There are a variety of things that a homeowner has to do to maintain his property, a few of them more frequently than others. For example, draining the water heater just has to be done annually, changing furnace filters every few months, watering the lawn every few days in the summer and trimming the trees maybe every two or three years. These are simply a few things on a lengthy list of maintenance needs on every home. One thing that must be done in many areas of the country at least two or three times in the fall is cleaning the leaves out of the rain gutters. This is certainly not enjoyable work. Water will start to break down the leaves so that a sludge is created, which can be a problem. On top of that, there is the fact that the rain gutters are affixed to the roof. This type of work would be intensive when done at ground level, but it is worsened when a homeowner needs to drag a ladder along and climb up and down over and over to get to rain gutters. Fortunately, someone determined there had to be a better way to go and invented the idea of gutter protection.
The theory with using gutter protection is that it helps to keep things from getting into the gutter to begin with, thus you can avoid having to clean them out. All sorts of stuff aside from leaves can get into your gutters although leaves are by far the biggest threat. But toys, newspapers, litter, and lightweight trash like plastic bags are easily thrown or blown up onto your roof over the course of a year. And anything that stops the flow of water down your rain gutters is a much more serious problem for your home than you might be aware.