Better Gutters:
Demand for gutters increases need for specialty rollformers
Mike Gorski,
Posted
08/01/2010
Every
year, U.S. snow storms and freezing weather rack up over a billion
dollars in homeowner insurance claims. And the biggest
culprit is water that seeps in through a home's vulnerable spots.
Homeowners who have not properly winterized their homes have been
saddled with costly damages. This year in particular, and
especially in the Northeast, record rainfalls, snow and ice flooded
faulty gutters and uprooted trees damaging hundreds of thousands of
homes from Maine to the Carolinas.
For homeowners, it's been bad news. But for gutter contractors
around the country it has meant additional work replacing damaged
rainware, which in turn has required new rollforming machines to
keep up with the workloads. Insurance companies are settling claims
a month or two later and machine manufacturers are reporting a
boost in gutter rollforming machine sales throughout the country.
Those increased sales also include an increase in demand for
specialty rollforming machines for making hooded leaf protection
systems.
More and more rollforming machines are being manufactured and
assembled outside the country as suppliers look for ways to reduce
manufacturing costs and maintain prices. Meanwhile, the cost of
portable gutter, roofing and panel machines remains the same or
lower than they were more than 20 years ago despitea vast
improvement in current machine features, including digital batch
controllers that automate panel numbers and their length, and
forming rollers in multi-panel machines that can be conveniently
changed out and replaced with different rollers by a single
operator in one hour.
The market has
seen the emergence of some specialty rollforming machines,
including portable rollformers and integrated equipment capable of
producing a 3-inch (76-mm) high standing-seam panel with a seam cap
that allows damaged panels with the caps to be removed and replaced
without uprooting an entire roof.
Also on the market now is rollforming equipment with an integrated
computer-driven attachment that can automatically parallel-notch an
eaves fold and angle-notch and cut panels for hips and valleys.
These systems are particularly useful for saving time on large
residential projects with multiple hips and valleys. But they can
be expensive. Contractors considering these time-saving units
should calculate whether they can generate enough business to
justify the expenditure or continue to use manual labor to hand-cut
notches and flanges.
The pre-owned machine business has been slacking off. Machine
manufacturers report that most quality used inventory was snapped
up during the early recession months.And with the advent of selling
tools like eBay and Craigslist, contractors have their pick of
pre-owned equipment that they are using to get into the business or
need to handle large jobs or multiple jobs on a timely basis. In
addition,new machine prices are at all time lows, making it
practical and affordable to buy new equipment with state-of-the-art
features and components versus an older machine without them. When
is it time to think about a new machine? When machine repairs start
to cost one third of the cost of a new one, it is probably time to
consider replacing it.
If you are trying to extend the life of your current machine, don't
abuse it, keep it out of the weather when it's not in use, keep it
clean and have a certified technician do tuneups and maintenance
every six months to a year. Remember, rust and accidentally running
screws through the machine are the common killers of these types of
equipment.
Meanwhile, the
federal stimulus package has also extended for another year the
increased Section 179 expensing limit of $250,000, which allows
contractors to expense up to $250,000 in purchases for the calendar
year 2010 as long as they don't spend more than $800,000. Both new
and used assets are eligible. California, however, does not conform
to the Federal rule, and instead limits the deduction to only
$25,000.
When you consider the incentives and the low cost of machinery, it
is really an optimum time to buy. For example, the average gutter
installed on a home is approximately 120 feet (37 m) long. And that
number is increasing as the size of homes in the United States
grows bigger every year. But let's say we use 120 feet as a fair
average. If you've been using a subcontractor to cut and drop 032
gutter at a job site, then based on industry yield factors, he is
able to run about 2.238 feet (0.7 m) per pound of gutter coil.
Calculate what he's charging you per foot and what he's paying his
supplier. It will probably range around 40 percent.
The average cost today for a 5-inch (127- mm) seamless rollforming
machine is about $6,800. If you divide $6,800 by the savings of 40
percent, that equals about 11,000 feet(3,353 m). Divide 11,000 feet
by 120 feet, the average footage needed to install gutter on a
home, and it equals 93 installation jobs. Industry studies have
shown that remodelers average 2.5 jobs per day.
Based on that pace of business, you would pay for the machine in 37
working days. From then on, it's all profit and, more important,
the job is complete and you can get paid.
Clearly, even in a deep recession there are silver linings. You've
just got to break out the old calculator and figure for yourself
whether you can do it or not.
Mike Gorski is the director of rollforming machinery
at Englert Inc., Perth Amboy, N.J. More information can be found at
www.englertinc.com.
www.englertinc.com