Follow along with the audio and graphic above or read the transcript below to learn how LeafFilter micro mesh gutter guards performed in the 2024 Ultimate Gutter Guard Challenge series on YouTube.
LeafFilter Audio Transcript
Audio Transcript:
Edited for clarity
Commentator: Johnathan Skardon
Audio from Ultimate Gutter Guard Challenge, Season 2024, Episode 24
Here we’re looking at LeafFilter from the north side of the garage. If you look at the top right photo of the May shot, this is 26 months after we initially installed it. The initial installation happened a little over two years prior to this photo being taken. You can quickly scan the three photos and the common denominator is that there’s pretty much always something sitting on top of it. There was really no exception to this fact because at the beginning of year three of our testing with the LeafFilter system [there was still lots of leaves and debris sitting on top of the cover].
We’ve received a lot of comments from people that purport that we installed this product incorrectly, and I just want to be clear we used to be a dealer for this product. We used to install this product for a living. People used to pay us to put this product on their homes. I was a fan of this product.
In 2008, when I first learned of LeafFilter, I liked this product a lot. I felt like it was the best gutter guard on the market at the time for what it did and what it does. What it does really well is it keeps leaves and debris out of your gutters. So if you care about nothing other than keeping leaves and debris out of your gutters, LeafFilter will do the job. It does a really nice job overall.
The problem with this system is [that] it all comes down to the design and you have to look at this. This was the original micro mesh gutter guard. A guy named Alex Higginbotham from Virginia created this gutter guard many, many years ago, like in 1999.
And he did a really good job with it, but there were some shortcomings to it. As your first invention, you would expect that you’re gonna have some things that work well and some things that don’t work really well. And if you’re a good inventor, odds are you’re going to invent another product that improves upon what you have here. So LeafFilter was the first MicroMesh gutter guard.
He then created a product called MasterShield, which is also part of our long-term test here. So first one was LeafFilter and the second one was Master Shield. Very similar in some ways and very different in other ways.
The primary difference we can say here is really two things: LeafFilter is made from plastic or PVC. So it is subject to expansion and contraction and warping. And the other thing is LeafFilter is designed to live within the gutter. So the frame is a little bit fatter on the back and a little bit skinnier on the front. And when that sits on the hanger inside the gutter, that creates the forward slope.
Technically, if you install your gutters properly and you put your hangers in your gutter properly, you’re going to get about a 10 or 11 degree slope on this product when it’s installed within the gutter. That’s exactly what we had here. So it looks like it’s flat inside the gutter. It’s not. It actually has a 10 or 11 degree slope on it and we verified that with a slope meter.
The long and short of it is the flatter your gutter guard sits inside your gutter, the more likely you’re going to get leaves and debris that will build up on top of it.
In the case of LeafFilter, by and large, it will keep that stuff out of the gutter, but it’s not going to keep the stuff from sitting on top of the gutter guard. So I think what they’ve done — what LeafFilter has done — is they install additional hangers inside the gutter, and then they encourage their installers to put the hangers at a steeper slope so that the gutter guard will be at a steeper slope to give it a fighting chance for stuff to blow off or wash off the top of the gutter guard.
The problem with that approach is — if that’s what’s happening — and, quite honestly, when I look in the field, I usually don’t see that, but I’ve heard that from a lot of comments that people have made on YouTube. So if that’s what they’re actually doing, it’s probably going to make the product perform worse over time than just installing it the way that it was designed to install. But I’m not going to get into that.
I’m going to get into the proper installation method, which is what you see here in the photo. So in the May shot, you can see after 26-months, we still have a bunch of stuff sitting on top of it. You go to the October shot, you can, you know, maybe you can see a little bit of the screen under there, like over the downspout, you can see a little bit of screen. But by and large, there’s a bunch of stuff sitting on top of it. It’s not to say that stuff never left the top of this system because it did. It cycled in and out. But there was never, ever a time where it was all screen and nothing else sitting on top of it. It always had something on there. Sometimes it had more. Sometimes it had less. But you can see in these three shots at the beginning of our test for the 2024 season, which would be basically 26-months after this product was installed as part of the long-term test, there’s a bunch of stuff sitting on top of it.
Come October, a bunch of stuff sitting on top of it now — loosely sitting on top of it here. You know it looks dry. It’s just kind of lofty sitting on top of the gutter cover, so there’s a fighting chance that it might blow off, but is at the end of the leaf falling season, this October shot, this was taken at the end of October.
There’s not a lot more stuff to come down, but then you go to April the following year and what do you see?
Even more stuff sitting on top of it. So whatever came down after that October shot, just kept building up on top of it and created a huge mound of stuff on top of that gutter cover. And as you can kind of see where the roof line is, you know, not all that’s sitting on top of the gutter cover. Some of it’s just wedged up against the roof shingles there, but the bottom line is [that it’s] installed properly.
If you live in a wooded environment or a reasonably treed environment, certainly areas around your house, you might expect a scene like this. You might find other areas work perfectly fine, but that’s what you got in this particular case after three years up on the garage.
If we go over to the left hand column, you can see the amount of debris in the gutters. So less than one ounce of material was [inside the gutter]. And, really the difference between this and the MasterShield system, because we took the covers off both systems at the exact same time or the same day, there was nine tenths of an ounce of material in here, but there was some water weight to that material because the gutter cover was so covered up with leaves and debris. Basically, there was no way for fresh air to get in and circulate around the interior of the gutter, which kept the environment wetter, darker, and wetter.
Whereas on the MasterShield system, there was really nothing sitting on top of the gutter cover so the air could circulate through there and dry up the debris. So while there was a similar amount of debris in both, obviously a little bit more here in the LeafFilter system, a lot of it was probably just kind of the water weight of the material that was in there.
Where I think LeafFilter does a really good job, to reiterate is, it will by and large keep the vast majority of the stuff out of your gutters. It’s at the top echelon of all the systems that we’ve ever tested — its ability to keep leaves and debris out of your gutters.
It’s fall down, fall flat on its face, is how much stuff can potentially sit on top of the gutter cover. In this case, 28 ounces of material we took off [the top of the cover]. That’s like a pound and a half of material. It looks like a lot worse in this photo than it actually turned out to be weight-wise, but that’s a lot of material sitting on a roughly a four-foot section of gutter there.
And then the other area where this really got hammered was its ability to take in water. And really, I think it’s twofold here, or it’s primarily because so much debris built up on top of it. It’s not like the screen itself clogged. If we wiped all that stuff off the top, yeah you’d have some dirt and kind of mud like stuff sitting on top of the screen, but it’s not penetrating through this particular screen, so it’s really its ability to take in the water.
Frankly, the water, I think, in large part just couldn’t even get to the screen. I mean, you see how much stuff is sitting on top of that system. So it was last place in its ability to take in water after three years, whereas the first year that this product was up there. It was at the top of the heap. It was like either number one or number two. MasterShield and LeafFilter were like within a hair of each other in that first year.
But as time marches on, and people aren’t buying gutter guards to sit on their roof for a year, they’re buying them hopefully so they never have to worry about it again. So year one did a nice job taking in the water. Year three came in last place of the of the long term testers for this particular test.
LeafFilter
Ultimate Gutter Guard Challenge
Years Tested: 2021-2024
Debris Intake Rank: 3rd Place*
Water Intake Rank: 2nd Place*
*Out of 3 long-term tested gutter guards
Material & Design
Frame: Extruded PVC (Plastic)
Screen: Stainless Steel Micro Mesh
Screen Density: Very Fine
Screen Connection Method: Inserted in channel within frame
Available Colors: White, cream, clay and grey
Dimensions: 5 foot lengths
Installs: Within the gutter
Fits: 5” and 6” K-Style Gutters
A Brief History of LeafFilter
As the original micro mesh gutter guard, LeafFilter, and its inventor, Alex Higginbotham, created an entirely new category in the home improvement space known as “micro mesh” gutter guards. Prior to Higginbotham’s 1999 invention, the best professionally installed gutter covers on the market were solid in style and curved in shape with a open channel running parallel to the gutter opening.
LeafFilter was a revolutionary leap forward that would change the gutter protection industry forever. Initially, Higginbotham oversaw the sales force, which meant that he had limited distribution and exposure to his product.
At the time I learned about LeafFilter in 2008, there were approximately 5 regional installers selling LeafFilter. We were one of the five. Other locations were in Seattle, Washington; Akron, Ohio, and New Jersey. Dealers in Seattle and Akron made up most of the product’s sales.
We picked up the rights to sell LeafFilter in Tennessee, most of Kentucky, and some other southern states.
In 2010, Matt Kaulig, the owner of LeafFilter North, in Akron, Ohio, licensed the rights from a Michigan plastics company, to sell LeafFilter nationwide. This was the beginning of what’s today known simply as LeafFilter. LeafFilter was the product and Kaulig’s company, LeafFilter North, was the engine that would turn the industry on its head.
Essentially, LeafFilter — now known as LeafHome — is a marketing company that happens to sell Higginbotham’s original gutter guard.
Kaulig and his college buddy, Chris Counahan, supercharged the sales efforts and quickly turned LeafFilter into a household name through a heavy emphasis on direct mail, coupons, and TV advertising.
Very quickly, LeafFilter went from millions to over $100 million in sales. Kaulig sold an interest in LeafFilter to Gridiron Capital in 2016. Since that partnership formed, some speculate that LeafFilter’s gutter guard sales now exceed $1 billion annually.
LeafFilter Review
LeafFilter was part of the inaugural class of gutter guards we tested for the Ultimate Gutter Guard Challenge on YouTube. It had gone from relative obscurity to the best known gutter guard by the time we began testing gutter guards in 2020.
What hadn’t changed was it’s form factor or what it was made from. Higginbotham likely made LeafFilter from extruded plastic because it was cheaper to make the tooling to test his invention. The company that manufactured LeafFilter was a plastics company, which had no interest in making the gutter guard out of metal like other professionally installed gutter covers at the time.
By the time Kaulig secured the rights to sell LeafFilter nationwide, in 2010, the product’s design, installation method, and material choice — plastic — were set in stone.
This didn’t deter Kaulig because his idea was to sell as much LeafFilter as possible.
The LeafFilter product we tested, as part of the Ultimate Gutter Guard Challenge, was the same product that we installed beginning in 2008. It has gone through modest changes since then. The screen is no longer as fine as it once was, and the company more recently added 4 extra slots to help better secure the gutter covers to the gutter in an effort to reduce expansion and contraction brought on by heat and cold.
LeafFilter has also introduced a second gutter cover that has a checkered frame that is marketed interchangeably with the original LeafFilter gutter protection system.
For the purposes of our test, we used the original LeafFilter that was on the market at the time we began selling it in 2008.
It consists of an all-plastic or Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) design. The plastic frame is comprised of a series of downward channels with vertical ribs that divide the channels. The stainless steel micro mesh screen is inserted down the center channel and was secured into place with caulk (sealant).
LeafFilter has since changed the porosity of the screen, making the openings wider and the screen heavier than its predecessor. This allowed the company to stop caulking the screen into place. The issue with not securing the screen is that if it’s not installed correctly, or if the frame experiences significant expansion and contraction, it can pop out of the channel and become dislodged from the frame.
Out-of-the-Box Observations
LeafFilter is the most heavily hyped gutter guard in the U.S. market. Thanks to heavy promotion on TV, mailers, and social media, most homeowners are familiar with LeafFilter.
The frame is made from a thick extruded plastic or PVC material that is taller at the back than the front. The frame has a center channel into which a stainless steel screen is inserted on the job site by the installers. The company believes that the screen is thick enough to securely sit in the channel without additional sealing to the frame, although we have observed screens that have become dislodged in the field.
For the purposes of our tests, we did not secure the screen to the frame and it stayed in place for the duration of our tests, which in this case was three years.
LeafFilter is available in a limited number of colors. Our test material was clay, and we know that it’s also available in white, grey and cream. Due to being plastic, the darker the color, the more likely that it will warp.
LeafFilter Installation
LeafFilter is designed to sit on the hangers installed within your gutters. Hangers can be installed as frequently as every 16” and as far apart as 4-5 feet. Naturally, the farther apart your gutter hangers, the more likely LeafFilter’s installers will need to add hangers to your gutters to support their product. Failure to support the product with enough hangers will allow the plastic frame to warp and sink into the gutters.
In our case, we included enough hangers on the roughly 4-foot run to adequately support the gutter guard. We also installed the hangers as we would when we are installing the gutters. In other words, we didn’t modify the angle of the gutter brackets to mechanically increase the angle of LeafFilter. It sat inside the gutter as it was designed to, which means that LeafFilter has a forward slope of 10-11 degrees.
LeafFilter Roofing Applications
Because LeafFilter is designed to install within the gutter, it can work with any type of roof. This would include asphalt shingles, which makes up the majority of the residential roofing market; wood shake, slate tile, metal, and low slope rubber and TPO commercial type roofing materials.
Leaves and Debris Handling
Our long-term LeafFilter tester — on the north side of the garage — faired worse than the south side gutter guard that we tested in 2021. Having been installed for a total of 37-months, there was never a day when there weren’t leaves and debris sitting on its cover. However, this is only part of the story.
LeafFilter did an excellent job keeping leaves and debris out of the gutters. In fact, it was the second best performing gutter guard for its ability to keep leaves and debris out of the gutters, showing that it’s original screen technology was well executed.
Where LeafFilter failed in our tests was it’s ability to effectively shed leaves and debris off the top of the cover. We regularly reviewed and ran a series of tests on the gutter covers, and LeafFilter never won any of the weekly competitions. In terms of its ability to shed leaves and debris, it was often ranked last.
LeafFilter Water Handling
In the first year that we tested LeafFilter for its ability to absorb water through its screen, it was neck-and-neck with MasterShield, as the two top ranked water handlers. However, by year three, LeafFilter took in 50% less water than it did in year one, and half as much water as MasterShield did during the same timeframe.
We attribute this phenomenon to the fact that there was a lot of leaves and debris sitting on LeafFilter’s screen by the end of the third year. So much that we believe the water couldn’t get to the screen and was simply following the path of least resistance, which meant it was adhering to the leaves and dripping off the covers from there.
Once we removed the debris from the gutter covers, there was evidence of decay on top of the screen. What once started out as a leaf or organic matter, decayed and formed more of a mud-like layer on top of the screen. This was likely a contributing factor to its poor performance by year three.
LeafFilter’s Installed Street Price
If we said the price was $100 per foot, we’d be correct. If we said that the price was $20 per foot, we’d also be correct. And, yes, you will likely hear pricing from LeafFilter’s sales reps that range between $20 and $100 per foot.
If you’re interested in learning more about LeafFilter’s pricing strategy, check out this informative article, “What is the Real Cost of LeafFilter Gutter Guards?” for pricing insights and what you can do to protect yourself from overpaying.
Our Response to Reviews that Rank LeafFilter #1
In September of 2010, Consumer Reports magazine rated LeafFilter the #1 Professionally Installed gutter cover. In the same test and edition, it also ranked Gutterglove Pro as the #1 DIY gutter cover despite the fact that Gutterglove Pro was also a professionally installed gutter cover.
That was the first and last time that Consumer Reports tested gutter guards. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find that article listed on Consumer Reports website, but you can see it here.
Jump forward to today and as magazine subscriptions have dwindled, and internet reviews have blossomed, publishers that once sold print advertising are now peddling fake reviews online. Or should be say paid reviews?
If you remember the pay-for-play scandal that hit the record industry in the 1990s, the same thing is alive an well in the publishing world. That’s right, do you think Forbes.com is reviewing gutter guards because it aligns with the magazine’s business focus or do you think they’re doing it because they get paid every time a homeowner follows a link from their website to LeafFilter.com?
In fact, Forbes has actually licensed it’s name to an unrelated company that is generating hundreds of millions of dollars selling leads, and Forbes is just one of the companies benefiting from paid reviews that generate paid leads.
And the kicker is that not only have these lead generation services never actually tested the gutter guards that they’re promoting, they’ve likely never seen them in person to test. It’s all about how much money a company like LeafFilter is willing to pay Forbes, Architectural Digest and Ask This Old House to be featured as the #1 Gutter Guard of fill-in-the-blank year.
What we did was a real test in a real environment over an extended period of time. If you would have tested the same gutter guards in a corn field in Nebraska, you would have gotten a different result. We tested the gutter guards in a reasonably tough environment, which is likely similar to your environment.
After all, if you live on a farm that doesn’t have a bunch of trees surrounding your home, then odds are you won’t be reading this or any other gutter guard reviews.
