[cent]

Foam gutter inserts - good or bad? We have a heavily treed lot with everything from Chestnut, Maple, to Pine and Cedar; they create a huge problem with our gutters filling up all the time.

Is the foam inserts the best option? What happens in the winter, is there a chance of the surface freezing and water damming to happen?

Thank you.

[smearcase]

I lived on a property for ten years that had about 100 tulip poplars from 75 to 100 feet tall and I thought I had tried every gutter protection device ever made, but never saw the foam insert. Incidentally, none of the approx 10 products I tried were anywhere near acceptable but the foam wasn't one I had seen. I was too cheap to buy gutter helmet type products so I made my own metal helmet from scratch , using a pvc pipe as the curved face of the opening maintaining the necessary surface tension to carry the water into the gutter through a small opening while the leaves simply fell to the ground, and it worked well. It requires some work to build and buying parts and I would give you that design if you want it (no charge).
Just looking at what I could find on diff websites it appears to me that the foam insert takes up a lot of the capacity of the gutter cross section but maybe I didn't stumble on the particular product you are considering.
I am just conjecturing here since I have never seen the foam product but it is not something I would consider as the gutter overflowing because of not enough capacity would be just about as bad as gutters blocked by leaves, dirt etc.
Do you have any info on the effect of the foam on the capacity of the gutter section?