Spring is almost here and in no time maple trees will start to bloom. This year, you’ll want to be ready and protect your home with gutter guards for maple trees if you’ve got any stately ones nearby. But how do you make the right choice with so many options available? There are some simple dos and don’ts to help make your decision a little easier. After all, cleaning all those seeds from your gutters is a chore you want to put behind you – you don’t want to wind up cleaning your gutter covers!
Each spring, an armada of maple helicopters attacks your home with the ferocity of a snow storm. Maple seeds, helicopters or whirligigs – whatever you call them locally – are a maple’s way of reproducing. Too many of them wind up in your gutters and, unlike snow, they won’t melt.
While maple seeds can range in length from an inch to over 2.5 inches, they’re also narrow and very slim, which is the bigger issue. Maple seeds become soft when wet and will follow rainwater wherever it goes. If the gutter guards you’re considering have any size hole in them, the seeds will either slide right into the gutter below or get stuck in the holes of the cover (see the picture above). The best gutter covers for maple seeds will have no visible openings, keeping helicopters out of your gutters permanently.
MasterShield is a great choice for maple seeds because its micro mesh filter won’t allow debris into your gutter. Our gutter covers use a surgical-grade stainless steel filtering membrane that keeps out anything larger than half the width of a single strand of hair. Click here to learn more about MasterShield technology.
While you may find “stainless steel” is the big buzzword in other gutter covers, it’s also important to pay attention to quality. MasterShield’s inventor, who was the first to use a stainless steel gutter guard filter, insists on top-quality, surgical-grade (also known as marine or 316 grade) stainless steel. Lesser quality stainless will begin to rust outdoors, and you won’t know your filter is failing until it’s too late.
The best gutter covers for maple seeds are also self-cleaning. Systems that sit flat create a shelf over your gutters that will trap maple seeds, and wind won’t be able to remove them. Products that maintain the pitch of your roof shed maple seeds more efficiently because wind flow forces debris down a consistent path, which leads right off your gutters. And before you let yourself get convinced by a salesman telling you that the shelf won’t be a problem, grab a fifth-grader and get their opinion on which one will really be less work.
Click here to find out more about how MasterShield is installed.
In order to be certain the gutter covers pitch with the roof, you’ll need a product with a profile thin and flexible enough not to lift your roof shingles. MasterShield, with it’s Shingle-Safe™ back has had its installation methodology approved by GAF and other shingle manufacturers not to void their shingle warranties. MasterShield focuses on keeping its back profile in line with the sub-roof so that, unlike other systems, our products don’t lift the shingle or cause it to dry out.
The key to choosing the best gutter covers for maple trees is choosing a multi-patented system such as MasterShield that was designed with problem debris like maple seeds in mind. And if it can keep out the small stuff like helicopters, you’ll have no problems in the fall keeping out maple leaves, twigs or other debris dropped from any of the other trees around your home.
