France in Focus

Nice autumn colours all around, too many dead leaves in gutters is another story. Last Saturday I saw an interesting solution for downpipes: a built-in slide. Water down, little leaves please why don't you play outside, use the glide. Normal water pressure and gravity should be enough, open for visual inspection. The other solution, an accessplate, doesn't prevent clogging. Prevention starts in the gutters with the help of plastic or metal 'spiders'.

A concours d'élégance is also possible: a nice curved downpipe.

Oooh, I like the curvy one !

We've had no problem since having grills put over the gutters a few years ago.

Looks like quite an elaborate system. Glad it works for you. My only gutter at risk catches willow leaves and such is the nature of willow, they drop all the year 'round. The are very thin and your grill things would not stop the willow. Only a very fine mesh would do it but then the leaves would just build up and block the water flow, so it would overflow the gutter and spill down the wall. On the bright side, it is the lowest gutter and can be reached from an ordinary step ladder so I do it every few months. The wall below it is covered with the healthiest passion flower I've ever seen. Rampant isn't a strong enough word to describe it.

When I virtually rebuilt our barn many years ago I removed the very dodgy & dangerous pitched roof leaving just the concrete pillars it sat on.
I constructed 8m long beams to span the pillars which I'd reduced in height on one side to give a fall of about 150mm across the width. A new roof was built off these beams using crinkly tin covering which discharged rainwater direct into the garden with no gutters.
One of out neighbours , now deceased, was quite adamant & viciferous that I'd made a huge mistake because the almost flat roof would hold a build up of leaves from the adjacent trees .
Almost 20 years later I don't think I've ever spotted more than the occasional leave remaining on this roof.