I see theres plenty of products out there, steel mesh, plastic mesh, brushes, foam, permanent, removable etc.
We have a single storey colour steel roof and steel matching gutters. Looking for suggestions as to what works and at what cost. I can still get on the ladder and manually remove leaves, but I'm wondering if long term its easier to remove the offending trees, in our case flowering cherry, alder, gum and wisteria.
Also, as we are on tank water, how much rain water is lost over the side in heavy downpour situations, where a screen type product is present. Cheers
apollo11,
Jan 4, 9:59am
We are on water tank too. We used the cheap plastic mesh, but mainly just to stop the bloody birds from washing themselves in the gutters. Our downpipes are fitted with leaf guards. Leaves can be blown a fair way in heavy wind, we get pine nuts on our roof from a tree that is a hundred meters away.
tweake,
Jan 4, 11:16am
most of the leaf guards are crap. thats simply because they end up blocking up and its an even bigger job to clean. most do not have a steep enough angle for leaves etc to wash over them.
one that i have seen (but not in use) is one that fits a mesh to the gutter but takes it right back up the roof to the first nail run. that at least makes it bigger than most and on a decent angle.
joanie32,
Jan 4, 11:36am
We pulled out the brush type leaf guard a couple of months ago
It had turned into a dirty, stinking big slug over winter.
We had a mesh before that, that I thought was useless too.
I have a bypass fitted now that means every now and again, I use a gutter wind to give a quick flush and the crap ends up on the ground.
Done this a couple of days ago, due to expecting a lot of rain, it took about 15 mins.
shanreagh,
Jan 4, 11:49am
Have used the plastic mesh and it is hopeless.
Used a scrunched up bit of chicken wire wire over the top of every down-pipe and this oldie but goodie worked better than the mesh but still meant you had to climb up and clean it.
A bypass seems to be a solution to leave doing anything about the gutter and concentrate on keeping the downpipes clear.
Any mesh type stuff needs to be angled and rigid over the guttering to work but then does this get overloaded or are the leaves then blown off?
I have seen the type like Tweake and wonder if that would work if you had it coming over the edge of the guttering and then the leaves would wash or be blown off.
I make sure that the the trees closest to the gutters (and especially those taller) are pruned back regularly.
shanreagh,
Jan 4, 12:03pm
Now I have seen special gutters for those that feed into water supply tanks.
At our family beach house, where the water from two sheds supplies tanks for plant water the plumber/builder had the roofing iron come about halfway across the top of the guttering. I was afraid that this would make the water splash out over the outside edge of the gutter but it doesn't and when I looked at the gutters late last year, first time since they had been installed 'mumble, mumble' years ago there was very little in the way of leaves.
Here is some thing from BRANZ about the systems to use when using guttering to collect rainwater. see the first flush diverter.
first flush diverters waste a bit of water. looked at fitting the downpipe leaf screen system but didn't have the room. what i found that works well is the tank over flow system with the bottom of the tank pick up. the advantage of that is it doesn't waste any water. it only cleans the crap out when you have to much water.
mechnificent,
Jan 4, 12:28pm
And does it keep the water good Tweak. I siphon mine manually every so often, but have wondered about them. I'm guessing they only suck crap from around the pipe. I vacuum the whole bottom. And add a bit of janola every second year.
tweake,
Jan 4, 1:29pm
i only made a simple version which is a single pipe. you can buy the proper version which has more pipes to cover the bottom. even so it did actually suck a lot of it up. its not perfect, it did leave bits behind. you can certainly see where the water had flowed along the bottom. remember the bottom of the tank is sloping so the crap slides along to the pipe. obviously it works better when there is big downpour of rain.
put a filter on and uv system and its better than town water.
nicc4,
Jan 4, 2:00pm
Thanks for this info.
The biggest PITA here is the gutter drain outlets blocking up with leaves too long to pass thru. Then the gutter fills and overflows, and in one case in our garage floods inside in very heavy rain (like two nights ago).
All the downpipes have the fold out diverter which is not great for expelling leaves, but is good for cleaning and used as a type of first flush diverter after long dry spells. They are also good for pollen season as we dont need to save any of that water.
The rest of our system is potable as we have a UV filter system, as well as a floating suction inside the tank. The tank is half buried which is another PITA, which needs manual or vacuum cleaning.
mechnificent,
Jan 4, 2:02pm
Oh ok. Thanks for that. Sounds good.
How do you stop it siphoning all the water out. Lol.
Don't suppose you've got any simple plans to show ?
nicc4,
Jan 4, 2:02pm
Another interesting observation is that only the gutters on the western sides of the house and garage cause any problems. All the others collect minimal leaves, less than a bucket full per year. West is the predominating wind.
tweake,
Jan 4, 2:38pm
air bleed hole at the top breaks the siphon. plenty of plans around as well as commercial kits.
mechnificent,
Jan 4, 2:43pm
Oh ok. I'll have a look. Only seen the commercial one advertised.
apollo11,
Jan 4, 2:49pm
The commercial kits are $500. You can do the same thing with $100 worth of pipe and fittings from M10.
mechnificent,
Aug 28, 5:56pm
I've been too scared in case I get up after a big rain and find a whole lot of erosion and no water.
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