You see ads for gutter guards everywhere telling you that you’ll never have to clean gutters again, but before you buy, think twice. In fact, don’t think; To do investigation. The cost of gutter protection can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars.

Since most gutter covers are notorious for their poor performance, it might make more sense to hire a gutter cleaning service a few times a year for $75-$100 or so. And if you can indeed find a reputable insured company to service you, that’s probably the best way to go. However, that can be a difficult challenge; and having someone else or yourself cleaning your gutters may not be the way to go. Why? Answer: There are several reasons:

1. Not all gutter cleaners do a good job. Rosemary paid $75 to have her gutters cleaned and just three days later they overflowed. Did the contractor do a poor job or did enough leaves fall to clog the downspout? Answer: There is no way of knowing.

2. The guy Joe hired to clean his gutters didn’t have any insurance. Big problem! Unfortunately there was an accident with the ladder and the partner sued Joe; and Joe went through a nightmare with his partner’s doctors and Joe’s own insurance company.

3. Claire had a company clean her gutters at an advertised price of $75 but ended up paying $350. The company replaced the end caps, drop tubes, elbows, and charged him an arm and a leg for each additional service.

4. Jim always cleaned the gutters until his ladder slipped and ended up falling out of his living room window and he ended up in the hospital with a broken pelvis.

Yes, to avoid these problems, it seems like the smartest thing to do is to install a gutter guard with the promise of solving clogged gutter problems. But buyer beware. If you choose the wrong product, it can also be a nightmare with flooded basements, mold, soil erosion, and even worse, total reliance on the installation company since you can no longer access your own gutters to clean them.

So, let’s do some research. There are basically six different types of gutter protection devices:

1. Protection devices that are not really recognized as gutter protection devices. Made of wire, metal, or plastic, they work simply by gravity and require routine ladder maintenance.

2. Filters, membranes and brushes installed in or on existing gutters. Basically they are no more effective than screens and require routine ladder maintenance.

3. Fin type with rounded front tip and solid flat top. Your advertising graphics lead you to believe that debris is thrown to the ground when instead, in medium to high level debris areas, enough debris sticks to the surface to clog gutters. Here you have to depend on the installation company for the service. See the resource box for photos.

4. Flat solid top with rounded front tip and a channel fin type. Since the basic fin type fails, the next progression was to add a channel. But it doesn’t take a college graduate to figure out that debris that gets into the gutter (basic filtration system) clogs the gutter or decomposes and goes into the gutter and clogs it. See the resource box for photos.

5. Rain dispersal units or flipping gutters. This requires removing the gutters and installing a gutter with a flip hinge or fins (installed horizontal to the faceplate) to disperse the water. Both seem viable until you see them work. The rain spreader unit does not work when it rains slowly and debris accumulates on top of it, preventing it from working. The flip clean gutter requires a rain coat for when the gutter is full of putrid debris. Flip clean gutters have also been known to warp and render them useless.

6. Rounded front nose with vertical louvered water catchers and a solid flat top. Whereas with the gutter cover flap type that will let through full sized leaves, the shutters discriminate the size of debris the gutter cover allows into the gutter. This gutter guard is the only rounded tip type that limits the amount or size of debris that can pass into the gutter.

This system has proven that gutters can flow freely in heavy debris conditions for twenty years; And it is not small thing. The only drawback is that in very debris conditions, debris can collect on the blinds and block them, meaning some maintenance is required.

While most other products require someone to climb a ladder and clean the gutter or deck, it can be easily done from the ground using a telescoping pole and brush. Because it’s easy to see where cleaning is required, there’s no guessing where to brush. No waterproof coats are required (as you might be with the gutter flip) to do this simple task, as it can actually be done dressed in a suit and tie.

After all, telling someone who has to clean their gutters several times during the fall that they won’t need maintenance is like asking them to believe in Santa Claus.