How Do Gutter Contractors Send Estimates? Same Day, in Writing

Short answer: How do gutter contractors send estimates: measure the fascia runs from the ground during the visit, count inside and outside miters, and fix the downspout count before pricing anything — commonly one drop per 30 to 35 feet on a 5-inch K-style and 35 to 40 feet on a 6-inch. Send a written estimate the same day or the next morning, priced per linear foot with downspouts as their own line, two profile options, and a fascia allowance. Hold it 30 days.

Gutters are the fastest close in exterior work and the easiest sale to lose by being slow. The ticket is small enough that most homeowners will not collect three bids, so the number that arrives first and reads cleanly usually takes the job. What separates this trade from every other exterior one: the product does not exist yet. Seamless gutter is rolled out of a machine parked in the driveway, in a color that has to be settled before the coil goes on the truck.

How fast does a gutter estimate have to go out?

Same day if the roofline is simple, next morning at the latest. This is a trade where speed is the competitive advantage, because the homeowner is usually reacting to something — water sheeting over the front door, ice coming off the eave, a roofer who just finished and left the old gutters up.

Step	When
Phone or web inquiry	Ask before booking: how many stories, how many roof planes, what is up there now, and what went wrong
Measure visit	Twenty to forty minutes, from the ground, ladder only to look at fascia
Written estimate sent	Same day or next morning
First follow-up	Day 3, by text
Second follow-up	Around day 10, with a specific install date
Price expires	30 days, subject to coil pricing and color availability

The ground measurement is the part people new to the trade get wrong in the other direction, by treating a gutter measure like a roof measure. You are not measuring roof area. You are measuring the fascia line under each roof edge, and a tape on a pole or a laser from the lawn gets you there in less time than it takes to set a ladder.

What am I actually counting from the driveway?

Every item below either becomes a line or hides inside your per-foot rate. It should become a line.

What you count	How it prices
Fascia run at each roof plane	Linear feet, listed by elevation
Outside miters	Each
Inside miters	Each
End caps	Each, left and right hand
Downspout locations	Each, with the drop height noted
Elbows and offsets	Each — a bumpout or a lower roof needs offsets
Story height per run	Sets the setup and the crew, not the material
Existing gutter removal	Linear feet, plus haul-off and disposal
Gutter guard	Linear feet, on its own line
Splash blocks or underground tie-in	Each
Fascia or drip edge repair	Conditional, priced per foot

Two houses can measure 140 linear feet each and be forty percent apart in cost. One is a rectangular ranch with four corners and three drops. The other is a two-story with eleven miters, six drops, a run over a lower porch roof, and a section you cannot reach without walking a ladder across a flower bed. The linear-foot number is what the customer compares. Everything that actually decides your day is in the count next to it.

Why does the downspout count matter more than the footage?

Because drops are where the material and the labor actually go, and a per-foot rate spreads them evenly across houses that are not even. The common industry rule is one downspout every 30 to 40 linear feet, tightening toward 30 to 35 on a 5-inch trough and stretching to 35 to 40 on a 6-inch. Complex rooflines and heavy-rain regions need more. Anything unusual — a large single plane, a valley dumping into one corner, a commercial building — should be sized against local code rather than a rule of thumb.

Then there is the part the price per foot completely conceals: how far the water has to fall.

Drop	What the estimate has to carry
Single story	A short run of downspout, two elbows, a couple of straps
Two story	Roughly double the pipe, more bands, a longer ladder set, slower work
Third story or over a lower roof	More pipe again, offsets to clear the roof below, often a second person or a lift
Downspout into an underground drain	A tie-in, an adapter, and a written note about who owns the buried line

Price drops as their own unit with the height stated. Folding them into the footage means the cut-up two-story with nine drops is being subsidized by nothing at all, and it is the job that eats the whole day.

Why does the estimate have to name the metal and the color?

Because seamless gutter is manufactured on site and the machine takes one coil at a time. “We will figure out the color later” is not a schedulable job.

Material	What it changes on the estimate
.027 aluminum	The default; common colors ride on the truck
.032 aluminum	Heavier gauge, holds shape on long runs and under ladders
Galvanized steel	Stronger, but cut ends will rust and it wants paint eventually
Copper	Several times the cost of aluminum, often half-round, soldered joints, a longer install and a different skill set
Zinc	Specialty work, handled much like copper

Copper is not aluminum with a bigger number. It is a different job: soldered end caps and miters, hangers chosen so they will not react with the metal, material bought specifically for the address, and a schedule measured in days rather than hours. Quote it as its own document with its own lead time, not as a third column next to two aluminum options.

Aluminum coil is a traded commodity, so put a qualifier on the page next to the expiration: pricing is subject to current coil cost and color availability. That single sentence has saved more gutter contractors than any deposit policy.

How do I put fascia I cannot see on the page?

With a per-foot rate and a written trigger, because the old gutter is hiding whatever is behind it. Spike holes, a fascia board soft from six years of overflow, no drip edge at all, a roof edge that has been wicking under the shingle. You find all of it about thirty minutes before the new gutter goes up.

Name four things in advance: a rate per foot for fascia board replacement, a rate for adding drip edge, a rate for soffit or trim repair, and a stated allowance quantity included in the price. Then write the trigger — work beyond the allowance stops and gets approved before it continues. Now the extra is a change order the customer already agreed to the mechanism for, rather than an argument on a ladder.

Photograph the fascia before the old gutter comes off and again after. Whoever removes a gutter inherits the blame for every mark on the board underneath it, and a dated photo settles that in ten seconds. Skipping this documentation is one of the quiet paths to gutter customer won’t pay.

How many options should one estimate carry?

Two, or three at most, priced over the same measured footage.

• Trough size. 5-inch with 2x3 downspouts against 6-inch with 3x4. Give the reason on the page rather than presenting it as an upsell: a 6-inch trough carries substantially more water per foot and pairs with a larger downspout, which is a drainage argument on steep pitches, large planes, or a house that already overflows.
• Guard or no guard. One guard product, priced per linear foot as an add, not three competing systems.
• Material, only where it is genuinely in play.

Hold the same margin across all of them. The frequent mistake is pricing the base option thin to win the comparison and expecting the upgrade to carry the year — which means the customer choosing the cheap option chose the one that loses money.

Get that arithmetic right, because markup and margin are not the same base. If your loaded cost lands at $9.40 a foot and you add 35 percent, you sell at $12.69 and keep 26 percent. To actually keep 35 percent you divide by 0.65 and price at $14.46. Across 180 feet and six drops, that gap is the difference between a good week and a busy one. Build the cost first: coil consumed per foot, hangers and screws, sealant, downspout stock and straps, crew hours at your real loaded rate, machine and truck, insurance, and disposal. Published per-foot ranges from national sites are a sanity check only — they swing hard by region, height, and season, and none of them know what your crew costs.

How do I send it, and do I need a deposit?

Send a PDF by email and a text saying it landed. On a ticket this size the text is the delivery notice, not the document — a message thread will not settle whether guards were included. The PDF carries the measurements by elevation, the drop count and locations, the color and gauge, the exclusions, and the expiration.

Deposits are one of the few places gutters are easier than the rest of exterior work. Standard white, almond, or brown aluminum goes on the next job if this one cancels, so a deposit is usually unnecessary. Take one when you are buying something you cannot reuse: a custom color, copper, half-round, an oversized commercial profile, or a guard ordered per job. Size it to that purchase rather than to a percentage of the contract, and check your state’s home improvement deposit rules first.

One more thing to know if you sell in the driveway: the FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule gives a buyer three business days to cancel a sale of $25 or more made at their home, with written notice of that right required at signing. Signing a contract on a tailgate is normal in this trade, so the cancellation notice belongs in your paperwork rather than in a story about a job you lost.

Then walk the house and mark where each downspout will land, with the customer standing there. After price, an unexpected downspout beside a patio door is the single most common complaint in this trade, and a two-minute walk removes it.

What happens once they say yes?

The estimate becomes a job, and the paperwork shifts to the coil ticket, the guard invoice, the disposal receipt, and the bill. The invoice should repeat the same footage, the same drop count, and the same color that the estimate carried, which is the point of what to include on an invoice. Keep the supplier tickets filed against the address rather than by month — that habit is the whole idea behind a contractor receipt organizer, and it is what answers a warranty question two winters later.

Keel is an iOS app that runs entirely on the device: no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. It does not write your estimate — that feature is still in development — but it covers the part after the handshake. The invoice gets built at the truck the hour the last downspout is strapped, in about a minute, with your numbering, logo, and brand color, and a payment link that renders as a QR code the homeowner scans before you pull off the curb. The coil and hanger receipts get photographed at the supply house and read on-device by Apple Intelligence, so the material behind a 180-foot job has paper attached to it. Miles between the shop, the supplier, and four measures a day get logged. Year end exports as a single file, or as the Accountant Pack — a CSV plus a one-page summary PDF. The ledger is append-only and hash-chained. Free is $0 with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a gutter estimate take to send?

Same day for a straightforward roofline, next morning at the latest. Gutter tickets are small enough that many homeowners decide on the first written number they receive, and most of them are reacting to a specific problem they want solved this week. Measuring on the visit and sending before the end of the day wins more work than any discount.

Do I need to get on the roof to measure gutters?

No. Measure the fascia line under each roof edge from the ground with a tape on a pole or a laser, and count miters, end caps, and drop locations while you walk the perimeter. Use a ladder only to look at the condition of the fascia board and the drip edge, which is what decides whether you need a repair allowance on the page.

How many downspouts should a gutter estimate include?

Plan on roughly one drop per 30 to 40 linear feet, tighter on 5-inch trough and looser on 6-inch, with more on complex rooflines or in heavy-rain regions. Price each drop as its own unit and note the height, because a third-story downspout carries several times the pipe, straps, and setup time of a single-story one.

Should a gutter estimate list the color?

Yes, by name, before anything is scheduled. Seamless gutter is run on site from a coil, and the machine takes one color at a time, so the job cannot be loaded without that decision. Put the color, the gauge, and the profile on the estimate, and confirm a custom color in writing since custom coil has to be bought for the address.

Do gutter contractors take a deposit?

Usually not for standard aluminum colors, since unused coil goes on the next job. Take a deposit when you are buying material you cannot reuse — a custom color, copper, half-round, or a per-job guard order — and size it to that actual purchase rather than a round percentage. Check your state’s rules on home improvement deposits before setting a policy.

How long should a gutter estimate stay valid?

Thirty days is reasonable, with a stated qualifier that pricing depends on current aluminum coil cost and color availability. Coil is a commodity and moves independently of your schedule, so an unqualified price left open for a season can commit you to material you can no longer buy at that number. The expiration also gives you a natural reason to make one last contact.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.