The Hill's 20oz Copper Gutters
17315 S. Bradley in Oregon City, Oregon
(10/04)

Project Photo & Description Page

 Updated 10-13-2004

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You can go to our 'Price Page' for our current cost for our copper gutters
Remember you can click on each pictures below for a better view

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Here is a recent copper gutter job we did for the Hill Family.  It cost a little over $5,600 to install these 20oz copper gutters.  The original bid was for aluminum gutters for only $2,040.  Just before we left the bid with them, they had us calculate a price for 16oz copper gutter to compare.  That price was about $4,100.  Why did the final price come out to be $1,500 more you ask?  You will have to read on to see.

We do not often make sales right there on the spot, but they did lay down $1,000 for the half deposit on installing the aluminum gutters, since we were booked out a ways and did not want to be put any farther out.  As it was, we estimated that we were 6 weeks out, but due to complications getting the parts, we wound up taking 9 weeks to get the gutters on their house.

We came out to measure the house on the 20th of September and got the second $1k deposit, since they decided to go with not only copper, but the heavy gage 20oz copper sheet metal. This was the first house we got to do in 20oz copper.  It is so rare, the local suppliers do not stock that copper sheet metal to run out gutters with.  We had to special order it and wait for it to get here.

This client also decided they liked the mitered endcaps, instead of the press-on caps used by all the other gutter contractors in the area. We also suggested that it would be best to make the wrap-arounds over the sides, like we just did for the Castro's house.  I spent all day that next Saturday getting the Casto's photos prepared and getting them on the Castro's web page we made.  This was a timely asset to show them what it would look like.  They agreed that this look would be best for their house.

This complicated things for us and made this project take over twice as long to do.  Regardless of the extra money, we love having the opportunity to do such excellent work.  If it were only about the money, that would not be enough to put what we did into this job.  These wrap-arounds shown the the left are on the ends of the garage.  The wrap-arounds did not have a function, but to keep all the ends as consistent as possible, we felt it was necessary.

If that copper were any thicker, it would not have made it through our gutter machine.  It just barely pushed through as it was.  Normally you can see the buckles and wavy bottom side of the 16oz copper gutters, but these gutters were perfectly flat on the bottom. It was amazing!  They were noticeably heavier too. They weighed over three times as much as aluminum gutters per foot.  The longest gutter was only 28' long, but it weighed as much as a 91' aluminum gutter.  What was most interesting was the fact that it did not bow much under all that weight.  A 91' aluminum gutter would have bowed so much that if I were to hold the center up with my arms stretched up as high as I can reach, the ends would still have dragged on the ground.  That is if it would not have tweaked in the center and bent beyond repair first, which it would have.  Any way, it was impressive to say the least.  Now, the standard 16oz copper gutters seem very flimsy to me.

As you can see, this is a house that had only a 3" side eaves, but the underground drains were on the sides of the house. We had to figure out a way to artfully get the rain water to the side. Doing this with an assortment of downspout elbows would have looked a lot messier.  Most gutter contractors would have just used a number of downspout elbows to wrap the downspouts around the corner of the house, and I would have also, if the hills were not willing to pay the extra money to do it this way.  Taking the gutter around the corner instead leaves a much cleaner look and minimizes the elbows needed to bring the water to the ground.

Unlike the front gutters, the back eaves were less than half of what was on the front of the house, so the gutter here was a little closer and lower to the gutter on the back of the garage.  We were not able to set the downspout elbow up high enough to drain into the lower gutter, so we had to make a copper funnel to join them together below the gutters.  Luckily this was on the back side of the house.  As you see, this is not the clean look we were trying to achieve.

Another new thing we changed over to for this and the Castro gutter job was the larger pipe cleats that are riveted behind the downspouts.  These larger pipe cleats have 6 pre-punched holes for rivets, instead of only 2.  This will make them much sturdier and harder to yank off the wall if a thief had his way.  These larger pipe cleats were designed to go with the larger 3"x 4" downspouts, but we discovered they are not too big for the 2"x 3" downspouts, and look better.

As you will see below, to implement our larger No-clog outlets on this gutter and most of the other gutters with only a 3" eave to the siding was even tricky.  We had to install the reducer at an angle, right under the gutter instead of installing an elbow.

Here is David taking measurements for this second story gutter.

below that is the last gutter to go on.  We had prepped all the gutters at our shop.  That took 3 days to do, working till 10PM and even to midnight the last day in our shop getting them ready.  This is another feature we offer most of our clients.  That way there is much less construction mess and noise at their home.  We have not found a client to complain yet.

For example, the mitered endcaps are just like fabricating a corners and it takes us at least 5 times longer to do than slapping on a simple press-on endcap, caulking, and crimping the ends.  We charge extra for this of course.  It counts the same as a corner miter, where two gutters are joined, since it takes just as much work to do.  We charge $35 + the 5" of gutter run-out to make this, instead of only $9 for a simple endcap, so it added $31 to the cost of each end.  The total added labor cost of all the 22 corners and mitered endcaps was $770.

For all of these lower gutters, we fabricated the wrap-arounds and mitered endcaps in a single piece of copper.  We cut and folded them around the corners from a straight stick of gutter.  This is another detail you will not find else where.  In the past, I have made one gutter with 4 outside corners and 1 inside corner that was all cut and folded from a single gutter.  We have yet to see one gutter contractors work that folded one outside corner.

Most of our aluminum gutter work does not get this sort of fancy treatment, but we will do it on request.  But if a client is spending the extra money for copper, we do our best to explain all the options, so they can know they are getting the best possible work for their dollar.  Other gutter contractors are not willing to invest the time to explain all this, let alone publish a comprehensive web site like this.

 

 

Below is a photo of our
Better Business Bureau's
NW Business Integrity Award
for the year 1998

1999 Better Business Award

We were also a 1997 finalist for this same award. See our referral web page to see how we managed to be honored with this special award

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