Gutter Guards in Akron, OH

Akron did most of its growing in a hurry. The census counted 69,067 residents in 1910 and 208,435 in 1920, as tire and rubber work pulled families in faster than builders could keep up. Firestone and Goodyear answered the shortage by planning whole neighborhoods for their workers, and private builders filled in the rest of the city through the 1920s and again after the Second World War.

The result is a city full of houses from roughly 1920 to 1950: Tudors and colonials with steep roof pitches, bungalows with dormers, then postwar Capes and ranches. A steep roof sends leaves and water down fast, so the gutter at the bottom takes the whole load at once. Many still wear their original fascia boards, painted and patched for the better part of a century, and a guard rests on that board.

More on this: gutter guards on older Akron homes.

Each part of the city drops something different into a gutter. Four of them have a longer guide on the Akron neighborhoods page.

Highland Square

Off West Market Street, more than half the houses were built before 1940, mostly colonials and Tudors in the 1920s style. Tall roofs, short dormer runs and mature street trees mean these gutters fill from several directions at once.

Firestone Park

Harvey Firestone started this South Akron neighborhood in the mid 1910s, and landscape architect Alling S. DeForest laid it out around a central park shaped like the Firestone shield. Its tree-lined boulevards have had more than a century to close in overhead.

Goodyear Heights

Frank Seiberling's answer to the same housing shortage, laid out in East Akron in 1912 and 1913 by Warren Manning, who also designed the grounds at Stan Hywet. Seiberling wanted traditional-style cottages, and cottage roofs have short runs and few downspouts, so one blocked outlet floods the whole run.

Kenmore

Kenmore was its own city until voters on both sides approved joining Akron in November 1928. It grew mostly between 1910 and 1920 as a town of salt miners and rubber workers. On a house that old, the wood behind the gutter line deserves a close look before anything is fastened to it.

Ellet

Akron's largest neighborhood by both area and population, with more than 19,000 residents in the southeast corner of the city around the Goodyear Airdock. It joined Akron in 1929, and its housing runs from early bungalows and Colonial Revivals to postwar ranches.

West Akron and Wallhaven

Wallhaven filled in from the early 1920s into the 1930s with Tudor Revivals, Colonial Revivals, Cape Cods and Dutch Colonials, many of them under heavy shade. Nearby Fairlawn Heights, annexed in 1932, puts houses on wooded hillside lots, and some back up to ravines. A ravine lot means leaves blowing in from trees you do not own.

Merriman Valley

The north end of the city, down in the Cuyahoga River valley at the southern edge of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, with Sand Run Metro Park's roughly 990 wooded acres next door. Houses sit on slopes among mature woods, and the back gutters, under the thickest canopy, are usually the first to fill.

The Leaf Solution guard is a stainless steel micro-mesh stretched over an aluminum frame. Its openings are small enough that rain soaks through, while nearly everything that falls from a tree stays on top, dries and blows away.

• Oak leaves. Tough and slow to break down, they hold water and mat flat in an open gutter.
• Maple leaves and seeds. The leaves come in fall, and the winged seeds spin down by the thousand each spring.
• Pine needles. Thin enough to slip through coarse screens, but not through micro-mesh.
• Shingle grit. Aging shingles shed sand-like granules that turn to paste with wet leaves. Most of it stays on the mesh.

When the city set out in 2025 to plant about 1,800 street trees on its devil strips, the species it named were northern red oak, sugar maple and serviceberry. Oaks and maples line Akron's streets, and they are what fills its gutters every fall.

Compare the options: micro-mesh against screens, foam, brushes and perforated guards.

The Leaf Solution guard fastens to the fascia board and the front lip of the gutter. Nothing slides under the shingles, which matters on older roofs, where prying up a brittle shingle tab in cold weather can crack it.

Because the guard depends on that board, the visit starts there. The owner checks the fascia for soft spots and splits, looks at how each run is hung, and photographs both. Runs on loose spikes or tired hangers get hidden hangers screwed into the rafter tails as part of the guard install, so the gutter keeps its pitch and gives the mesh a straight edge to sit on.

If a board has rotted or a steel gutter has rusted through, a guard is the wrong answer for that run, and the photo report will say so before you are asked to sign anything.

1. Clean out and flushEvery gutter is emptied by hand and every downspout is flushed with water, so no old debris ends up sealed under new mesh.
2. Hangers checkedEach run is checked for pitch and hold. Loose spikes and weak hangers give way to hidden hangers driven into the rafter tails.
3. Guards fastened, corners miteredPanels are screwed to the fascia and the gutter lip. Inside and outside corners are cut as miters, so every corner is closed.
4. Hose testA garden hose runs water over the finished mesh along each side of the house to prove it drains through and out the downspouts.
5. Photos the same dayYou receive pictures of the finished guards, the corners and the downspouts before the day is out.

The long version: how a gutter guard installation goes in Akron, and how the quote works before it.

Mesh

Stainless steel micro-mesh.

Frame

Aluminum, with Leaf Solution's triple-dip finish.

Mount

Fascia mount. Nothing goes under the shingles.

Colors

White, black or mill (plain aluminum).

Gutter sizes

Made for 5 inch and 6 inch gutters.

Material warranty

Leaf Solution's Lifetime No-Clog Warranty applies to the guard material. It takes in defects, the finish, and clogs caused by leaves, twigs, needles or seeds. Labor is not included, the warranty is not transferable, and a routine rinse is expected.

Workmanship warranty

Guttrz covers the installation itself for 10 years, parts and labor.

Both are spelled out on the gutter guard warranty page.

A rinse now and then

Pollen, seed fluff and sap film can coat the mesh. Under the heavy canopy of a Merriman Valley or West Akron lot, expect to rinse it with a hose once or twice a year.

Ice dams come from the attic

When warm air leaks into the attic, it melts the snow on the roof, and that water freezes again at the cold eave. The ridge of ice that builds up is an insulation and ventilation problem. A guard keeps the gutter open for the thaw, but it cannot keep the ice from forming.

A guard cannot straighten a bad gutter

Mesh on a sagging, leaking or rusted gutter leaves you with the same bad gutter. The inspection tells you which runs are sound enough for guards.

Guttrz is based in North Canton, and the drive to most of Akron is about 30 minutes up I-77. That is close enough for the owner to do every inspection himself and to come back if any part of the install needs a second look.

Guards are priced by the linear foot of gutter. After the visit you receive one written price for the whole house, based on the measurements in the photo report, and it stays valid for a year. Nothing has to be decided on the spot. The Akron gutter guard cost page explains what moves that number.

Get a written quote online

Four longer reads, each about this city and no other.

• What Akron's new street trees will drop in your gutters
• Gutter guards on rubber-era worker cottages
• Ravine lots in West Akron and the Merriman Valley
• How the city's leaf collection works, and what it leaves for your gutters