How would I bid a rain gutter job, by the job,or by sq. lin. ft., or by the hour?

Question

I am interested in starting a business where i live in cleaing rain gutters for people. I would like to know how and what to charge them.

Answer 1

You'll need to charge by the hour......some gutters are way high up, and may take 3x as long to clean as others.

Answer 2

My wife started a "Business" without a well thought out business plan, worked 60 hour weeks, and lost $1500 for the year.

Minimum wage doesn't protect business owners.

Gutter cleaning probably doesn't have a big initial investment so you can always back out with minimal expense if you aren't making as much as you'd like (assuming you don't buy a special vehicle for your business), but you need to figure in a whole lot besides the time it takes to clean the gutter.

1) How are you going to market your business, how much is that going to cost, and how much of your time are you going to be expending purely marketing? Door to door? Yellow Pages? Flyers delivered to houses?

2) How are you going to bid jobs? Are you going to have to make a trip to the site? How much is that trip going to cost and how much time is that going to take? How many bids are you going to have to make to get a single job? Multiply the two together to get bid cost and time spent for a each successful bid.

3) Will you need any expendable supplies? Soap, Hoses, nozzles, rags, etc.

4) How will you handle on the job damage and clean-up should the stuff in the gutter get out of the gutter?

5) How will you bill?

6) Don't forget the time you will need to spend accounting so the IRS can take it's share.

If you have an idea of how much you want to make you will want to factor all of this overhead time into the calculaion.

Answer 3

By the ft. & job on a house (do you have to remove cheap gutter guards etc..). If it's a building then you need to factor in ft. & the Job only becasue you'll need special equipment. I'd say charge about $1- maybe...maybe..$2 per foot on a house. The Gutter in front of my garage is one piece and about 25ft. That should take about 10 min to really do a good ob on it. I have a total of 150ft. Don't try to charge me $2 per ft. No way will I pay $300 (2$ per ft). I'd pay $150 ($1 per ft). which will take 5-8 hours. Which comes out to $18.75 an hour for 8 hours. not bad for a no brain gutter cleaning job. FYI make sure to clean up your mess or you'll be out of business fast. In other words if your using a pressure washer count on having a mess. a hose is nice, but again your using the home owners water (So what? you might say.) well if your running water for 4-8 hours That adds up to a couple of extra dollars on their water bill.

Answer 4

hello.....i am a general contractor and my suggestion to you is as follows:

if i were you, do some test practice runs yourself and have an idea of how long it takes to clean gutters....of course, factor in size, amount of debris in gutter, etc , but based off of what you determine you should have a pretty accurate idea of how long it takes to clean gutters.....................i realize everybody is in business to make money, but at the same time....be fair.........if you bid based off of lin.ft.,???????what if the gutter is 1/4 full or a 1/4 empty....it just wouldn't be fair.....so do your bids based off of how long you determine it will take......establish your price.....SO DON'T DISCLOSE TO POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS THAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO THE JOB ON AN HOURLY RATE CHARGE..........B/C some people have a bad perception of jobs bid by the hour........keep that to yourself and base the total price off of an hourly rate.....factor in potential downtime, fuel, disposal fees, drive time, etc.......i've been doing this for several years now, and i went from about $500,000 a year in sales to about $2,000,000 in less than 2 years........WORD OF MOUTH MAKES A LOT OF DIFFERENCE WHEN QUALITY WORK IS DONE.........

again, i can ramble on and on , but bottom line is LARGER THE JOB CHEAPER THE COST, SMALLER THE JOB HIGHER THE COST......

Answer 5

you should go out and estimate the job.... if really high or lots of trees - it'll cost more. if it was mine - you'd be up only one story with no trees or anything! i will make a couple recommendations....1) always call the clients within 24 hours if possible 2) make sure they know you will clean up the mess that was inside and remove it from their property.
just two simple things to consider as a good show of customer service!

Answer 6

BY THE JOB.
LESS THAN AN HOUR TO CLEAN GUTTERS SO FIGURE WHAT YOU WANT TO MAKE.

LOOK AT HOME--CLIMBING INVOLVED-
NUMBER OF GUTTERS.
CAPPED OR NOT...
DRAINS OPENED OR CLOSED...
TREES PINE-OAK- WHAT COULD CAUSE PROBLEMS.
BIRDS..