Rwanda trip Journal, part 2

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Part 2: Working on Clean Water in Kibuye, Rwanda on behalf of No Thirsty Child. and www.peacewater.org

 Great thanks to my wife Lisa, Mr. and Mrs. Larry McBride and Bill and Karen Cass and Candi and Bill Chavez for making this possible and also to my teammates Joel Lautenschleger and Peter Hoffman.
a new email from Rwanda:" Dearest Larry
I am very glad to inform you that today :Pentecost day we had the tank fulL of rain water everbody at Free Methodist church was shouting of joy I trust that It was the same at Assembly of God church.
May God bless you dearest Larry and all the Team Pastor Léonidas " 6-13-2011

A huge collection of photographs from the trip is HERE.

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We scouted our two locations. I guess I am in charge of the installation at this point. Joel is the team leader but I am the technical expert, at gutters lol, so I am making the bulk of the decisions on how the gutter installation is going to go but there is no friction or competition at all. Joel is team leader and managed the project funds and Peter took care of the logistics such has paying for our drivers, rooms and whatnot. We all worked together on the installation and training. The ever present children, sometimes begging and usually pointing and waving at us when we went anywhere and shouting the word for white person. Larry cracks me up, he points back and shouts “ black child “.

We in our world can see the pictures, but you have to come here to see the life they have. It is inconceivable to us. You cannot imagine the conditions some of these people live in, yet most


everywhere we go we are greeted with their lovely smile and “ armakuru? “ to which we reply “ ne meza “, which means we are fine. Americans could learn a lesson from these people, but we won’t. Or at least, the ones who have never been here will not.

Peacewater is Larry and Carolyns baby 100%. He is probably the closest thing to a saint I have known.

The remains of the stadium.

I could write for hours, but I am toast. The Kibuye stadium is being torn down; the walls are gone and only a portion of the stands remain. It is best that the horrible place be replaced as it is; with a hospital. A thousand or so feet from the stadium where some 10,000 were executed over the course of two days is yet another Catholic church where yet another congregation was butchered.  There are gutted structures of churches that we see pretty frequently. I don’t care to imagine the horrors that those walls witnessed. In Rwanda the Tutsis were about 10% of the population but here in Kibuye they were about 20%. The beautiful lake that my room overlooks still has ( according to Larry ) the bones of unknown thousands that were killed and tossed into the water.

Today we started the gutter installation on our first location. It went well enough. We went to the lumber yard and got our wood. The men here make about 2000 francs per day if they are lucky, or about $3.00 u.s.

They are in a mixture of rags, dirty clothes and failing coveralls with flip flops or leather dress shoes. Some have rubber rain-type boots and I can only imagine what their feet must feel like after wearing them all day. The electrical panel is open, sawdust is a foot thick on the ground in places and the machines are at least as old as I am. I guess that tarp covered workshop is home to four different businesses. They make attractive furniture that will be  exported to the Congo twenty five miles across the lake. I negotiated a price for eighty feet of hardwood 1” x 6” and eight pieces of rafter material, cut to our specs, planed smooth and delivered for the equal of $37.00 U.S. dollars.

A curious group watched us work all day. We had to break to get one of our “ ladders “ welded. It was hard dirty work. The pastor showed up and despite what we were expecting he was grateful for what we were doing, however we were doing it. At first he had said, “ I have a metal roof, I want metal gutters and two tanks, and gutters on both sides of the building. Larry, the consummate negotiator and diplomat fixed that and we asked the pastor enough questions that he felt like we were respecting his church and opinions, then he left.

We finished the day at the Bethany Hotel sipping coffee and chatting with our various families via skype and now I am in the dining room awaiting the dreaded Sombasa diner. Sombasa are little sardine sized fish that you eat whole with the head tail guts and all. The sunset was spectacular and once again electrical storms light the sky over the Congo. ( ps, the sombasa were great. They are deep fried and tasted like sweet French fries )

TUESDAY

I sit in a restaurant in downtown kibuye with the workers that are helping that are helping us install the rain harvest system on the first church. The food is served buffet style and there was some excitement when we pulled up as our driver knocked over a motorcycle trying to park. The owner ran up to the window and I had a brief moment of terror, not knowing if I was about witness a battle or what. This is my first time away from the team and on my own. I got sent with the crew to get them lunch and buy some more water.  Our friend Jados looks over my shoulder as I type watching every word. This is such a strange experience. Aside from one Chinese person I am the only non-African around. Jados is on staff at Saddleback as the in-country staff person, but I guess he only gets paid when there is a clean water team in Rwanda, so he is very happy to see us.

The first location completed with the foundation for the rain tank, the fascia board and rain gutters installed. First Assembly Of God Church, Kibuye, Rwanda

WEDNESDAY

It was a long day.

We got the first system pretty much done. We went into town to purchase another ladder today. The ladders we have to use are the most ridiculous thing you could imagine. The picture of the ladder to the left is part of the good ladder of the two we had. :)

When you purchase a ladder in Kibuye that means going to the local welder and having one made. They close their eyes when the arc lights and the transformer is a open spool of wire. To get the right voltage the wrap, or unwrap a few strands of wire.

The second site is going to be more difficult, just because of the kids mobbing us. They are mostly the abandoned children of the local prostitutes. Filthy, and often in rags they gather to watch us work. Yet always, that easy smile and joyful greeting for us. There is a lot of alcoholism here. Many stores sell beer and hard stuff. The poor drunks drink homemade banana beer. I am now showered and waiting for diner in the common eating room. There is not much to do in the room beside sleep.

THURSDAY

Today we started work at our second location. It is going to be easier, although it is in the direct sun all day. We called it a half day as we are all exhausted. We will go this afternoon into the countryside to visit the site where Immacule hid in the bathroom for three months with eight other women as the genocide raged around them. I am really looking forward to getting out away from the city of 30,000 where we are staying and into the remote areas.

My body clock is finally adjusting to the time difference, which is about nine hours. I have been skipping the morning walks that Larry, Pete and Joel take every morning as I am the one doing the bulk of the installation as I am the only one with previous experience, but I guess they saw otters in Lake Kivu which is about a half mile from where we are staying. The sunsets over the lake are spectacular every night without fail. The Catholic girls’ school below us finishes their day with a song every night a nine o’clock and it is a sweet sound that makes you instantly feel relaxed. I am kind of surprised that there are Catholic churches anymore to be honest. Jasque, our interpreter was raised in that faith but after the war, as Rwandans call the genocide, he will not attend a Catholic church anymore. He says they cannot be Christians as some of the priests were participating in the murders. To me, that some of the worst areas of mass killings were inside the Catholic churches defies understanding. It is easy from a distance to say that all Catholics suck but the Sister that runs the hotel where we are staying is a sweet and caring woman. They are not charging us to do our laundry as they know we are volunteers working in the community. Lunch is now being served.

We finished the day as usual, at the hotel Bethany where there is wireless internet and we drink coffee with hot milk. It is such a bizarre thing to get the wife and kids on skype on a video call here, half way around the world. Another oddity about Rwanda is that you can be deep in the country and there is cell service. There seems to be nowhere you can go that you cannot get a call. They don’t drop, they don’t garble. I guess that there never were land lines so they just erected cell towers everywhere. After we went to Immacules house we stopped by some of the wells that are leaking or not working. These wells were put in by another NGO and the problem is educating the locals to not let the children abuse the wells, to keep their cows away so they don’t poop where it can run into the well head and contaminate the water supply.  The NGO is called Living Water and they too are doing important work. Now there just needs to be some maintaining and repairing of the wells. There seems to be quite a lot of them. One problem I can see with groups coming in to give stuff to the people is that they have no investment, no ownership ( as Larry says ). We are hoping to change that with what we are doing by insisting that the churches we are working on provide volunteers to assist with the installation of the gutters and rainwater harvest storage tanks. That way, if the gutters get damaged, they might have some knowledge about how to fix them. By investing in at least the labor they may be more inclined to keep the children from damaging the tanks.Larry wanted the churches to pay for the foundations for the tanks which cost about $180.00 U.S. for the cut stone and concrete, but when you are at a church where people tithe with lemons and bananas, or a few pennies there is simply nothing they can do besides provide the sweat equity which is more than they are doing with the wells, where a drilling truck comes in, the crew lays a foundation the drilling happens, the well is dedicated and its “ see you later. “

I had a nice chat at the Bethany Hotel with a man from Burundi who is a nutritional specialist who has been working here since the genocide. His job is to go into the refugee camps and deal with the rampant malnutrition and getting the former Rwandans to repatriate. I guess many of the perpetrators of the genocide fled and they are in limbo in camps along the borders surrounding this country. They may face trial and prison time if they return, but the penalty might be as little as ten years, even for those who may have killed hundreds. The main goal is reconciliation. My friend from Burundi ( I couldn’t  pronounce and will not even attempt to spell his name ) says that something like the genocide could happen again if there is not continuing efforts at healing. He says that in perhaps fifty years the memory will have faded enough that it would finally be over.

FRIDAY

Success!

We got the second rainwater harvest system installed. I felt confident enough in our Rwandan assistant that I stepped into the church ( EDIT; to be honest, I had a moment and found myself cursing at the absurdity of the ladders, having no tool bags, poor communication, so I needed a break ) for a half an hour to work on this and let them finish the installation.
We took a motorcycle taxi through downtown Kibuye ( #27 on the list of things I never imagined I would do ) and went to the Congo market. The scene probably hasn't changed much in two thousand years except now the oarsmen are required to wear life vests. Bananas and plantains are brought to the shore of Lake Kivu where they are traded for avocados and other misc. locally grown produce. I saw children with bundled firewood that were carried in balanced on their heads to be traded. On the other side of the road hundreds of pigs, goats, cattle and chickens were gathered waiting for the end of the day where they are herded onto the boats and taken back to the Congo.

The second team that is in Rwanda right now is focused exclusively on hygiene and they met us today here in Kibuye. It was nice to see them again after a week apart and we all had diner of barbecued goat, fries, pasta and passion fruit at our hotel. They want to visit the sites where we have done our work and then we will all recreate and go visit two islands. I asked the driver to stop at the site of the former Kibuye soccer stadium where about 10,000 people were massacred. The politicians and police told them to gather there so they could be protected. Then the soldiers began throwing grenades and machine gunning them. Those not killed that way were finished with machetes. It took about three days to finish the job. I guess the killers would keep regular hours; in the morning they would gather, set up road blocks and do their business. Come five o'clock or so they would clock out and go home. If they encountered potential victims after hours they would let them go. " We'll get you cockroaches tomorrow. "

Our friend Jados was a student at the catholic school right next to the stadium and stayed home during the one hundred days of carnage. Our interpreter Jasque escaped with his older sister; they were hunted like animals the whole time; moving and foraging for food at night and hiding in the forests during the day.

Tomorrow will be our last full day in Kibuye. I guess I will go out with just our interpreter deep in-country to scout churches. Woot!

Next Up: Free Time, House Visits and Hygiene Training Observations

http://abraingutters.blogspot.com/2011/06/rainwater-harvesting-in-rwanda-part-3.html

Rwanda trip journal, part 1

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 The gist is we are using donations to fund rainwater harvesting on churches in Rwanda and part of my role is to help put together a training manual that others can use and hopefully other teams doing similar work will find this useful. These first parts contains the story. A future post will have the technical information on how to install rainwater systems in the third world. Rainwater harvesting combined with Sawyer filters brings clean drinkable water.

My role is the “ rain water catchment specialist “, which is a fancy way of saying I am a gutter guy. I have been doing this for almost 26 years and have done just about everything a person could possibly do with that. I had often wished my life had been spent doing something else as gutters are not that glamorous. But you know what? It could be that all along this was my purpose and that all those years of hard work were not as meaningless as they sometimes felt.

I never imagined I would be here, or that something as mundane as rain gutters could benefit people in such a fundamental way as providing them drinking water. The catchment ( gutters ) combined with the other technology like the filtration means that some will not have to go to the ditch as I see them do now and fill their jugs. The team members Pete and Joel are awesome. There is no friction whatsoever. Larry is here guiding the way and his job is complicated. Makes mine look like child’s play. Perhaps that’s why he refers to us as his children.
This is a wonderful experience and if you ever get a chance to come here, do it.

More to come when I can.

LAX May 26th

En route to Kigali Rwanda aboard a 757. First to Washington D.C., then to Brussels and then an overnight flight to Kigali Rwanda. We will spend Saturday in Kigali getting our supplies and funds converted. Then we take a 3 hour drive to the city of Kibuye where we will work.

On board are the other members of my team Joel and Pete and another team of four. I am nervous about the twenty hours of flight and my ability to let go of life back home. I miss the wife and kids already. I am hoping that my own, and the teams goals are achieved.

Washington D.C. May 26th

Pete and I almost missed the flight. First they said we had 45 minutes so we grabbed some food, but on international flights I guess they depart when the bulk of the passengers are on board and we made it to the gate about two minutes before they closed the door.

We are now over the Atlantic. This flight seems like it has been going on four six hours but it has only been two. The wife was concerned that I might have some reaction to the sudden detox, and I was too, but not much. I am a creature of habit and I had let some habits get the better of me. I am taking some vitamins and herbs to help with depression. Yes. It’s been four years now since the great recession started and I feel exhausted from the stress. It is a weird place to be; wife, kids, house; but hardly any income. Ah well. The bond between my wife and kids has actually gotten stronger. I kept looking at her expecting her to have had enough and up and bail, but she is actually proving daily that I made a good choice in a wife. Part of what I am doing is trying to force a change in myself and my ways of thinking. She and those two precious kids of mine deserve it.

It was so strange to leave D.C. in the afternoon, see it get dark for two hours out the window and then have the dawn sky rise. It doesn’t feel like we have been up all night, but I at least have not slept for more than one hour. I believe we are somewhere over England now. I can only see a red dawn and a thick layer of clouds. I had requested a window seat but on both planes so far we have all had aisle seats. That was a good lesson for a long flight and here is the first example of the trip of Larry McBrides experience; it is way better to have an aisle seat. You have better leg room and it is easy to get up and walk around. I just listened to some dramatic music for five minutes on the airplane headphones and was hooked until the singing started; I can’t understand whatever it is. The same thing with the cabin announcements from the pilot. Everything is said in English, French and Dutch.

So far I have a bit of a tummy ache and I feel three stages past tired, but I still can’t get any rest as just when I begin to nod off somebody in our aisle of five seats needs to get up. The plane has two seats on each side and a row of five in the middle. We are sitting next to a father and son who appear to be from Africa as they are the best dressed on the plane. Pete explained it best; all that they have is their clothes. Most do not have cars or property so they dress very formally and keep themselves very nice. The dad has a three piece suit on. You just don’t see that a lot.

Now I try and sleep again. We are one hour from our second stop in Brussels , looks like maybe over Ireland based on the map on the seat in front of me.

45 minutes from Kigali

That was the best airplane food I have ever had. The American airline companies should take a lesson from Brussels air. There was a delicious pasta salad with some sort of turkey sandwich that tasted amazing. The food on United was flavorless microwaved glop. I would love to be able to spend a day sightseeing. The buildings and farms all look so quaint.

I lucked into a window seat on the flight to Kigali and I have spent the time awake with my nose to the window. I could not see any of the towns that show on the plane map, but I could see the Nile river, and huge flows of volcanic rock poking out from sand dunes. What appears to be single lane roads lead for hundreds of miles away from the water. I couldn’t help but think of the conflicts in Libya and Yemen as we flew over. In the minds eye I imagined tracer rounds shooting up at us, or perhaps a guided missile but that world is far below and they are oblivious to us.

I can feel my work issues fading. I don’t think I will have any room in my brain for the troubles that have been bogging me down at home. The people I am traveling with are awesome. There is not a hint of discomfort I feel with any of them. Now the sun is setting and it is getting dark. Not a single light can be seen on the ground.

We are now 33 minutes from meeting Larry at the airport.

First night in Rwanda

We were greeted at the airport by Larry. He seemed glad to have some company. I could only see the few miles that led from the airport. There are police in yellow vests and radios everywhere and about every quarter mile there is a soldier with an AK-47. It is all very surreal. The soldiers look spiffy in their black berets, but there is a hardness, a humorlessness to them. I hope to get a picture with one. You get the sense that if the country suddenly went insane again there is not much you could do besides hide. There are many little salons and shops and bars. If one had to party there is ample opportunity. The hotel where we are staying is sort of a church too. Not really clear on that.

There are beautiful new buildings being built within a stones throw of shacks with no power, as far as I can see. The main form of theft deterrence is shards of glass set into the mortar on top of all the brick walls.

Most places have walls, as if the memory of the roving bands of blood thirsty militias are not so distant. There are cell phones everywhere. Walking at night was strange. Joel was carrying about 14k in U.S. dollars and the other team about the same. I guess crime isn’t much of an issue. The black case Joel was carrying had our project funds.

Tomorrow we wake up and go for a walk as the city is shut down until noon for community service. I guess people have a choice on that one weekend a month; you either clean up something, help build something or you stay out of site. Joel was supposed to come here last year but that trip was cancelled because there was an election going on and the main opposition dude was found sans head, and there was concern that the madness would return. I guess there are free elections, as long as you vote for the guy they want you too. The people here express faith and love for their president. I wish it were like that where I live. I have little doubt that if somebody tried to assassinate the president hell would be unleashed again. We had a nice diner a few hundred feet from where we are staying.

There was beef, fish, rice and potatoes. I guess many Rwandans only eat meat on religious holidays, perhaps 2-3 times per month. Obesity is a non-issue, all the men are stick thin and there are large boned tough looking girls but they don’t have the luxury of gluttony. The place we ate had a full bar and wireless internet. It was spotless and the decorations were a casual African cool.

Beat. Shower and sleepy time. I am happy there is security glass on the walls where we are staying.

Kibuye, Day One

We started today with the best coffee I have ever had and then walked up to the “ Hotel Rwanda “ which is actually named something else.

It was a beautiful place with a full bar and huge swimming pool. There are no signs of the war. As we were loading the bags cars rounded the corner with lights flashing and men with guns. They must have been doing fifty down the street and we all scrambled to get the doors shut on the vehicles as the driver said, because who it was was the president of Rwanda. I guess they drive like maniacs to make a smaller target. Then we went to the market in Kigali to exchange money and get water and anything else that had been forgotten, i.e. I forgot shampoo and Pete forgot toothpaste. When we pulled up to the car a mother nursing a baby came up and, it was an instinctual reaction, I handed her my bag of trail mix and some change. Biggest mistake thus far of the trip; within seconds a half dozen mothers with nursing babies surrounded the car, pointing to their children and then to their own stomachs. Then a boy about five came up and shook his stump of an arm at us and said he was very hungry. So, the ladies had to sit and try to ignore the mothers as they stood inches from the car, staring and pointing to their babies while Larry and company exchanged about 14k in American hundred dollar bills into Rwandan francs. The market had all you could need and even had a machete section.

Somewhat disturbing, seeing a stack of the long curved blades. I may actually buy one as they were only $3.00.

Then we went to the genocide museum.

It was a respectful and somber place. That day happened to be the national day of mourning so there were many fresh displays of flowers and, a crowd carried in a small box of just recovered bones to be interned with the other 275,000 or so human beings placed on a space no bigger ours and our neighbors house and yards combined.

I guess they are still finding bodies all over. The family was about fifty or so members dressed in beautiful African best; traditional robes and elaborate head pieces on some of the ladies. Apparently they go to the perpetrators and offer them money to reveal where their relatives were killed. Sometimes the bodies can be recovered.

The pictures at the museum were much more hardcore than anything you’d ever find on the internet. Children with machete hacks in their skull that somehow survived by being left for dead and pulled from the piles of their mothers and fathers by the rare heroes of the carnage, piles of horrifically chopped bodies, some with outstretched hands with deep slices in their palms that were obviously defensive wounds and the unbelievable remains of decaying bodies that were left for months to rot, heaped in piles inside churches.

I have now seen true hell on Earth and the remains of unimaginable carnage with my own eyes. I think I have seen one person that looked over forty. That entire generation almost, is gone. I thought the pictures of the faces, the clothes of the victims and the room of remains was bad, but what really kicked me in the groin was when I went to see The Wall Of Names; of the 275,000 bodies there, I saw a list of maybe a thousand or so names. The rest of the wall was blank.

The death toll had to be much higher, because many latrines and pit toilets were filled with bodies, or had live people thrown in them, and then rocks tossed in until they stopped screaming, and it is unlikely that they could have recovered them all. Some families were chained together and buried alive. It makes me sad to think of all the people, the good people like our interpreter and good friend Jasque who is a Rwandan presidential scholar, or C.W.I's ( stands for clean water initiative ) in country person named Jados who were murdered for a stupid and pointless reason.

The initial method that the scum French used to determine who was Hutu and who was Tutsi was simple; if you had over ten cows you were considered a Tutsi and your name was put on a list. I really have no words to describe my feelings for the Catholics and the other so called pastors who participated in the slaughter. The French will forever be tainted in my mind.

The second memorial we stopped at was a former catholic church site where an unknown number of people were entombed. About a thousand Tutsi and moderate Hutus were inside the church when the pastor demanded that all the Hutus leave. Some of the Hutus were married to Tutsis or were friends and neighbors and they refused to budge so the pastor hired a man with a bulldozer, who didn’t want to knock down the walls until the pastor assured him that a replacement would be built, and then he knocked the walls down in on the thousand victims and ran his tractor over the rubble until they were all dead.

The man had no problem with the killing, he just didn’t want to ruin his church. The school building still stands with the long empty rows of seats. I looked through the glass and imagined the echoes of the children.

The drive to Kibuye was not like I imagined as all along the way there were people. I don’t think we went more than two minutes without seeing a person and the majority carried the old diesel fuel cans that many use to carry water. There was a man with a wooden bicycle, many women with high loads balanced on their heads and lots of children.

I have a private room with a view of the lake but no internet. We will be here for almost two weeks so I am fully unpacked and appreciating the privacy. Now my eyes blur and fatigue overwhelms me. The only toys I have seen are metal rings which the boys push along with a stick. I see boys four or five years old working in the fields, carrying water and forced to beg, yet they greet us with big waves and warm smiles. It is hard to believe what evil these beautiful people committed; the crime just doesn’t match the happy faces we see everywhere.

Tomorrow we scout our locations and go to church.

SUNDAY

Ya, wow. It is hard to describe today.

The church service was a powerful experience. To see people living in such poverty, yet filled with such joy. They first look at us with wonder, like, who are these people and why are they here. We walked in like rock stars and when we were introduced there was a respectful round of applause. Then it came time for us to speak and Larry whipped them into a fever within about one minute.

Joel got up to speak and it was not quite the same effect. Pete and I just waved from the podium when it was our turn. The sound of the singing was…beautiful. They danced and clapped like nothing you can even imagine. The pastor beat a metal drum. The olfactory senses were assaulted as it was a packed house with no electricity and few windows. I would not want to be in there come summer time.

One of the old women sitting close to us ( center left, below and left of the guy

with the cabbage in the white shirt ) had a large scar on the side of her head from a machete wound. We had a translator ( who will visit us when he returns to California ) who tried to keep us informed about what the songs were saying; “ don’t give up, no matter how hard life is you must keep trying…”. Afterwords we visited the pastor at his home. No power. No plumbing.

I can see that Peacewater has some huge challenges. So far there are no churches that are able to buy into their own rainwater catchment systems. When you are person who attends a mud church with log rafter beams and pays tithing with husks of corn or a few lemons and your children have scabbies and live in rags it is easier to understand why they wouldn’t be able to contribute financially. Some of these churches have no roofs.

NEXT: The work week in Africa.

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First Stage Filtration for Rainwater Harvesting Systems

" California is like, so totally lagging behind in this whole rainwater harvesting thing. "

 Ah well, we are a crisis orientated society. It will take a serious Earthquake or major prolonged drought before people get it, I guess. The above quote is loosely taking from this story here.

A fine mesh high quality gutter screen should be a priority on a rainwater harvesting system.

One of the most important parts of a rainwater harvesting system is the debris screen for the rain gutters. I often hear customers say that for the price of an even inexpensive gutter screen you could hire a day laborer to clean them once a year. The key question may be; are you going to do that?
People forget stuff. They forget to clean their gutters and even more so, their roofs. Unconsidered by many an average homeowner in Southern California is the risk they take when hiring those day laborer types. They don't realize that the legal responsibility is on them, the homeowner. You are required by law to have insurance to cover uninsured laborers. Ask yourself, and I speak to the other poor saps I see on the freeway everyday; do you have an umbrella policy that will cover you when that displaced transnational entity falls off your roof while cleaning your gutters?
I didn't think so.

Not maintaining your roof and gutters causes all kinds of property damage;

See more pictures of this Long Beach California home that had 40k in damage due to leafs clogging the valley metal, gutters and trapping moisture in the wood roofing deck. Click HERE

On a tile roof like that ( and by-the-way, those types of tile roofs are known to gutter dudes as " egg-shells " ), leafs collect on the roof and when it rains the debris forms a barricade for the water. Water is ruled by gravity and finds its way down, which means that the water spreads out under the tiles and causes damage. As a gutter man for 26 years I have installed miles of EZ Lock gutter screen. The problem for a contractor is that when people see grass growing out of a gutter with screen you installed they will call you wanting to know, " why the heck is there grass growing out my gutters that you, Mr. Expert, installed two years ago?!? I need a service call! "

It creates a warranty or maintenance issue; if you are savvy, you will explain that any 1/4": mesh gutter screen will have debris get inside it anyways and that they, the homeowner, will still have to clean their gutters. The fact is revealed; they are wasting their money. Being honest avoids the warranty issue as they understand that even though they have spent good money on a gutter screen they still have to clean their gutters, which will be twice as hard with a screen on it, but it also avoids the issue all together because what self respecting homeowner would spend money on a product they are informed does not work?

So after 26 years installing rain gutters and 14 years being an independent business I have picked a gutter screen that actually works. It is of a thicker stouter material than any other gutter screen. It is so strong that a heavy tradesmen could lean a ladder on the gutter and the gutter would likely not be damaged at all.

I present to you, Gutterglove.

click the image for a larger view

 The above image was from a rainwater harvest installation in Tustin, California where we used Gutterglove Ultra as a first stage filtration device. The idea is not only to keep the gutters clean, but to keep sedement from forming in the bottom of the rain barrels. The next image is from a rainwater harvesting project in Los Angeles and featured Gutterglove Pro;

 These are real life examples of products that work from a dude ( that's California for person ) that has been in the trenches for over a quarter century, installing all types of seamless and custom rain gutters. All over the L.A and San Diego area are gutters that bear my brand; Las Vegas. Salt Lake City. Volcano, Hawaii and soon, thanks to God and www.peacewater.org I will be installing rain gutters and rainwater harvesting systems in Rwanda.

I'd like to recognize Robert Lenny, the owner of Gutterglove for his generous cash donation to the P.E.A.C.E. team. We at www.peacewater.org are bringing clean water to people in need in five countries.

Details

Construction:
Gutterglove Ultra consists of two components, a perforated aluminum channel and type 316 stainless steel mesh. The stainless steel mesh is glued into grooves along both sides of each 5 foot aluminum channel section. It installs on any existing gutter. Gutterglove's specifications were designed so that it simply slips under the roof shingles and fits snuggly to the front lip of your gutter. Gutterglove should be installed at the same pitch as the roof (up to 5/12) to get the best performance of debris shedding off. However, it's not necessary to install Gutterglove at greater then a 30 degree pitch.
Aluminum Channel Frame:
Aluminum Channel Frame: The extruded aluminum support frame is anodized to further protect itself from the environment and to make it more adaptable to be installed on a copper gutter. The anodizing process converts the aluminum surface into an extremely hard, durable, corrosion resistant, long-lasting aluminum oxide finish. Anodizing also responds favorably to current governmental regulations because it is one of the most environmentally friendly industrial processes. Since this process is a reinforcement of a naturally occurring oxide process, it is non-hazardous and produces no harmful or dangerous by products. Anodized aluminum is used around the world as highly durable exteriors in commercial buildings such as one of the world’s tallest buildings, the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois. Other revolutionized uses are in scientific instruments, home appliances, satellites in space for harsh environmental protection, staircases in skyscrapers and a host of other uses.

Gutterglove is the ONLY gutter guard in existence that uses an anodized extruded aluminum profile.

Stainless Steel Mesh:
The super-strong type 316 stainless steel mesh allows more than 150 inches of hourly rainfall to filter through to your gutter. Type 316 is molybdenum-bearing austenitic stainless steel which is more resistant to general corrosion and pitting/crevice corrosion than the conventional chromium nickel austenitic lower quality stainless steels such at types 302 and 304 or any other standard stainless steel alloys. The pots and pans manufacturers that are highly promoted at home and garden shows for their non-corrosive attributes are only type 304 stainless steel.
The 316 alloy offers higher creep, stress-to-rupture and tensile strength at elevated temperatures. It also resists attack of marine and corrosive industrial atmospheres which makes it an ideal component for Gutterglove. Type 316 stainless steel alloy is widely used in the food, marine and medical industries.