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Straight Talk about Leaf Filter from Allen

Team — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:41:43 +0000

A reader submitted the following information that seems especially helpful for those thinking about Leaf Filter. Allen is an installer in the Northeast United States. In his own words…

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I would like to share with others what I have learned about LeaFilter since becoming a dealer in 2006. Note, I am not going to claim to have installed an unrealistic amount of the product like others. But rest assured it is a fact that I have installed thousands of feet of the product on customer homes in the Northeast. When I discuss this product with my customers, I always attempt to point out both pros and cons that I have learned. I want them to make an educated decision before moving ahead with an installation. We do NOT pressure our customers.

So that being said, here are the facts. Once the LeafFilter has been installed and the stainless steel (Zela) screening becomes wet, it will catch the majority (99%) of the rain water. If you have valley areas on your home (where two roof fields join together making an inward angle) you will need to have the valley screen (different from the normal Zela screening) installed. The valley screen is able to handle more water flow which occurs in valley areas. If the installer does not use valley screen, then it is very likely you will experience water overflow. In some cases we have had to install diverters even when using the valley screen. So this is dependent on the size of the valley and roof pitch. I would NOT recommend LeafFilter for pitched metal roofs. Reason; the runoff is too fast for the screening to absorb water and I know this to be a fact.

A DIY alternative to Leaf Filter

When installed properly, LeafFilter will keep debris from collecting in the gutter. However, debris is likely to collect on top of the LeafFilter. This is what the product was designed to do. This is NOT a maintenance free product like some claim. Because LeaFilter sits directly on top of the gutter, at times it may act as a shelf for the debris. The higher the roof pitch, the more accumulation. LeafFilter was designed with a pitch so debris will in most cases eventually run off, but it may take time and several heavy rains to do so. You may need to spray or brush debris off in some areas. If it bothers you and you don’t want to wait for the debris to shed naturally, then you will need to clean it off. I have also had situations where mold and moss have grown on customer roofs and then onto the LeafFilter. The stainless steel screening will clog when this occurs. This is more likely to occur on areas that get no sun. I have had to clean the LeafFilter off with either a house cleaner such as Zep, Jomax or products similar to Clorox Cleaner with bleach. Usually we just have to spray, wait ten minutes, rinse off and the mold is gone. I always suggest having your home washed at least once a year and when doing so, wash off the LeaFilter and this will help deter dirt and mold growth.

Another issue I have ran into in the past. The stainless steel screening has a natural bend to it. The installer needs to insert the screen into the PVC base with the bend down. If not, then some rain water will likely roll over the screening. I learned this the hard way. When the screening is adhered to the PVC base, the installer must use GeoCel 2320 as specified by the manufacturer. This is one of the best construction adhesives on the market and does an excellent job at locking the screening into place. I have seen pictures online of screening coming away from the PVC base. All I can say is the installer must have used an inferior adhesive or not enough. In six years, we have had no issues in regards to the screening coming away from the base because we always use Geocel and a lot of it.

I give LeafFilter 4 out of 5 stars.

What else? When the installer screws the PVC base onto the front lip of the gutter, he must make sure not to attach the base too tightly. Being PVC, the material naturally expands and contracts depending on the season. The PVC base will appear to be wavy if not installed properly. There are reasons why this product should NOT be sold to do it yourselfers. The installer needs to know what he’s doing for a successful outcome. I have been installing gutters for 27 years. I can tell you there is no perfect gutter protection product on the market. I give LeafFilter 4 out of 5 stars. The PVC base will not last as long as aluminum because of stresses put on it by both cold and hot weather. Do not install this product in real cold weather. Reason; it will crack when being cut.

Well I hope you find this information helpful and good luck.

Leaf Filter Homeowner Reports and Reviews

Team — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:17:04 +0000

Here are a couple of recent Home Owner reports about their experiences with Leaf Filter and their local installers. First up is Keith who is not having a good time with his recent Leaf Filter installation:

Courtesy of Leaf Filter

Keith writes:

(5/27/2011) – I had Leaf Filter installed a little less than a year ago (for what I consider a hefty price) after the sales person sold me on it. While they were installing it I saw them cutting pieces of ordinary insect screen in addition to the micro-screen that keeps the small grit out. He explained they put it at only the corners to deal with heavy water flow. OK, fair enough though a little slippery of the sales guy who took over an hour of my time demonstrating the stuff not to mention this limitation. Upon departing the installer remarks “don’t worry if it runs over – it takes awhile for the oil from the manufacturer to wear off the micro-screen”. Hmmm… sure enough at the corners where the water flows heaviest it shoots out like waterfalls – a year later! I have 6-inch gutters. This product is simply flawed and misrepresented by sales staff. Don’t believe what they say.

More recently, Keith continues his story:

(6/9/2011) – First, I left a post a in [May] 2011 explaining my bad experience with my Leaf Filter install – deceptive sales pitch, untruths spoken by the installer, still pours over the gutters one year later as if the gutters are not even there. [Strange that] I got a call from a somewhat perturbed dealer telling me to chill out and they would contact me soon. Two weeks later I have not heard a word and am sitting on my front porch during a shower enjoying the waterfalls eroding my landscaping. Thank you Leaf Filter for wasting $2200 of my money.

As is typical, we get a lot of poor reviews of gutter protection products. Angry people tend to write more than satisfied people. I’m sure that we can all understand that. It would be nice, however to get some detailed positive reviews of the various gutter protection products out there. Anybody?

This Old House Gutter System Review

Team — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:32:24 +0000

Here’s a video we came across on YouTube where This Old House does a tiny review… overview… really of some unnamed gutter systems. I have a few problems with this video.

It sounds like they are all half asleep, especially the host.
Their “test” of the various systems is ridiculous at best.
They seem to be pushing gutter systems as the “obvious” choice.

But I suppose, what are you going to do in a 5 minute television segment? The only one of the bunch who doesn’t appear to be pandering is the woman. At least they mention the ridiculously steep price of these gutter systems. They didn’t bother mentioning the price of the Do It Yourself option (which is our pick!).

Seriously, with the DIY option you really only have to go up to clean the gutters once every 3 to 5 years… and the cleaning is simple. I’ve only ever found a thin layer of gravel-muck. Spending $4000 to $8000 for a gutter system that *might* work is just retarded. As many others have experienced, you might spend all that money and be worse off than when you started.

Anyway… here’s the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWLV_iJBaYM

Cheers!

Leaf Guard Review and Field Report

Team — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:09:12 +0000

Sherry writes to tell us that LeafGuard is not performing well with all of the winter ice and snow. Hopefully she will keep us up to date with any resolution from LeafGuard.

I had the leafgurad gutters put on my house in April and all seemed good, until this winter with all the snow and ice and now I have water dripping into my basement from the gutter system. Two calls to them and a returnn call from leafguard and still no one has been out to check them and the problem.

I am not happy with them right now and I will call them everyday until someone comes to address the problem and fix it. Right now I am sorry I put their gutters on my house I should have kept my old ones on I never had this problem with them. Leafguard states they stand behind their product, as of right now I do not see that!!!!

Leaf Filter gets professional praise

Team — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:39:40 +0000

A thoughtful gutter protection professional by the name of Jay has offered some thoughts and advice from his experience with different manufacturers. He writes:

I first off would like to say thanks to everyone who has left a comment on this web site. I think that everyone needs to have a place to put their experiences in dealing with any product. It not only helps people make an educated decision, but also gives the company a chance to make changes to better deal with complaints.

I have installed many types of gutter protection and have found good and bad with all of them. Unfortunately most of these systems are at the mercy of the crews who install them. Leaffilter is no acception to this rule. But in my experience Leaffilter is by far the best product I have ever installed and had the pleasure of servicing(extremely little service).

Every company I have ever worked for (gutter helmet, hallet, clearwater, leafguard, etc) has had so many complaints and services that they had to hire a service tech( myself) to keep up with them. I am not saying that Leaffilter doesn’t get service. But when we do,we take care of them promptly.

As for complaints dealing with a charge for service. Perhaps we as consumers need to do our homework on the laws dealing with contracts before we make blanket statements about companys taking advantage of people when charging service fee’s. I don’t know about all states laws, but where I live companys only have to service their work for 1 year before they have a right to charge a modest fee for services rendered.

Thanks very much for the comments, Jay.

We would always like to hear from professionals in the field. Just reply to an existing post or use our Contact Us form. Cheers!

Review of Leaf Filter and Leaf Guard

Team — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:03:33 +0000

We here at The Gutter Club understand that those with complaints will make the most noise. We know that most of the reviews featured on this site are negative… but that seems to be the only kind we ever really receive. We would love to hear from consumers with positive experiences. We know they exist as we have featured one or two on the site before. So let’s hear them!

That being said, the following review is a bit of both worlds! Reader Laron O. submits an unfortunate review of Leaf Filter while praising Leaf Guard for rectifying the situation. Interesting. They write:

We had Leaf Filter installed on our Monroe, WA home and were completely disappointed as well – both with the product and with the many promised fixes. After many promises, attempts to shift the blame to the installer (who ironically was responsive because he was not being paid and tried his best to effect what “fixes” he could), we finally became perturbed enough to contact our credit card company who reversed the payment. That got the owner’s attention. He promised if we sent a “good faith” payment of $3,000 in the form of a check, he would make us so happy we would be a “poster child” for the product. We immediately sent the check – he was a compelling “talker”. Nothing!

I took a number of videos and photos of water pouring over our gutters, and still nothing. I probably should have involved the Better Business Bureau but by this time, I was just tired of the whole thing. I went up and tore off all the screens and we lived with that for the next two winters – the gutters were installed correctly and handled the water well. We called Leaf Guard the following summer and they came right out, tore off the old gutters, hauled them away and we are now “poster children” for them – totally satisfied. DO NOT BELIEVE THE CLAIMS OF LEAF FILTER. We have plenty of ugly video and images of the green “slime” mold and masses of leaves and needles that never blew off if any one would like to see reality rather than nice little studio produced commercials.

Dana’s Amusing iRobot Looj Review

Team — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:15:32 +0000

Here’s a review submitted by reader, Dana:

The Looj - cute little gutter robot

Seriously, people – it’s not hard to charge for exactly 15 hours. Just buy a timer, the kind you can use to turn your lights on and off when you’re away. Set it and go about your life; when you’re ready the Looj battery will be too. If iRobot had included a more sophisticated battery the price would be higher. Also, as an early adopter, you should expect these little glitches – someday you’ll be telling your grandkids, “Back in my day, we had GUTTERS. We had to put batteries in gutter-cleaning robots BY HAND. And we had to CHARGE them on a TIMER.”

I bought the Looj two years ago because I have one section of gutter that is an absolute pain to clean – and dangerous too. It’s at the edge of a steep roof I cannot climb on, above an area where it’s hard to get close to the gutter on a ladder. Bonus: it’s under a whole row of ailanthus trees that drop leaves, twigs, seeds and branches. I am 55 and a single woman homeowner, and I do my home maintenance myself, so this looked perfect for me.

I just love it. It is not perfect, as other reviewers have already noted, but it is just so darn much fun. It wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if it were automatic; you have to use it correctly, like any other tool. Skill comes with experience. I always use it on a nice Saturday so people walking by will ask me “What IS that thing?”

Last spring it stopped working. I had no trouble at all with customer support; they sent me a new unit right away, after I’d returned the old one. I was pretty happy since I bought my Looj refurbished from Woot!

I just got done cleaning a summer’s worth of leaves, twigs and dirt out of the bad section of gutter. Instead of wearing myself out at the top of a shaky ladder, reaching over my head to lift debris out and onto my head and down my neck, moving the ladder a dozen times, I had fun blasting it out of the gutter by remote control while standing on a nearby section of flat roof.

Sometimes I wish there’d been a Looj back when my ex was convinced that cleaning the gutters once in five years entitled him to do nothing else whatsover in the way of chores. He’d have been up there with the Looj every month. But then, I wouldn’t have had the fun of using it myself, and I might still be married to that lazy bum.

Review of Gutter Clutter Buster cleaning tool

Team — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 05:01:08 +0000

A reader going by the online name of Samuraidog98 offered up a review of the Gutter Clutter Buster gutter cleaning tool. We’ve seen tools like this advertised, and they look like they should work reasonably well. The tool basically consists of ultra-high technology (not really)… they are just a couple of plastic tubes. The tubes attach to your shop vac in order to give you the necessary reach up to your gutters. The top tube is curved so that you can stick it into your gutters to clean them out. Seems reasonable, right?

Well Samuraidog98 has some video that shows otherwise. Check it out for yourself, and then read his written review below.

His vacuum really should be sufficient. 6.5HP is pretty strong so I’m not sure what is going on here. Is it possible that his vacuum has some kind of obstruction that is limiting the airflow? Here is what Samuraidog98 had to say about his experience.

This is my review of the Gutter Clutter Buster.

Cost of GCB: $59.99 (kit incl. 2 extensions) + $15 shipping.
Vacuum: Ridgid 16 gallon 6.5HP wet/dry vac. (Model WD1670)
Type of leaves: Maple, Ash, White Oak, and Hickory (?).

As you can see in the video, I get a LOT of leaves in my gutters. So, I was really hopeful that this device would work as advertised and keep me from having to climb the ladder to clean out my gutters.

Although this video clip only shows about ten minutes of the GCB in use, I initially used the GCB for about an hour on a ten ft. long section of gutters before realizing that it wasn’t going to work as I’d hoped. As you can see in the video, the GCB easily clogs. Although the pipes aren’t too heavy, my arms got really tired after using it for such a long time with limited results.

I can’t really fault the wet/dry vac. When I used it to vacuum out my car, it seemed to have lots of suction power (read the reviews of this vac on amazon.com or homedepot.com).

I contacted the seller telling them about the difficulties I was having with their product. I was told that I need to use at least a 5HP wet/dry vac. After telling them that I was using a highly-rated Ridgid 6.5HP vac, I was told that they’ve sold thousands of the GCB and that I was the very first person to ever complain about a clogging problem, so I “had to be using the product incorrectly.” I asked for a refund, but was told that I could only return the product (minus shipping) as long as it has no scratches or damage (must look like it is new so it can be sold as new). Since shingles are like sandpaper, it is nearly impossible to use this device without scratching it!

I told them that I was highly dissatisfied with the GCB and that I’d do a review of the product and post it online. I was then threatened with a lawsuit if I posted anything negative about their product on the web.

Perhaps there are some satisfied users out there. I was really hopeful that this product would work and I wanted to give it a positive review, but the GCB just didn’t work for me.

The Gutter Clutter Buster website has a video of the product in action and it appears to work. However, the geographic location is most likely Florida, and the leaves being vacuumed are tropical… much smaller and narrower than the GCB pipe opening. They certainly aren’t trying to vacuum large Maple or Oak leaves in that video. We are up here in New England and feel that we would, unfortunately, have the exact same experience as Samuraidog98.

As far as we can tell, the Gutter Clutter Buster maker is trying to do good… and they believe in their product. And it’s American made! It just seems that they might be lacking a bit in the customer service arena, at least in this particular instance. If an honest customer is truly that unhappy with your product, it seems that the right thing to do would be to offer some kind of assistance.

We would love to hear about other GCB experiences both good and bad. What are you thoughts? Is Samuraidog98 doing anything wrong? Do you think that the alleged treatment from the Gutter Clutter Buster manufacturer represents adequate customer service?

GutterMaxx Review

Team — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:20:18 +0000

A reader self-identified as “Disappointed in CT” writes the following tale of woe with the GutterMaxx System.

We have had the GutterMaxx System for about 3 years now. We are surrounded by a forest of very tall trees and decided after moving in that it would be worth the pricey investment (especially given the near 40 foot peak on our house in some areas.) In theory, it should work. We saw the demo, did our research but now are beyond disappointed.

The installation was messy. The installers did not put 1 downspout where they were supposed to because it was under a deck and they didn’t want to crawl under it (Guttermaxx did come out and fix that). The biggest problem is the water that pours OVER the gutter in two main areas leaving little water to actually go down the downspout.

One overflow led to leaking into our basement, something that NEVER happened previously. We had to pay a contractor to put flashing in to alleviate this problem.

We have called Guttermaxx at least 8 times. They have not shown, cancelled, came 1 time but did not BRING a ladder so they could not assess the gutter???!!! We were dealing with Hartford (more local) and finally called the headquarters in Texas a couple times. They told us if there was a problem we should be calling them. Nobody had told us this and our problem has yet to be resolved. Their customer service is truly the WORST of ANY business I have ever dealt with in my entire life.

It may be a quality product but sadly we will never know and we are out $5000. If you are thinking about using GutterMaxx, spend your money elsewhere. The only way you will be pleased is if you get lucky with your initial installation and the system works as it is supposed to.

Brilliant LeafFilter Review Video

Team — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:12:58 +0000

A LeafFilter gutter system owner by the name of Sue is so disappointed with her $9000 LeafFilter installation… but still surprisingly upbeat… that she made a wonderful, smart video to warn inform other people thinking about the LeafFilter system. We will let Sue speak for herself.

Even if you don’t care about LeafFilter, you should watch this video.

NOTE: Apparently the video has been removed from YouTube for some unknown reason. If anyone has an updated link, we would appreciate hearing about it. Thanks.