The article below was written by a Madison Newspaper's staff writer for the Home Products Show suppliment of February, 1993. While it's over ten years old and we no longer operate out of Middleton, the Rainhandler product information remains current. As a member of the Madison Area Builders Association for many years we contiue to exhibit the Rainhandler Rain Dispersal System at the Home Products Show anually, on the first weekend in March. It's the best place to see it perform without getting wet, unless you stand too close to the display!
Rainhandler tackles common gutter problems
By George Coburn
for Madison Newspapers (February 1993)
An engineer trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented a new way to get rid of the rain water that runs off the roof of your house. And he did it quite by accident.
It seems Dick Schapker, the homeowner, was cleaning the leaves and debris out of his gutters and downspouts a few years ago when his ladder tipped over, tossing him to the ground. The mishap got Dick Schapker, the engineer, to do some thinking and some tinkering. What he came up with is a product called “Rainhandler.”
Rainhandler is the brand name for what is called a rain dispersal system. It’s about as far removed from conventional gutter and downspouts as crabgrass is from chrysanthemums.
Basically, Rainhandler is a 3-inch wide strip of aluminum with louvered slats in it. It looks a little like the air conditioning vents found in some auto dashboards. The slats are angled so when water runs off the roof and hits them it sprays out like a light shower. Instead of a torrent of water rushing out of the downspout, Rainhandler turns the heavy runoff back into rain, distributing it more evenly over the yard. The product comes in 5-foot sections and it locks into brackets, which are mounted to the fascia of the house anywhere from 3 ½ inches to one foot below the drip line of the roof. It comes in white, brown, or bare aluminum, but custom paint jobs are available. Rainhandler comes with a 25 year warranty.
The big selling point, though, is that it’s designed to save the homeowner a lot of grief. Rainhandler doesn’t leak. Actually, it does, but it’s supposed to. It doesn’t freeze over in winter, or rust, or rot. Best of all, it doesn’t clog. No more scooping sloppy, wet handfuls of leaves out of your gutters while precariously perched on a ladder. If a leaf does get trapped, you just shoot it out with a garden hose. And there’s no more chipping away the ice when the snow on your roof starts to melt.
Those ice jams around conventional gutters can be a big problem, said Greg Hintze, the distributor for Rainhandler in the Madison area. Hintze, a remodeling contractor, owns Woodsman Services in Middleton (now near Portage, serving the Madison area and most of south-central Wisconsin). He’s done a lot of roofing projects and he knows the trouble ice in gutters can cause.
“In this climate, in the wintertime, gutters fill up with ice and snow,” he said. “Water from snow melting off the roof backs up against the ice and works its way up underneath the shingles. The result can be roof and trim damage. That won’t happen with Rainhandler.”
The system has another feature that should make environmentalists happy. Not only does it help prevent roof damage but it retards soil erosion as well.
When rainwater from the roof hits Rainhandler’s louvers it turns into a fine mist that falls gently on your yard in about a two-to five-foot swath for a single-story home. On a two-story house it’ll kick the water out even farther. If you have bushes next to your house chances are they’ll get a nice shower. That’s not likely with conventional gutters and downspouts. “Your typical gutter system, assuming it’s clean, will take all that roof water runoff and deposit it on ten percent of your lawn,” Hintze said. “That spot becomes saturated and the water has to run.” The result is a river of water cascading toward the nearest storm sewer, carrying soil, grass, fertilizers, whatever’s on you lawn, with it. That can be a big problem in the Madison area, especially with all the concern about improving the water quality of our lakes.
So, is Rainhandler tough enough to handle one of Wisconsin’s infamous summer downpours? You bet. “The harder it rains, the better it works,” Hintze said. In fact, the Tulsa, OK fire department helped conduct a test of the system by spraying water on a roof using one of their big, high pressure fire hoses. That’s more water than you’re likely to see even in the heaviest summer rain storm. Rainhandler handled it beautifully.
In an independent test, engineers put an 81-pound load on the Rainhandler for eight days, and while it sagged a little, as soon as they took the load off, it returned to its normal position.
Rainhandler has been on the market for nine years (since 1984). In the beginning, it was available only through mail order, and the orders didn’t exactly come pouring in. In 1990, the company began setting up a network of distributors and sales have picked up. Hintze was appointed Madison-area distributor in September of last year. He’s not only a Rainhandler distributor, he’s a Rainhandler customer.
“I’ve got ashes and maples surrounding my house,” Hintze said. “I just couldn’t keep up with the leaves.” Hintze tried screens on his gutters, but all that did was make them more difficult to clean out. When he finally took his gutter down he had a tiny maple tree actually growing in it. He discovered Rainhandler in a trade magazine, installed it, and it worked great. “I love it,” he said. “I figured if I enjoyed that much success with it there had to be at least a few other people out there who would too.”
In case you’re worried about getting wet when you walk out your door, Rainhandler makes what it calls “Doorbrella.” It diverts water over doorways and around skylights, making the system virtually leakproof where you’re standing.
While Rainhandler cures a lot of headaches for the homeowner, there’s another advantage. It looks good. It’s aesthetically pleasing. It’s practically invisible on the side of a home. When you look at it from the street it looks like a trim line or shadow. Hintze said a realtor told him they always take photographs of new homes before they put the gutters and downspouts up because they often spoil the look of the house.
As you can imagine, the cost of a Rainhandler system varies greatly, depending on the size of the house and the area to be covered. Generally, it’s a little more expensive than conventional gutter and downspouts, but because it’s virtually maintenance free, the system will pay for itself in the long run.
At the Madison Area Builders Association Home Products Show, you’ll be able to see first-hand just how the system works. Hintze has a display that will show you how Rainhandler disperses the water that runs off your roof. He warned, though, that he sometimes cranks up the water pressure during the demonstration, so you better stand back or you might get wet.
