Do All Gutter Covers Collect all the Water?

The job of a gutter cover or leaf guard is to collect all the water and keep out debris. A gutter guard that really does its job--keeps the homeowner off the roof and the gutter clean and free flowing--can sell for thousands of dollars so it makes sense to make sure you're getting what you paid for.

Gutters are usually of two basic configurations: 1. Straight. 2. With inside or outside corners.

If you have a configuration involving inside corners where two roof lines come together or there are dormers creating a valley flowing into a gutter, you'll want to pay particular attention to this article since out of a hundred different manufacturers there is only one gutter protection system that can handle water flowing from valley configurations.

Since manufacturers of all gutter guards claim that there's no overshoot, this article is about which ones don't even get the first job done on straight gutters--the designs to definitely avoid. Even some gutter screens don't collect all the water and overshoot. And that sounds impossible because some of them have fairly large openings in the top flat surface. Why?

Answer: Because at a high velocity, water films over the openings of the flat ones and simply skips off the screen onto the ground.

With most gutter guards, covers, protectors and leaf guards (they are the same) there is a downward curved front surface for the water to adhere. However, there are many different designs of curvatures.

Generally there are three types of curved surfaces.

1. A tight curved surface of approximately 1/8"radius. 2. An overall curved surface composed of two or three bent angles. 3. A large smooth curved radius of 3/8" or larger.

The size of the radius determines the amount of water that a cover can collect. The smaller the radius, the less water the guard can collect. The larger and smoother the radius, the more water the rain gutter cover can handle.

A small tight radius or 1/8" or so on the leaf guard will result in the water over shooting onto the ground. To clarify, a sharp 90 degree bend would have no radius, i.e. a radius of zero and water would just fly off into space.

Some leaf guards, instead of having a continuous radius use a series of bends to change the direction of the water. Rather than using a continuous radius they might use a two 30 degree bends. The result is two basic problems:

First, heavy rain fall will simply shear off from the tight radius bend or from the point of the bend and overshoot onto the ground.

Secondly, if there is a slope of more than 20 degrees on the top solid portion of the leaf guard, then again as heavy rain flow engages the bends in the front downward leading surface, it too overshoots. Consider this; the ideal shape is an infinite number of bends to form a 3/8” or larger radius continuous bend.

There are several products that have a continuous radius that catches all the water. With one product in particular, because the bend is continuous, the top portion of the guard can be at any angle without causing overshoot. It is the only gutter protection system that can be installed on gutters that are significantly lower than the roof edge where the angle of the cover may be as much as eighty degrees or more.

The product is also available in a high capacity version in which the radius bend is 5/8" vs. 3/8" for the standard residential cover. The high capacity version is used mainly for industrial or residential roofs with rafters longer than 35 or 40 feet.

Two methods of collecting water from valley configurations are a dome-a stealth like diverter--for short valleys and a special panel installed catty-cornered in larger valleys. With this special panel water is spread out across a larger area and collected with a special high capacity gutter cover panel that gets integrated into the leaf guard system installed on the gutters themselves.

Wouldn't it be great to have a gutter protector that is free of overshoot on both straight gutters and inside corners? And wouldn't it be equally great to have a guard that really can keep gutters clean and free flowing in heavy debris conditions for twenty plus years?

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