InvisaFlow 4490 Downspout Filter, White

I live in Washington, yep fine pine needles and lots of rain. I waited to do this review until I had seen them in action for a Winter. I am finally ready to provide an opinion. They work. The vast amount of the water continues past the filter, and a large amount of the tree matter gets expelled out the front of the filter.Prior to installing this, ALL of the tree matter (pine needles, twigs, leaves etc.) went into my underground receivers which I was afraid would eventually fail. I now KNOW that large amounts of that matter are being filtered out. Even Pine needles are caught by the filter. I'm sure not all of them, but in a Rain, you will initially get a release of the materials that are in the gutter down the downspouts, and it appears what happens is that they form their own filter media at the filter on the unit and start trapping the remaining material on it's own. I have at times reached in and had to pull several inches of stuff out of the filter area. Even so, the water was still making it down the pipe through the material and into the underground piping.The other day we had one of the hardest rains I remember EVER having here. I walked out and watched (from a dry area of course) what happened at the filter. As I suspected, there was an initial surge of pine needles and leaf matter. Most of it was caught in the filter, and it continued to accumulate and some was flushed out through the opening. The water continued to (for the most part), make it past the filter, and some (but not all of) the matter was expelled. If you think about how this thing is supposed to work, there WILL BE some water that comes out through the opening while it flushes the material off of the filter. After the rain, I had to go around and remove a small amount of the stuff from each filter (mostly right near the lip in the front of the opening). I would say that 80-90 percent of the water went down the pipe, and a large percentage of the leaf matter was flushed out the opening, with just a small amount left in which needs to be dealt with manually.In My opinion, this is probably as good as I can expect. It sure beats what was happening before where all of the material was going down into my underground system.

So far I am happy with these... ordered three of them, but have only installed two so far. A 3 inch PVC pipe fits perfectly inside the outlet tube (to ensure it didn't slip out during the installation/burying process, I taped it with some foil/mastic tape that I had on hand).After installing one of them yesterday, I tested with a garden hose, and pretty much all the discharge went down the pipe with only an incidental amount of spash-out through the opening. I installed another one today, and this evening we had quite a bit of rain. Moderate rain, like the garden hose, had virtually no splash-out. There was some splash-out when the rain became torrential (heavy enough that my downspouts were overwhelmed, with the gutter overflowing in one spot for a few minutes), but with such heavy rainfall, I consider some splash-out to be inconsequential.

Like others have said, these divert water out of your drain and splatter it all over the ground. Same effect as having no downspouts. I was surprised to see this happening even during a very light rain. Why have downspouts and underground drains? Install these and you will still have water wash out your foundation.

Good concept. Combine with large rectangular opening on gutter drain and catch leaves and debris at ground level before flow into underground pipes. Not needed where downspout just dumps output onto a splashblock.Weaknesses: Removeable grill to catch debris is hard to position properly and can slip out of place. I have used black versions of this. They are a solid black color and attractive wherever black works. The white version is not a true white. It is translucent. A more opaque finish would look less cheap.

We purchased this filter for version 2.0 of our rain barrel irrigation project,which includes the barrel, a zero-pressure faucet timer and a 1/2 in drip supply line connected to 1/4 in irrigation drip lines . The invisaFlow deflects the big leaves and debris very well, but small leaves (1/2 inch) from a Royal Poinciana tree nearby could still go through sometimes when the wind was strong. Since the filter portion of it (the piece with the diagonal lines ) is removable, got a piece of nylon mesh from a cheap colander (from the 99 cent store) big enough to cover the filter, and secured it with small wire ties. A piece of windowscree will work as well. I put the filter back in place, and waited for the next rain pour.Now the small leaves are deflected as well. We also added filters at the entry point of the downspout on the roof to reduce the debris coming in.

I purchased 4 of these as the price was good and didn’t have to pay more at HD. Does it’s job. Recommend getting a good hand saw for metal to trip downspouts.

Cheaper compared to Home Depot for downspout leaf remover. Used it on a diy drain system to keep clear of debris. Hard plastic that seems like it will last.

I received the product fast in just couple days. Installed it next morning. Didn’t have time to screw it to gutters so I just connected without tightening. The same day was a heavy rain that washed my gutters from leafs. All the leafs would have got into my new drains and maybe clog them if it wasn’t for this product. I’m very happy I bought it, and the price was great !