Pine needle gutter guards in Glastonbury, CT

Needles slip through where leaves do not

A broad leaf is wide. Almost any screen stops it, and it sits on top until the wind or the rain moves it along. A pine needle is thin and stiff, and it goes through a coarse opening end first. Once a few dozen are in the trough, they catch the next ones, and by spring the gutter holds a felt mat that soaks up water.

That is why a guard that works fine under broadleaf trees can fail under pine. The fix is a finer filter, and the finest ones on our list use two layers of perforated aluminum with the openings offset, so a needle that gets through the top layer meets metal underneath.

If you only get a few needles a year from a tree down the street, you may not need any of this. We ask what grows near your roofline and how close, and we tell you plainly if a simpler system will do.

What grows around Glastonbury rooflines

Part of Meshomasic State Forest, Connecticut's first state forest, created in 1903, lies inside Glastonbury. The forest mixes broadleaf hardwoods with white pine, and it includes a stand of pines more than 100 years old. A house on a wooded lot near the forest can get a double load: leaves in autumn and needles on and off through the year.

Most of the town is houses with their own rooflines. Three in four Glastonbury homes, 10,885 of 14,606 units, are single-family detached houses, and the median one dates to 1976.

Storms bring more down. NBC Connecticut's record of the October 2011 snowstorm includes a photo of a tree uprooted in Glastonbury. After a storm like that, a gutter full of twigs and needles is the least of it, but it is also the part that keeps causing trouble through the next season.

Two ways to stop needles, priced per foot

If you need new gutters, DoublePro is the system for pine. It combines the gutter, a continuous hanger and two filtration layers, installed for $30 per foot on 5-inch gutters and $34 on 6-inch. DoublePro carries a lifetime clog-free warranty, pine needles included.

If your gutters are sound, Gutter Clean Pro is the retrofit, from $18 per foot on 5-inch and $20 on 6-inch. It is also two layers of aluminum. Its manufacturer's warranty gives lifetime limited performance coverage, including coniferous areas. Sound means the gutter hangs straight, drains, and does not leak at the seams.

T-Rex, at $25 per foot, has one perforated layer. It suits leaves well, and we do not recommend it where pine overhangs the roof. Downspouts are their own line at $14 per foot, or $16 for 6-inch work, and removal of old gutters is $1 per foot when a replacement needs it.

Downpours, snow and the historic district

Hartford Bradley, the closest long-record NOAA station, logs about 47 inches of precipitation a year in its 1991 to 2020 normals, with 12.4 days of an inch or more and 51.7 inches of snow. Those are Hartford-area numbers, not measured in Glastonbury. Most guards cope fine with a drizzle. Trouble starts in a downpour. A needle mat on top of a coarse guard turns that downpour into a sheet of water off the front edge.

Glastonbury's National Register historic districts run along Main Street and through South Glastonbury, and the town also has a local historic district. Inside the local district, exterior changes visible from a public road need a certificate of appropriateness from the Historic District Commission. Ordinary maintenance or repair that keeps the design and appearance is exempt, and color is not regulated. Ask the Commission before your install date if your house is inside it.

The pine needle question page covers the topic in general. For your house, call (617) 401-9301.

Call to install: every step

Three ways to start

• Call (617) 401-9301. It is answered any hour, and a missed call gets called back.
• Send the short form on the home page with your street address, and your number lands in your inbox.
• Text or chat through the chat window on this site.

1. 01

   Understand what you actually need

   About fifteen minutes on the phone: the length of the roofline, the number of stories and the trees around the house. The roofline is measured remotely, so nobody comes to the house to sell. You get your price the same day, from the published per-foot rates.

   • Gutters still in good shape: Gutter Clean Pro goes over the gutters you already have, from $18/ft.
   • Gutters that need replacing: new gutters with the guard built in. T-Rex (continuous hanger) from $25/ft, or DoublePro (two filtration layers) from $30/ft.
   • Fascia that cannot be drilled: Hover Pro, quoted for your house.
   • Complex rooflines, third stories and copper are quoted separately, and we say so on the call, never after arrival.
2. 02

   Your plan, in writing

   You get a written quote and your StormRail plan: photos of your house, the system, the gutter size and your color choices. The certified installer works from that same plan, so you and the installer are never on different pages.

3. 03

   A deposit capped at one third

   Massachusetts law caps a home-improvement deposit at one third of the contract. We hold to that in every state we work in. Your quote names the exact figure before you pay anything.

4. 04

   Material ordered and confirmed

   Your Alu-Rex system is ordered through the Alu-Rex distributor and confirmed before an install date is set, so the date you get is one the material can meet.

5. 05

   Scheduled with a certified installer in your county

   A certified Alu-Rex installer working in your area takes the job, and you get the date without chasing anyone. In season we're typically booking four to six weeks out. We'd rather tell you that now than promise you Tuesday and send whoever happened to be free. Emergency work — a collapsed run, active water in the basement — gets triaged ahead of the queue.

6. 06

   Installed

   The installer fits the system on the plan you already approved. Any balance is due as your quote states.

7. 07

   After the install

   We check in after the job is done. Each system carries its own written Alu-Rex warranty:

   • Gutter Clean Pro: manufacturing lifetime limited, clog performance lifetime limited, including coniferous areas
   • T-Rex: manufacturing lifetime limited, clog performance 25-year prorated limited
   • DoublePro: manufacturing lifetime limited, clog performance lifetime limited, including coniferous areas

Questions homeowners ask

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