For anyone who has lived in a bushy area, or just somewhere there are a few trees near the house, you will know the joys of constantly having to clean your gutters. Unless you are a particularly well organised person you will generally get a reminder that they need a clean in the middle of a downpour as water comes pouring over the side of the gutters and down your wall or running under your house to your nice dry stumps.

Trees are lovely to have, but they really can cause a mess. Gutter protection systems, normally referred to as gutter guards, became popular in the second half of last century as the availability of improved plastic compounds made it more commercially viable to produce the systems that were reasonably easy to fit, were long lasting in terms of exposure to heat, sun, cold and wet, and were effective in keeping leave and debris out of gutters.

The design of these systems has continued to improve over the years to the point that they now do such a good job that you will rarely have to get on the roof again. The best systems will not only let water flow through to the gutter as normal (an obvious pre-requisite you would think, but it wasn’t always the case), but they will also lift the leaves and debris over the top of the gutter and let them fall to the ground.