Gutter Guard Installation in Sydney

Aluminium. Holds its shape, does not go brittle in UV, and is non-combustible. It is the default on most Sydney roofs for a reason.

Steel and stainless. Stronger, and used where the span or the traffic on the roof needs it. The catch is metal compatibility: the wrong combination of mesh, fixings and roof sheet in a street near the water sets up corrosion between the two metals, and the fixings go first. On a coastal roof the screws and clips matter as much as the mesh does.

Plastic and poly mesh. The cheapest option and the one we get called back to. A few Sydney summers of UV make it brittle, it sags down into the gutter, and once it sags it holds debris instead of shedding it, which is the opposite of the job. It is also combustible, so it is not an option on bushfire-prone land.

It is almost never the mesh itself.

• Wrong aperture for the trees. A mesh sized for broad eucalypt leaves lets pine needles and casuarina through, and a mesh fine enough to stop needles clogs solid under figs. The tree over your roof decides the mesh, not the other way round.
• Fitted flat instead of on the fall. Guard only sheds debris if it slopes. Laid flat across the gutter, it becomes a shelf.
• No access left. A guard that cannot be lifted means the gutter underneath never gets checked. Fine for two years, a problem in year five.
• Valleys left open. The valley is where most of the water and most of the leaf off a roof ends up. Guarding the gutters and ignoring the valleys solves half the problem.
• Fitted over a gutter that was already finished. A rusted or sagging gutter does not get better with a mesh over it. It gets harder to see.