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Are Eavestrough Guards Worth It? Screens at $4 a Foot, Guards at $9, Which Trees Defeat Each One, What Ice Does to Them, and the Houses Where They Pay
Exterior Finishes
Gutter Guards: $9 a Foot to Stop Climbing the Ladder Twice a Year, If the Trees Over Your Roof Are the Right Trees
A guard on an eavestrough is a lid with holes in it. Water goes through the holes, leaves slide off, and you stop cleaning the trough. That is the pitch, and on a house under big maples with nothing else around, it is true. Under a white pine, a cedar hedge, or a silver maple that drops a million keys in May, it is half true, and the half that is not true is the half you paid for. Guards are $9 a foot fitted and screens are $4 a foot snapped in, and on a 156 ft bungalow that is $1,404 or $624 before HST. Whether it is money well spent depends on what is upwind, not on the brochure.
The types and what they cost
| Type | Per lf, installed | How it works | What gets through |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snap-in leaf screen, plastic or aluminum | $4 | A coarse grid that clips into the trough lip and rests on the back. Cheap, fast, removable. | Needles, maple keys, seed fluff, shingle grit. Big leaves sit on top and mat. |
| Perforated aluminum guard | $9 | A solid aluminum sheet with punched holes, slid under the drip edge and screwed to the trough lip. Stiff enough to walk a ladder against. | Fine grit and pollen. Needles mostly slide off; keys can lodge in the holes. |
| Fine stainless mesh on an aluminum frame | $9 | A micro-mesh screen that passes water and almost nothing else. The best filter of the lot. | Nearly nothing, which is the problem when pollen and roof grit seal the mesh and water sheets over the top. |
| Reverse-curve cover | $9 and up | A solid hood; water follows the curved lip into a slot by surface tension, debris falls past. | Light rain works. Heavy rain overshoots the slot. Ice fills the slot and the whole thing becomes a solid roof extension. |
The $9 rate on the price schedule is for a fitted aluminum guard on an existing or new trough; a brand-name reverse-curve system sold with its own trough is its own quote and usually a long way above this. All of them sit on a trough that should be sized first; the sizing page is the one to read before this one.
Which trees beat which guards
Oak, sugar maple, beech, big broad leaves. This is what guards were invented for. The leaves land on the guard, dry, and blow off, and the trough underneath stays empty for years. If this is the only tree near the roof, a $4 screen does most of the job and a $9 guard does all of it.
White pine, spruce, hemlock. Needles go through a screen like it is not there, and they lie flat in a perforated guard and stitch themselves into the holes. Fine mesh stops them, and then the needles pile on the mesh until it is a thatched roof and the rain goes over the front. Under a pine you are cleaning something either way; the question is whether you clean a trough or a guard.
Silver maple, Manitoba maple, ash. The keys and seed clusters are the worst thing an eavestrough sees. A key with its wing hooks into a mesh and holds, and by June the guard is a carpet. Screens let them straight in. Nothing short of a solid reverse-curve cover deals with keys, and that cover has its own winter problem.
Cedar hedges and willows. Fine fronds and whips, same story as needles. Fine mesh catches them on top.
The honest test is to look at what is in the trough now. If it is leaves, guards work. If it is a damp mat of needles and keys, guards move the mat 1 in. higher.
What a Simcoe winter does to them
Any guard is a shelf at the roof edge, and in January that shelf grows ice. Perforated aluminum and mesh freeze over, the melt from the roof runs across the top of the ice, and the trough underneath does nothing until March. That is mostly harmless on a house with a cold attic, because there is not much melt to carry. On a house with a warm attic it turns the guard into the top of an ice dam, and water backs under the shingles above it. The ice dam page is where that story is told; the guard did not cause it, and the guard will not fix it.
Reverse-curve hoods are the one type that makes winter worse. The slot the water is meant to follow into is the first thing to ice shut, and a hood that is iced shut is a 6 in. extension of the roof that sheds every drop of melt straight past the trough onto the walk below. I have taken those off more houses than I have put on.
Snow load is the other thing. A guard screwed to the front lip stiffens the trough, which helps when the snow slides, as long as the hangers are hidden hangers screwed into sound wood. On a trough hung with spikes into a fascia that the rot page describes, the guard just gives the snow a better grip on the whole assembly when it goes.
When they pay and when they do not
- A two-storey under hardwoods. Yes. Cleaning a trough 22 ft up is a ladder job most owners should not be doing and pay someone for, twice a year. 104 lf of guard at $9 is $936; divide that by what you pay a year for the ladder visits and you have the payback in years, and it is usually short.
- A bungalow under hardwoods. Maybe. The ladder is 10 ft and the trough is easy to reach. $1,404 on a 156 ft bungalow buys a lot of Saturday afternoons; a $4 screen at $624 catches the big leaves and the owner clears the corners once a year.
- Any house under pine, spruce, cedar or silver maple. No, or at least not expecting to stop cleaning. Spend the money on a 6 in. trough with 3×4 in. downspouts instead, which plugs less and clears itself better, and clean it.
- A house with no trees within 60 ft. No. Roof grit and the odd bird nest are a once-a-year flush with a hose, and the guard costs more than ten years of that.
- A house with an overflow problem. No, until the trough is sized. A guard on an undersized trough makes the overflow worse by shedding the heavy rain over the front. Price a bigger trough first.
On the houses we build the trough is 6 in., the hangers are screwed, and I put guards on when the lot has mature hardwoods and the owner asks. On a lot cut out of a pine bush, which is half of Tiny Township, I tell them to save the money and clean the trough in November, and they usually do not believe me until the second spring.
What a guard does not do
It does not stop ice dams; that is the attic. It does not fix a trough with no slope or too few downspouts; that is sizing. It does not stop water running behind the trough down the fascia; that is the drip edge. It does not make a rotten fascia hold a hanger. The order of work on an eave is fascia, trough, downspouts, and then, if the trees agree, guards, and a quote that leads with the guard is selling the most profitable line first. The exterior renovation hub has the grid for lining three quotes up.
Questions people ask
How much do gutter guards cost in Ontario?
$9 a linear foot installed for a fitted aluminum perforated or mesh guard, $4 a foot for snap-in leaf screens, before HST. A 156 ft bungalow is $1,404 or $624; a 104 ft two-storey is $936 or $416. Branded reverse-curve systems with their own trough are quoted separately and cost considerably more.
Do gutter guards work with pine needles?
Not well. Needles pass through screens and lodge in perforated guards; fine mesh stops them but then mats over with needles until the rain sheets over the front. Under conifers, a 6 in. trough with big downspouts and a yearly clean beats any guard.
Do gutter guards cause ice dams?
No, a warm attic causes ice dams. A guard that ices over can make an existing dam worse by extending it, and reverse-curve hoods are the worst for it. Fix the attic ventilation first; the vented soffit page has the arithmetic.
Are leaf screens as good as guards?
For big leaves, close. A $4 screen keeps maple and oak leaves out and lets everything small in, so the corners and outlets still need a clean once a year. A $9 fitted guard is stiffer, sealed under the drip edge, and stops the small stuff until pollen and grit seal it.
Can guards go on my existing eavestroughs?
If the trough is sound, sloped, sized for the roof and hung on screwed hangers, yes. If it is a spiked 5 in. trough that overflows at the valley, put the money into the trough and add the guard later, if at all.
Get your own number
The soffit, fascia and eavestrough calculator prices guards and screens as separate lines on top of the trough, so you can see the $9 a foot next to the $3 a foot it costs to go from 5 in. to 6 in. and decide which one your trees want. If a quote leads with a guard system and the trough is an afterthought, the $99 review will say so.
Sources and further reading
- Alu-Rex: seamless eavestrough and gutter-guard systems made for Canadian snow and ice; sizing and installation notes.
- Your rights when starting home renovations or repairs: Ontario government: the 10-day cooling-off period on a contract signed at your door, the written contract rule, estimates, and the door-to-door rules.
