Gutter guards in Pittsburgh

Start with the trees

The right guard depends on what falls into the gutter, and Pittsburgh's street trees are specific.

• Silver and Norway maples — the most common trees in the older neighborhoods. Helicopter seeds in May and June slip through almost any screen and sprout in the gutter; big leaves in October. Micro-mesh is the only guard that stops the seeds.
• Pin and red oaks — Fox Chapel, Squirrel Hill, Mt. Lebanon. Small leaves, and pin oaks hold them into December and drop them onto a guard that's already covered in snow. Mesh or a good screen.
• Sycamores along the rivers and in Highland Park — huge leaves and bark flakes. A cheap aluminum screen handles them.
• Black locust and tree-of-heaven on the hillsides — small compound leaflets that go through screens. Mesh again.
• Hemlock and spruce on wooded lots — needles that lie flat on any mesh. Plan on a yearly brush-off no matter what you install.

The three types we install

Stainless micro-mesh (about $10–$18 per foot installed): fine stainless screen on an aluminum frame, screwed to the gutter lip and tucked under the first course of shingles or set below the slate on older roofs. Stops maple seeds and locust leaflets, handles heavy rain without overshoot when it's sloped, and doesn't hold ice the way a solid hood does. Our default under maples.

Aluminum screen (about $5–$9 per foot): perforated panel that clips under the shingle and over the lip. Keeps out oak and sycamore leaves, lets maple seeds through. Fine where the trees are big-leaved; not worth it under maples.

Reverse-curve (about $18–$30 per foot): the solid hood that water follows around a lip. Works in moderate rain. Two problems here: water overshoots it in a hard summer downpour, and in winter the hood ices over and builds a shelf that makes ice dams worse. We install it when someone specifically wants it and it suits the roof, but it's rarely our first choice.

Guards on old gutters

We won't put guards on gutters that leak, sag or are undersized — you'd be locking in the problem. If the gutters need work, we do the repair first or fold guards into a replacement quote, where they're cheapest because the crew is already at every foot of the run. Guards on built-in box gutters are a special case; see the box gutter page.

What to expect afterwards

Leaf guard gutters Pittsburgh homeowners install under maples still need a brush-off from a ladder once a year, usually after the seeds drop in June, and a look after the November leaf drop. That replaces two or three full cleanings, which is where the money comes back — about six to eight years on a house under heavy trees, never on a house with two small ornamentals. The fall leaf-season post has the tree-by-tree calendar.

The pitch you'll hear elsewhere

Gutter guards Pittsburgh homeowners get offered at the door come with a two-hour presentation, a "never clean again" promise and a price that halves when you hesitate. The product is usually a reverse-curve or a mesh that's perfectly good at $15 a foot and no better at $40. Ask for the price per foot, whether the mesh is stainless or polymer, how it attaches, and what happens when a maple seed sprouts on top of it. Then get a plain quote from a gutter contractor and compare.