Flex-Drain 85198 Co-Polymer Gutter Guard Roll, 6-Inch x 20-Feet

So, had similar 3' type guards on my old house and now in the new house realized I was going to need gutter guards here as well. I can only say this was way simpler of an install than I thought it would be. I installed almost 210 lineal feet in about 2.5 hours. And honestly about 30 minutes of that was just getting tools and things that I thought I would need ready. In fact I needed almost nothing.Also, while on the roof I observed my neighbors gutter guards which are similar but in 3' lengths that were contractor installed. Compared to the finish job of this product those look like junk. Yeah, its on the roof and nobody can see them. but still I know.So let me explain what I did:The product packaging says to cut them into 3' lengths to make them manageable. I did not I left it as 1 20' length and then overlapped about 3-5" at the ends. This was no problem to work with and was much faster than cutting them. In my gutters they fit nearly perfectly. They make a slight humped arch in the gutter, but much less than when using the Flex-Drain 85175 gutter guard girder. I bought these, but immediately realized I did not need them.My gutter I beams were spaced about 28" apart and seemed more than enough to keep the guards up. Now, initially I planned to screw them in every so often. But I quickly moved to another faster and easier method - Caulking them. Yeah, everytime I moved the ladder I would place a small bead of caulk under the gutter lip (on the inside of the gutter) that was in front of me, then put the gutter guard in and pressed it against the lip of the gutter to ensure it and the caulk were embedded. I think this makes it easy enough to remove later if necessary, completely hides the attaching mechanism and I can always apply more if necessary. And I can remove the guard incredibly easily later also if necessary.I have to say I am pretty impressed. Now, if you have trees brushing your gutters or large sticks falling into them then maybe you need the 85175 gutter guard girders to firmly hold them in place. I do not and I see no reason that the way I did it will not result in years of success. I will report back after this fall and let you know.They cut very easily - almost like butter.

flimsy even with the guards

After evaluating various ingenious and innovative solutions (high-end material, patented, thus expensive) for leaf gutter guard, it seems that the low tech low cost plastic net/grid barrier guard is worth a try, certainly as a temporary solution, got to be better than having no guard! If it doesn't work, throw away and back to the beginning, no buyer's remorse for steep sunk cost, or difficulty in removal. Some of those fancy guards, like sharp needles and stinky wet foam are a mess if not hazard to remove.Easy to install (PLEASE ignore the official instruction to cut into more manageable shorter lengths) if kept as one long piece, buy some clips that will better secure the guard to the gutter (I used 4, 2 at the ends and 2 in between at about 7' apart), all friction fitted (jammed in) with no mechanical fasteners, with easy future removal in mind if it fails to work or when a superior sure-fire solution is available on the market. At less than 50 cents per linear foot, it's a cheap experimentation.O, BTW, there is no need to buy this one, which claims to be US made and cost 3 times as much as the other one. I bought both products just to compare, there is no discernible difference between the two, probably made by the same Chinese outfit but sold with different labels.

Got 2 to test out and was really impressed. I'd tried other metal guards that wouldn't work because my gutters hang below the line of my roof. Installed these and they were thick enough to keep an upward arch and stay in place well. Got 4 more to install in the rest of the gutters and got a thinner made in china variety that is vastly inferior to the first ones I got. Had to use gutter girders to keep the proper arch to the guards. Quite disappointed with the new thinner ones as I'd gladly pay more for the thicker ones that stayed in place properly.

Too bad there is not a 0 rating. These things are cheap and flimsy. Don't waste your money or your time. I don't know why somthing like this was ever put on the market. Yes, they are 6" wide and 20' long and about as lick as a sheet of paper. These things would not hold the weight of a leaf.

For the price, I think these are great. I was worried after reading a description that I might get a newer, flimsier ones, but the ones that arrived were marked Made in the USA and is of pretty good quality. It's vinyl, so it is easy to cut and work into spaces to try to hold them in place. Where the gutters have girders (or whatever the name is for the metal things used to hold gutters up and onto the house), I could slide the side/edge nearer to me into the space between the gutter and the girder, and slide the other side into the space between the roof and the gutter top, and it stayed in place with an arch. If the spacing of the "girders" were smaller, like every 1.5 ft, I probably could get away with just placing them this way without any gutter clips or roof nails to secure it. For reference, I live in Northern California, where the mild fall/winter season is also the rainy season and leaf season.Not every gutter situation is standard - in my case, even though my gutters are the 5" size, my shake roof comes down to cover almost a third, sometimes half, of the top of the gutter. Metal mesh guards were way too wide to be squeezed in to cover the narrow gutter tops. This flexible vinyl was easy to manipulate (can even cut it to make it narrower, make notches, etc) to fit my needs.If you don't want to get creative with the installation, you could buy the clips that they sell to go with this -- and make sure to check how exposed your gutters are on top because you probably need the full width exposed to be able to use the clips.