Foam gutter guards can cause major problems with your gutter system. If these products don’t work, they can give homeowners extra headaches and stress that they don’t need.
Foam gutter guards are especially hard to deal with. Foam gutter guards are often sold as long-lasting, cheap, and easy to use. However, they have some serious problems.
WHAT ARE FOAM GUTTER GUARDS?
Gutter guards are protective devices that go on top of your gutters. The gutter guard should let rainwater into the gutter but keep leaves, sticks, and other things from getting in the way. Gutter guards are supposed to keep your gutters from getting clogged up so that water can easily flow away from your roof.
A foam gutter guard is meant to keep water out of the gutters by soaking up water in its soft material and letting it seep into the gutter, leaving the debris on top of the guards. This is one of the five main ways gutter guards are made. These are the other four designs:
1. Guards made of mesh
Most of these gutter guards are made of metal. Holes are drilled all over the gutter guard so that water can filter into the gutter.
2. Gutter Guards Made of Bottle Brushes
Built with tiny bristles and bottle brushes to keep bigger things from falling into the gutter.
3. Screen Gutter Guards
The design is similar to mesh, but it uses a screen system to filter water and keep debris out.
4. Reverse Curve Gutter Guards
These may have been the first type of gutter guard, but they are no longer popular in modern homes.
WHY FOAM GUTTER GUARDS ARE BAD
The team at Ned Stevens does not suggest foam gutter guards. Simply put, they are not worth the trouble they cause. Most of the time, our cleaning crew has to deal with broken, cracked, or otherwise damaged foam gutter guards. This makes the cost of cleaning for homeowners go up.
Aside from the cost of cleaning, gutter guards have three other major drawbacks.
They don't last as long as they say they will
Foam gutter guards will be advertised as “durable” at Home Depot, Lowe’s, and other home improvement stores. Even if a foam gutter guard lives up to its advertising claims compared to other foam gutter guards, it can’t match the durability of metal gutter guards, but even metal gutter guards have serious problems.
Because of this, foam gutter guards could dry out or crack in as little as one to two years. Even though foam is cheaper than metal, if you have to change your gutter guards all the time, you end up spending more money.
It's Hard to Clean Really Well
Material made of mesh and screens is easy to clean, disinfect, and shine. With foam gutter guards, water and bacteria can get deep into the foam, making it impossible to clean to the same level as metal.
This is another reason why foam gutter guards dry out, crack, and have short lives in general.
They can sometimes block themselves
There have been stories about foam gutter guards attracting so much water and soil that if a few seeds got stuck and were left for long enough in the right conditions, they grew their own little plants in the gutter guard.
In these cases, the bad design of foam gutter guards means that your gutters will end up in a worse state.
SUMMARY
In short, you shouldn’t buy foam gutter guards. How to keep your home safe.
When compared to the unreliability and problems of gutter guards, the cost of hiring a professional gutter cleaning service to take care of your home all year will quickly save you time and money.
If you own your own home and are worried about how clean your gutters are or how long they will last, call us today at (919) 646-5009 to get a free quote. Our gutter cleaning experts will be happy to show you why gutter cleaning service is better than foam gutter guards.
