like this one or if it’s just rain, don’t chance it just use a ladder, safety first.
Before we get started, I got to do this one more time. I’ve got to clean these gutters up before we put the filters in. Use heavy gloves to protect your hands when cleaning out your gutters. Also, be sure to check for damage as you go along. If you’re working off the ladder, do both the cleaning and the installing to your right and left with every move of the ladder.
The filters come with hinges that attached to the mesh and clipped on the gutter edge. Clip the hinge to the gutter with the filter flap away from the gutter then flip the gutter over the gutter and snug it to the shingles. Overlap the guards by about a half-inch.
Well, moving along, I actually found some damage. I’ve got a little hole right here that’s rusted out. Now, these are metal gutters and really there’s nothing to repairing them. All I need is a little piece of the same kind of material that the gutters made out off. I need a drill and I also need a little Pop rivet tool for riveting and some silicone cock.
First, clean around the damage area. Then, cut a piece of metal of this size, draw holes for the rivets. Apply a bit of cock around the hole including the rivet holes, place the metal back over the holes and rivet into place. Pretty good! These gutters that end straight are really easy to work with. In fact this whole house ends just like this.
Now, for those of you who have corner gutters, this is what you’ll need to do. This is an outside gutter corner and for your filters you could cut minor cuts into them. It makes a nicer looking edge. And to do that, you simply take your speed square, mark it against the angle of the speed square like that, and then cut it as you normally would.
Now, like I said this is an outside corner and this is just fine for that because this is a ridge on the edge of the roof here and debris actually moves away from this seam. But when you have an inside corner, just the opposite happens. You’ve got a valley which is collecting a whole bunch of debris and it’s shooting it right down into the seam. This is a weak link in the system. So, you don’t want a mitered seam on the inside corners. Instead, what you want to do there, here’s an inside corner prop, run your filter right to the inside edge of the gutter and then just butt that one you just put in with another filter. This way, there is no seam in that inside corner at all.
Here’s another tip. These hinges will come off easily with a needle-nose pliers just incase you run into any obstacle along the way. Now, this product is really inexpensive. In fact, a sheet like this cost about a dollar and ten. That 20 foot up there costs us under 10 dollars to do. So, you can see that this is an easy fix and with your gutters clog free, you can turn your attention to better things during the spring and fall of the year.
Now, I got a little more work to do here. It’s the same thing that you’ve already seen. So, I’ll finish that off and you guys go and have fun.