Gutter Guards in Wallhaven and Fairlawn Heights, Akron

Wallhaven is the crossroads of the west side. West Market Street, West Exchange Street and Hawkins Avenue all meet there, and roughly 5,000 people live across its two square miles or so. Behind the shops, tucked out of sight, is teardrop-shaped Hardesty Park, home of the Akron Arts Expo.

Fairlawn Heights lies just to the west. It is a neighborhood of Akron, not part of the separate city of Fairlawn, and it is small and quiet, with about 2,300 residents. It started in the 1910s with large homes for Goodyear executives, and Akron annexed the hillside in 1932.

They share a look, with mature trees and traditional houses, but they give a gutter installer two different problems. In Wallhaven it is shade and roof pitch. In Fairlawn Heights it is shade and slope.

Most of Wallhaven's houses went up between the early 1920s and the middle of the 1930s. Builders of that period worked in revival styles, and the streets off Market and Exchange show the full set: Tudor Revivals with steep cross gables, Colonial Revivals, Dutch Colonials with their barn-like gambrel roofs, and Cape Cods.

Each shape treats rain differently. A Tudor's steep front gable throws water into the valleys on either side, and those valleys aim it at inside corners. A gambrel roof has a nearly vertical lower slope, so water reaches the gutter moving fast. A Cape Cod puts dormers above a low eave, and every dormer has its own little gutter.

Over all of it hangs the shade. The shade trees here have had decades to grow out over the rooflines. Leaves, seeds and twigs come down in quantity, and they come down on roofs that were designed to move water quickly. A partly blocked gutter overflows sooner here than it would on a low-pitched ranch.

Fairlawn Heights is built on a hillside. Ridgewood Road, Halifax Road and Fairlawn Boulevard come together inside the neighborhood, and the boulevard's southern end near Stockbridge Road has a wide green median where neighbors gather.

The oldest houses stand near Ridgewood Road. Farther from it they get newer, and much of the neighborhood was built between 1940 and 1969. Colonials and Tudors are the usual styles, old and new alike.

What the hill does is change the height of the house as you walk around it. A home that shows one story to the street may show two at the back, where the ground falls away. The rear gutter can be twenty feet up while the front one is within reach of a stepladder. Wooded lots add to it, since the tallest trees are often behind the house, on the slope, over that high back gutter.

Some lots back onto ravines. The trouble with a ravine is that the trees filling it belong to nobody in particular and cannot be trimmed back. The post on ravine lots in West Akron and the Merriman Valley takes that problem on its own.

Guttrz installs the Leaf Solution guard, a stainless steel micro-mesh on an aluminum frame. On a shaded west side house its job is simple to state. It keeps everything the canopy drops out of the gutter, so the gutter can do the one thing a steep roof needs from it, which is to carry water away fast.

The frame fastens to the fascia and the gutter lip. No part of it goes beneath the roofing. On a ninety-year-old Tudor that is the right way round, because the roof edge is the last place you want anyone prying.

Valleys get particular care. Each inside corner under a valley is mitered, sealed and then run with a hose until it is clear the water goes through the mesh and not over it. Steps like that are set out on the installation page.

The owner inspects every house himself, and here he spends most of his time at the back. He checks the high gutter and the ground a ladder would stand on, which on a slope is half the job. He tests the fascia by hand, since the shaded side of an old house is where wood stays damp longest.

You get his photos the same day. If the fascia is sound and the hangers hold, the report says so. If a section needs repair first, you see the picture before you see a price. The page on guards for older homes explains what counts as too far gone.

Guttrz charges by the linear foot. The rate is lower where a run can be reached from a one-story ladder and higher where it cannot. A hillside house is priced one side at a time, so the low front is not billed like the tall back. Corners are included however many the roof has.

The written price is good for a year. How it is worked out, and how it compares with what national brands are commonly quoted, is on the gutter guard cost page.

Guards go on existing gutters and involve no construction. If your project ever grows into one that needs a building permit, Akron's are issued by the Summit County Department of Building Standards, 1030 E. Tallmadge Ave.