What to charge for gutter cleaning
Price it by the foot, and split the feet by height. A foot of gutter you reach from a short ladder and a foot at the second storey are not the same work, so each gets your own pace. Add the downspouts and the trip, pick a price above the cost, and divide by the feet.
By TailGateBid. .
Cleaning is hours. Installing is another sum.
This page prices cleaning: nothing is bought, and nearly all of the cost is time on a ladder.
Putting new gutters up is a different sum, and it is the one a fence uses: material by the foot, the hours to hang it, and a trip for each day on the job. What to charge for fence installation has boxes for exactly that. Type the feet of gutter where it asks for the runs, and what a foot of gutter, hangers and outlets costs you where it asks for a foot of fence. Leave its boxes for posts empty.
Why the high feet are slower
- You clean an arm's reach, then the ladder has to move. OSHA's card on portable ladders says not to move or shift a ladder while a person or equipment is on it. So every few feet of gutter is a climb down, a move and a climb back, and on a tall ladder each of those takes longer.
- The card says to use a ladder only on a stable and level surface, unless it has been secured at the top or the bottom. Flower beds, slopes and soft ground under an eave are minutes of setting up that a driveway is not.
- It also says not to go over the ladder's load rating, and to count the weight of tools and equipment in it. A bucket of wet leaves counts against it, along with you and your tools.
- None of this is a rule this page is teaching you. The card is a short list of safety tips, and what applies to a business with people on ladders is a question for OSHA or your state. It is here because it explains where the hours go.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the feet of gutter
Split the gutter by how you reach it, because the same foot takes longer off a tall ladder. The boxes add the feet up, work out the hours at your own pace for each height and put both in the calculator below.
From a house you timed, ladder moves included.
Leave it empty if there is none.
Your own figure. Every move of a tall ladder is a climb down and a climb back.
A clear one and a packed one are not the same. Use what yours take.
Type the feet of gutter. The total shows here.
Two people for a day of 8 hours is 16.
A rental, dump fees, a sub.
Type the size of the job to see a price for each foot.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your hours and what an hour costs you, or your materials. The answer shows here.
One house, two heights
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say a house has 120 feet of gutter on one storey and 60 on the second. Say you clear 60 feet an hour low down and 30 up high: 2 hours and 2 hours. Say its 6 downspouts take you 10 minutes each: 1 more. That is 5 hours for 180 feet, which at $57.05 an hour is $285.25. Say the trip costs you $45. The job costs you $330.25. Charge $472 and you keep $141.75, which is $30 of every $100. That is $2.63 a foot.
The same house at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $367 | $36.75 | $10 |
| $413 | $82.75 | $20 |
| $472 | $141.75 | $30 |
| $551 | $220.75 | $40 |
| $661 | $330.75 | $50 |
What is in the gutter sets the pace
- Dry or wet. An Oklahoma State University Extension housing specialist says that if the leaves are dry a leaf blower speeds up getting them out, and that otherwise they come out by hand: Oklahoma State University Extension, Homeowners should gear up for fall maintenance projects. Those are two different paces for the same gutter. Time a dry day and a wet one, and quote with the weather you expect.
- Why the calls come together. The same article says gutters and downspouts clog with leaves in the fall, that the water then spills over the edge or sits in the gutter, and that once it freezes it can cause an ice dam, which could damage shingles and possibly cause roof leaks. Where it freezes, that squeezes the work into the weeks between the last leaves and the first hard frost, for every house on your list at once.
- We found no source worth naming for how many feet anyone clears in an hour. Your own houses are the record: the feet, the height, what was in the gutter, and the hours.
What gets missed
- The downspouts. They are counted, not measured, so they have two boxes of their own. Leave them out and their time is given away.
- What comes out. It lands on the ground, the shrubs and the walk. Picking it up, bagging it and getting rid of it are hours and sometimes a fee.
- Guards and screens. Taking them off and putting them back is time before the first handful.
- The trip. A small house with forty feet of gutter carries the same drive as a big one: what a trip costs you shows the least a job has to bring in.
- What you find. A loose hanger or a split seam is a repair, with its own line and its own price. Say so before you fix it.
On a quote, and next door
On a TailGateBid quote the cleaning can be a line counted in feet with your price for a foot, and the downspouts a line that is simply counted. What an hour costs you is under both.
The ladder is already off the truck. If the same customer wants the windows done, that job is priced by the pane: what to charge for window cleaning. And the leaves on the lawn under those gutters are a job by the size of the lot: what to charge for leaf removal.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.
This page is about one kind of job. TailGateBid works for any trade, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.
Sources
Related
- Trip and minimum chargeIn the example, a job 25 minutes away costs $93.92 before any work is done. See what your smallest job costs with the trip in it.
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- Window cleaningPanes counted by kind, each at your own minutes, with the set-up and the trip, worked into a price for a pane.
- Leaf removalFrom the lot, the crew, the visits and the loads to a price for each 1,000 square feet cleared.
- Fence installationAdd up the runs, count the posts, and see what a price for each foot of fence leaves you.
Put the gutters and the downspouts on a TailGateBid quote as lines of their own, and send it from the driveway.
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