The Best Gutter Fences You Can Install Yourself
Every home is a complex system. When all the parts are working correctly, you will have a dry and warm place where you can survive the bad weather. When parts of this system stop working correctly, you’ll have a very, very long night instead. Keeping your home running sometimes requires costly repairs, replacements, or renovations, but sometimes all it takes is simple, affordable maintenance that you can do yourself.
Case in point: your gutters. Attached to your roof, these metal pipes serve a vital function: they carry rainwater away from your walls and foundations. When they get clogged with debris, they stop working and you find yourself on the stairs scraping fallen leaves and dirt off them , so you should install gutter guards to keep them clean. You can pay a company or contractor a lot of money to install fancy gutter guards, but it doesn’t really have to be. Many gutter protection systems are easy to install (some don’t even require tools!).
The easiest way to do it yourself: gutter brushes.
Gutter brushes are tubular bristles, usually made of galvanized steel; they look like huge chimney sweeps. They are easy to install: just buy the right size (most gutters are five or six inches wide) and slide the brush into the gutters. You can cut them to size with scissors, but you don’t really have to – you can usually just bend the brush if it’s too long.
The brush captures debris before it settles on the bottom of the chute. The brushes themselves usually only last a few years and require periodic cleaning to maintain effectiveness, but they are cheap and all you need to install them is a ladder.
Featured Product: GutterBrush is an affordable brush that’s effective and comes with a 10-year material warranty. VEVOR makes a slightly cheaper gutter brush that works just as well but only offers a one-year warranty .
Short term solution: foam inserts
Another gutter solution that is very easy to DIY is a Styrofoam insert. These are simply triangular pieces of dense foam that are placed in the gutters, blocking debris from entering the channel, allowing water to filter and flow through the space left by the corner of the foam. All that is required to install them is scissors or other cutting tools and a ladder.
The disadvantage of foam inserts is their durability or lack of it. They will definitely have to be replaced every few years (or maybe every year if you have a lot of rain) because they deteriorate quickly. The upside, besides the ease of installation, is the cost: Styrofoam inserts are by far the cheapest solution for keeping gutters clean. As a result, they are ideal short-term solutions.
Featured Product: GutterFoam EZ makes installing foam protection gutters as easy as possible. It comes with a three-year warranty, which is about as good as a foam product, and is very easy to work with and install.
Best option: screens
A slightly more complicated DIY installation: the screens are sheets of plastic or metal mesh that are installed on top of the gutters. Screens are best at keeping most dirt and debris (as well as nesting critters) out of the gutters and tend to last the longest. They range in difficulty from very simple to slightly complex, but all the products mentioned here are within the power of anyone who is comfortable on the stairs and using a power drill (at the same time).
Featured Product (Easiest): Frost King plastic mesh is cheap and easy to use . You simply cut it with any scissors to the length of the gutter, then fold it into the channel so that the edges catch on the edge of the gutter and hold it in place. That’s all. They don’t last very long, and a big storm can throw them out of the gutters, so they’re not the ideal choice, but they’re definitely the easiest.
Featured Product (simply): Amerimax makes a whole line of gutters, and their snap-on guardrails are designed to slip under the last row of shingles on a roof and then snap onto a standard gutter. This makes them relatively strong and quite effective at keeping gutters clean without the need for drilling.
Recommended Product (More Sophisticated): Lastly, self-tapping gutter mesh will last longer and be more weather resistant, although it does take a bit more effort. Raptor Micro-Mesh gutter guards can slide under shingles or attach to the edge of the roof and then to the edge of the gutter providing a stable and durable solution. They are made of stainless steel, so they require metal shears to work with, but cutting them to size is not too difficult.