Gutter Cleaning Anyone?

Although we're coming up on prime window cleaning season, I wanted to provide you the lowdown on offering a gutter cleaning service to your customers. Actually it's not me providing you the details, but a window cleaner by the name of Tyler Kirk. He's been in the window cleaning business for about 3 years now. He's pulling in some nice profits providing this service…$8,000 in profits in the month of January and over 5k in profits for february by the time we spoke feb 21/22.  This DOES NOT count his window cleaning jobs/profits by the way. 

His gutter cleaning service is promoted to his window cleaning customer base, so he's not promoting this as a stand alone type service.  In other words, there is literally no investment. No advertising, no special supplies or equipment, etc.

The main services that I provided my own customers were window cleaning, ceiling fan cleaning,  mirror cleaning, and a few dozen christmas light installations around the holidays. But there are just soooo many more services you can provide. I think one of the best is gutter cleaning primarily because as mentioned above there is no initial investment in equipment and no ongoing cost for supplies.

Here is what Tyler had to say in our phone conversation:

"My gutter cleaning jobs range between a $100 and $150 per home. Each job takes me no more than an hour to do. If it's a super large job, that might stretch into an hour a half.

It's too dangerous to be on the roof walking around the edge of the roof line cleaning the gutters, so one of my employees or myself, if I'm doing the job, will go up and down the ladder and move the ladder around the house as we work.  Sounds like a lot of time spent climbing up and down the ladder, but it's not.  

We tie a bucket around our waist and with gloves on, we'll empty the leaves out of the gutter by hand. We don't take the leaves out of the gutter and just throw them on the ground. This would create more work for us at the end of the job, so we found that placing the leaves in a bucket right away is best.

As our bucket fills up, we'll empty the bucket of leaves into a trash bag during one of the times we've climbed down from the ladder. 

The final step in the process is to take a regular water hose with a spray nozzle, climb up the ladder, and spray the hose directly into the gutter.  We do this in 2 or 3 locations. This will force any left-over loose debris to run down the shute. 

And that's pretty much it.  

Some additional notes Steve…Gutter guards can cost as much as $20 to $25 per foot, so in many respects, it's more worthwhile for a homeowner to hire someone to clean their gutters than it is for them to invest in a gutter guard. Oh…and gutter guards do not work as advertised in all cases. In other words, leaves and debris can still wind up in the gutter. I tell my customers this even if they do have a gutter guard. It gets them thinking that maybe they should have me clean their gutters even if they have a gutter guard.

Talk to you soon.

Tyler"

My own notes:

To approach your customers about this service, how about sending 'em a letter letting them know about it? Here's one you can use:

Dear Mrs. Jones:

Steve Wright
Clearview Window Washing Service

Happy Gutter Cleaning!

Steve