Gutter Guards

 When the new roof and solar system was installed, they also took down the old gutters and put up new ones.  But the crud that was in the French drain re-enforced the concept of putting screens over the gutters to keep out leaves and twigs.  I think I've already put them on the sections of the roof that run along both sides of the garage.  I don't think we need them on the gutter in the back -- it gets very little in terms of leaves and in any case just runs out into the yard.  We don't have gutters along the West side of the house.  So that just leaves the front gutter.

We found the cheapest gutter guards available, from Home Depot, consisting of 3 foot sections of plastic screens.

We slid them under the last row of shingles and push them onto the front edge of the gutter.

Until we had them covering the entire front gutter.

Update. 9 Sept 2024.  When we were putting up these cheap plastic gutter guards, Michael (our neighbor from across the cove) came over and offered me a pack (well, a partial pack) of Easy On Gutter Guards from Costco.  These are stainless steel mesh gutter guards. $10 apiece, instead of $1.54 for the plastic ones.  But 4 foot long instead of the 3 foot plastic ones.

The one pack was enough to redo the gutter on the East side of the garage.  This gutter gets a lot of leaves and such from the Crepe Myrtle trees and the Chinese Pistache tree.

First, we remove the current plastic screens.

 The stainless steel screens are much stronger.  They slide in under the shingles easily and then are held in place with either tape 

or screws.  We used the tape to put them in place and then used screws, just to be sure. We use a #8 x 3/8 sheet metal screw, but since we only had 12 in the package, we then ended up with only two per screen (the instructions suggested 3 per screen).

We can evaluate if they work that much better, to justify the cost.

French Drain Camera

 Kyle showed up this morning with the drain camera.  The camera is on the tip of a long cable and communicates with a specialized iPad in a case.

The camera and cable go down into the clean out pipe and transmit video back to the computer which displays and records it.

Most of the video is uninteresting -- just a long sequence of a white pipe.

But you can see, in the upper left corner, a time-stamp.  And in the lower left corner, in white, in brackets, how far down the pipe we are.

As I said, mostly it's uninteresting, but occasionally, you hit a joint

Or here, at 9 feet in, we have gone under the gate into the back yard and are turning to go over and run along the fence.

At 18 feet, we are along the fence and turn to run parallel to it.

Further down, we run into some twigs that got into the drain and have not yet been flushed down or decomposed.  We actually ran into some at 26 and 34, but the camera will actually push them down the pipe as it moves forward.

At 53 feet, we hit another turn, where the side fence stops at the fence along the back of the lot (on the West side) and turns to continue down the back yard.

Then, at 59 feet, the bottom of the pipe seems to fall off.  Kyle says this looks like the pipe has been broken or collapsed.

And a few feet more, a massive root ball.  Kyle says this is most likely from the big old oak tree in the back.

Then, to know exactly where the camera is, Kyle could turn the cable into an antenna of some kind generating a signal that he could pick up with a locator device to follow the cable from the clean out pipe down the back yard to exactly where this root ball is, and he marked it on the ground with a big white circle ( and I stuck a yellow flag).

So we know exactly where the problem is.  I can dig down and find the French drain at this location, take it apart, repair it and we will be back in business.  Also this would be a good spot for another clean-out pipe.  Apparently, good practice is a clean-out pipe every 50 feet.