Gutter Mind

We have gutters now! Yesterday I wasn’t sure if any work would be done since the forecast was calling for rain in the afternoon, but around 8:00am a truck labeled “Gutters For Less” showed up and a friendly guy named Mike introduced himself. They asked me a few questions, like whether I wanted the new gutters to wrap around the ends of the roof like the old ones did and what I wanted to happen with the ends of the downspouts where our Rain Barrels are sitting. Around noon they were done! Quick and easy.

I have only one complaint. We had asked Derrick when we first met with him (and reminded him a few times since) that we wanted the guttering guys to also install some leaf guards (a metal mesh that sits on top of the gutter to keep debris from building up inside of it) since we have to be more careful about getting up on the roof and it would be nice not to have to get up there to clean it. We bought the leaf guards ourselves ahead of time and showed one to Derrick so he would know what we were talking about. But when Mike the gutter guy came up to talk to me he didn’t mention the gutter guards and so I told him I wanted them to install the guards and brought them out and showed him one. He said he wasn’t sure if they would work or not but they would try. We’ve watched videos of people installing them on houses with slate tile roofs and things, and the size can be adjusted by folding them, so we were pretty sure they would work fine. But at the end of the job he told me they were too big and weren’t going to work. I told him about folding them and he said he didn’t think that would work either and generally didn’t seem to be interested in trying.

So, there’s a chance these gutter guards legitimately won’t work on the gutters they installed or won’t work with a Tesla solar roof, but our gut feeling is that these guys either weren’t getting paid to install them or didn’t want the hassle. We’re planning to rent an extension ladder and try installing them ourselves; I’ll post an update when that happens (which could be later in the year — we’ve got lots of yard tasks that have been queuing up while these guys have been outside.)

Either way though, I will say the nice white gutters look GREAT next to the jet black solar tiles!

Meanwhile, while the gutter guys were working the Tesla crew rolled up and started working too. They did get chased out by an incoming storm around 2:00pm but they got a decent amount of work done in the meantime. As you may have noticed in the photo above, they finished the top of the bay window in the kitchen.

Another thing they did was all the edge pieces up against the side of the house on the back half of the garage, leaving a little area under the window that needs to be moved:

They also did the black flashing right up against the house on the porch roof. Here’s an extreme closeup:

On a completely unrelated note, I tried walking on the tiles for the first time. They made creaking noises and flexed as I walked on them, which I was sure at any moment would lead to one breaking, but none did. Derrick has told me sometimes that nobody should walk on them without somebody from Tesla to oversee them, other times that you can walk on them as long as you stay in the middle and don’t step on the edge tiles, and other times acted like it’s fine of people get up there and just do whatever. I only walked on “middle” tiles and it went just fine.

I forget if I mentioned, but on Wednesday Derrick said he thought the whole job might be done yesterday or today. This morning I notice the port-a-potty is gone, so maybe that’s a good sign?

One other interesting thing happened last night, but I’m splitting that into a separate post.