What does a downspout cost to replace?

Four numbers that are not the same number

Put side by side they look like a spread. They are not. One is a shop price for a length of folded metal, one is material by the foot, and two are jobs done on your house. Comparing them is the single easiest way to misread a downspout quote.

There is one real tension here. Fixr's installed price of $7.43 to $13.51 per foot sits almost entirely inside Bob Vila's material-only band of $5 to $17. If Fixr's figure includes labor and Bob Vila's does not, one of them is out of step. Our reading, marked as ours: Bob Vila's higher rows are copper, and copper material genuinely can cost more than an installed aluminum downspout. For the aluminum most houses have, Bob Vila's $9 to $12 material and Fixr's $7.43 to $13.51 installed still overlap more than they should. Two years separate the two guides, and neither comments on the other. We would use Fixr's band for a fitted job and treat Bob Vila's as a materials check.

What yours will cost

A downspout runs from the gutter to the ground, so its length is roughly the height of your eaves.

Our arithmetic, marked as ours, and read the caveat. The lengths below are illustrative, not taken from any source. Measure yours. The rates are This Old House's $8 replacement foot and Fixr's installed band.

Multiply by the number of downspouts on the house. This Old House is explicit that each downspout needing work adds to the total, and that two-storey homes typically run about twice the repair cost of single-storey ones, both because the runs are longer and because the work is more dangerous.

The downspout also has to match the gutter: 2 by 3 inches for a 5-inch gutter, 3 by 4 for a 6-inch, which our sizing page sets out.

The small parts that are not small

From This Old House's installation guide, with retail prices from The Home Depot:

A splash block at the top of that range, $66, costs more than replacing an eight-foot downspout at This Old House's own $8 a foot, which is $64. That is not an error in the source; it reflects how wide the decorative end of that market runs.

Extensions, and a disagreement inside one publisher

A downspout that ends at the foundation is a downspout doing half its job. Extensions carry the water further out.

Bob Vila gives two different figures on two different pages. The gutter installation guide says extensions cost $10 to $50 depending on type and length, plus $30 to $100 to fit. The gutter guard guide says extensions cost $8 to $15 each. We are showing both rather than picking one, and we cannot tell from the pages which case each describes.

The same guard guide prices downspout screens, which sit between the gutter and the downspout opening to catch debris, at about $5 apiece plus fitting.

The cheapest downspout problem to fix

A blocked downspout is not a replacement job. Fixr's cleaning guide puts the surcharge for clearing one at $50 to $100 on top of a standard gutter clean, bringing that visit to $170 to $350.

This Old House adds a detail worth knowing before you call anyone: the drop, the piece that collects water at the gutter's outlet and feeds it into the downspout, often just needs cleaning and resealing, and is the most common cause of clogging in the whole system.

Our advice, marked as ours: water overflowing at a downspout is far more often a blockage or a failed drop than a failed downspout. Get it cleared and inspected on the next gutter clean, and see our cleaning frequency page for how often that should be before you accept a quote to replace anything. If the downspout itself is split, crushed or pulling off the wall, the figures above apply, and if several are failing at once, look at the repair page for the point where the whole system is the cheaper answer.