The perforated metal leaf-guards that got installed with the gutters originally got zip-screwed into place at the outer lip of the K-section, and while the guards seem to work reasonably well there is not a gutter-screen product made that will never have to be opened up at some point for cleanout underneath. With trees overhead and seasonal pollen and dust flying around, fine organic muck will simply accumulate no matter what the design tries to take into account. After realizing that a year and a half in there was already a bit of muck buildup on the bottom of the gutters, I needed to get in there to check on things and maybe give everything a quick cleanout. Rather than have to mess with a bunch of [steel, thus galvanically mismatched] sheet-metal screws and trying to re-thread old holes every time I went to pull the guards, I wanted to see if some sort of quick-release retaining clips could be fitted instead. |
The strips were cut with the usual score-n-bend method, which actually wasn't so easy when only snapping off an inch of material. |
I'd need about 30 clips all told, so I had a bit of work to do... |
But it went reasonably quickly. Not the most precision or uniform operation ever, but close enough to the shape I needed. |
But in the same year and a half, the gutter actually hadn't accumulated
that much stuff inside. I ran a sponge down the whole length for a
clean sweep and got a couple of inches in a bucket for the whole run,
that's it after two falls and two springs, and it was less than a quarter-inch
deep all along. That would seem to put the nominal really-needs-it cleanout
interval at something over two or three years, which isn't bad considering
the amount of stuff that lands on the roof. And the next experiment would
be to see if the right answer for clearing all the top surfaces is a quick
pass with a
portable leaf blower
instead of trying to mess with brushes.
At some point later I might experiment with micro-mesh screens, but the smaller the holes in a system the more readily they "heal over" from fine pollen accumulation. |