Gutter Guards

 With a large live oak and a neighbor's camphor tree adding shade to our back yard, we have a very livable environment; however, with those trees also comes falling leaves.

Each year when we return to Gladys, Rick has to climb a ladder to clean out the accumulated leaves in the gutters.  This year, after his heel surgery, the job of cleaning out the gutters was not a painless experience. To avoid such problems in the future, we decided to add screened gutter guards to the house.

Rick does a balancing act to screw the back
of the screen to the back of the gutter guard.

Rick positions the front of the guard
before attaching it to the gutter.

Once the gutter guards came, they had to be bent to fit our 6" gutter and then screwed into place.  While the bending was not a great problem, screwing the back side into the back of the gutters took a lot of twisting (since it was at a horrible angle) and a lot of strength.  

The screens should keep the debris
from clogging the downspouts and drains
on the gutter system.

In the end, although Rick was in pain due to his heel by the time we finished, we finished with gutters covered by screens. Hopefully, they will not clog in the future and nothing but water will enter the drain pipes during a storm.

This brush, when attached to a screw-on handle,
will allow us to brush debris off the gutters 
without having to climb any ladders.

As an added bonus, the company sent us a free brush to safely stand on the ground and brush off any accumulated leaves that might collect on the top of the screens. For now, we are waiting for a good, hard rain just to see if the system really works. If it does, we will order out more guards for the gutters at the front of the house also.