Gutter Guards for the Discerning Contractor
Gutter Guards for the Discerning Contractor
Minimizing the chances of debris getting into a gutter, regardless of its size
Maximizing the amount of water that can be redirected into the gutter
Reduction of the need formaintenance on the part of the homeowner
Incorporate properties that allow the filtration element to self-clean
MicroMeshGutterGuards.com’s products are the leaders in genuine microfiltration technology. Our technological advancements have led the industry and stem from the critically acclaimed industry innovator in gutter guards, Alex Higginbotham.
MicroMeshGutterGuards.com’s patented technologies weren’t created overnight. Each design developed from the original technology of innovator Alex Higginbotham. Only a handful of people may remember his Leaf Free product–a great start, but a proven failure. But inventors don’t necessarily get it right all at once. The critical moment came when he touched the underside of a filter with a contact point designed to redirect water through the filter. This concept, which he’s patented through multiple embodiments of the underlying technology, was the genesis of change for an industry.
When challenges developed, he built prototypes to address the problem. Dozens of them. Sometimes even more. Often, the challenge he set out to solve got figured out in ways that were completely different from the starting point. In many cases, it took years to get to a solution. In fact, the MicroMeshGutterGuards.com warehouse is filled with many designs that just didn’t perform to his standards.
And yet a failure is usually the genesis of a new idea. When something fails, it gives you a reason to work to discover why it failed. And those initial thoughts became the springboard to ideas and ways to overcome failure.
It took about seven years to create the next generation of microfiltration found in MasterShield. His expanded metal technology took about eight years to get to the next generation. There were probably more than 200 prototypes of each along the way. That’s 400 failures before we could call MasterShield the Gold Standard of Gutter Protection and release an expanded metal product in Klean Gutter that could outperform his earlier designs.
It was worth the journey to fail, because in our case, failing worked.
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
Alex tested different roof types, roof pitch and amounts of water flow. Higginbotham’s innovations ultimately led him to produce the first gutter guard to ever feature stainless steel in any part of its design (our microfilter). Over the years, the filter has evolved from a common 316 stainless steel filter to one custom woven to meet specifications of the Higginbotham Ratio, one of Alex’s many discoveries that improved filter performance.
MicroVortex, the name we’ve given to this custom weave, will help you distinguish it from other systems that use a microfilter. A MicroVortex filter takes more water through it and self-cleans better than anything that came beforehand. The properties of this custom filter are worth seeking out in microfitration. This latest advancement in filtration technology was incorporated into MasterShield in 2011.
Another Higginbotham innovation is HydroVortex Technology, another feature unique to MasterShield. Unlike other systems that rely solely on gravity to pull water through them, HydroVortex Technology allows water to be pulled through the system at virtually any angle, from flat to vertical. It’s the key feature that allowed MasterShield to be pitched with the roof, improving the product’s ability to shed debris by just using wind more efficiently and effectively.
Alex Higginbotham now holds ten US patents for gutter protection, as well as two Canadian and one Australian patent. In these patents, he teaches over 14 new technologies, representing about 15% of all the advancements in the field of gutter guards since 1880. No one understands microfiltration better than Alex Higginbotham.
Alex has several patents pending in all three countries. There is no other gutter cover technology available today with the sweat equity and research that has been put into MicroMeshGutterGuards.com.
