Gutter guards in Nashville

The short version

Gutter guards keep the bulk of the leaves out and cut cleaning from two or three visits a year to one rinse. They do not make a gutter maintenance-free, and the $30-a-foot product sold at your kitchen table is not four times better than a good $10 micro-mesh. What decides it in Nashville is the kind of debris your trees drop.

• Hackberry is the tree that fills Nashville gutters. Small leaves that drop early, from late September, plus the berries and the sticky honeydew from the aphids that live on them. The leaves slip through coarse screens. Micro-mesh handles them; it also catches the honeydew grime, so plan on a rinse.
• Maple — silver and red maple both — drops large leaves in a heavy two-week wave in October and helicopter seeds in spring. A basic screen keeps the leaves out; the seeds get through anything but mesh.
• Oak and tulip poplar drop big leaves late, November into December, and oaks drop acorns and spring tassels. Screen handles the leaves; mesh handles the tassels.
• Pine and cedar, common on older lots in Bellevue and Brentwood, drop needles year-round that mat inside a gutter. Only a fine stainless micro-mesh sheds them.
• Bradford pear blossoms in March get past every guard we know of. A hose from the ground is the answer.

The three types we install

Stainless micro-mesh (about $10–$20 per foot installed): fine stainless screen on an aluminum frame, screwed to the front lip, sloped with the roof pitch. Sheds hackberry leaves, maple seeds and needles, and takes a Nashville downpour without water sheeting over the front as long as the gutter under it is sized right. Our default under hackberry, pine and oak.

Aluminum screen (about $5–$9 per foot): a perforated panel that keeps big leaves out and lets small debris through. Fine under maples and other large-leaf trees. Not under hackberry or pine.

Reverse-curve (about $18–$30 per foot): the solid hood that water follows around a lip. Works in moderate rain; in a spring storm the water can overshoot, and hackberry leaves ride the sheet of water into the slot. We'll install it if you specifically want it, but it isn't our first pick here.

Gutter guards Nashville homeowners buy at the door are usually a reverse-curve or a decent mesh product at three times the going rate. Ask for the price per foot, whether the mesh is stainless or polymer, and how it attaches; a guard that slides under the shingles can void a roof warranty.

Guards go on good gutters only

We won't put guards over gutters that leak, sag or are undersized; you'd be paying to hide the problem. If the gutters need work, we do the repair first or fold the guards into a replacement, where they're cheapest because the crew is already at every foot of the run. Leaf guard gutters Nashville salesmen promise will never clog still won't fix a 5-inch gutter with one small downspout on a long run. It'll overflow with clean water instead of dirty water.

What to expect afterwards

Under hackberries, plan on a hose-off from the ground once a year to clear the honeydew film and the late leaves off the top of the mesh. Under pines, a leaf blower along the roofline once a year. That replaces two or three full cleanings, which is where the money comes back: guards on a home that needs cleaning twice a year pay back in roughly six to eight years. On a lot with two young ornamentals, they never do, and we'll say so. Fall leaf season in Nashville has the tree-by-tree calendar if you want to see what you're up against first.