Last reviewed October 31, 2026.
The slate on the old house is fine, but the gutters along the front are rusting through at the corners. A neighbor put up copper a few years ago. It has gone from bright penny to a deep brown you keep noticing on the walk to the train.
Now the roofer is talking about ounces and solder, and the price is a different conversation from aluminum.
16 ounce or 20 ounce sheet
Copper sheet is specified by its weight in ounces per square foot. Revere Copper Products, based in Rome, New York, lists 16 ounce sheet at a theoretical 0.0216 inch thick (0.0204 minimum) and 1.00 pound per square foot, and 20 ounce at 0.0270 inch (0.0258 minimum) and 1.25 pounds. Its guide specification calls for sheet that meets ASTM B370.
LI Gutter Service in East Meadow uses 16 ounce cold-rolled copper as its standard and offers 20 ounce for commercial work or long exposed runs.
The same page sorts the two profiles by house. Half-round is a true U, which it calls period-correct on Tudors, Colonials and Victorians. K-style is an ogee profile with more water capacity, suited to transitional and modern homes.
Copper K-style can be rolled on site like aluminum. Englert’s spec sheet for its 5-inch K-style machine lists copper up to 20 ounce among the metals it forms, so a crew with the right machine can run copper the full length of the house.
Soldered joints, not caulked ones
Aluminum gutters lean on sealant at the corners. Copper is meant to be soldered. LI Gutter Service says every corner and every outlet on its copper jobs is hand-soldered with lead-free silver solder, not riveted.
The stakes are spelled out on the same page. Correctly installed copper lasts 60 years or more, the company says, and copper installed wrong, with riveted seams for example, can fail in 10.
Revere’s specification sets the standard for the work. Solder should meet ASTM B32. Before soldering, the joint has to be mechanically cleaned to a bright, unoxidized surface, and bare copper should be pre-tinned.
Before you sign, ask the installer who does the soldering, and whether you can see a finished corner on a past job.
From bright penny to green, and how fast
Copper changes color for decades. LI Gutter Service’s FAQ gives the sequence it sees: bright new copper turns salmon to brown between months 3 and 12, chocolate brown in years 2 to 4, then a darker brown stage, and green verdigris from about year 8 to year 15 or later. It adds that Long Island salt air speeds this up a little compared with inland.
Revere sells a pre-aged sheet that ships with a brown oxide finish and says that in most environments it will still eventually weather to green. LI Gutter Service prices pre-patinated copper as a premium upgrade of 25 to 35 percent.
Then leave the new copper alone. Revere says not to clean copper chemically or abrasively, and to wash off construction dirt with clean water only, no soap or detergent. Fingerprints from installation, it adds, fade as the metal weathers.
Keeping copper away from aluminum and steel
Two metals touching in the rain can eat each other. Mark Graham, NRCA’s vice president of technical services, wrote in Professional Roofing in November 2019 that water running off a copper gutter into an aluminum downspout will make the downspout fail early. Run it the other way, aluminum draining into copper, and the effect is limited to where the two metals meet. Graham also wrote that the farther apart two metals sit in the galvanic series, the stronger the push toward corrosion.
The fasteners count too. Revere’s specification calls for copper, copper alloy or non-magnetic 300 series stainless steel fasteners, and says to separate copper from other metals as those metals’ makers recommend.
LI Gutter Service uses only bronze or copper hangers and keeps everything in the water path copper. Aluminum hardware on copper gutters, it says, fails in 5 to 8 years. It will do a split job, copper on the front of the house and aluminum on the back, which keeps the two metals on separate runs.
Which flashing metals hold up near the water is a separate question, taken up in our roof flashing guide.
What a Long Island copper installer charges
Few Long Island companies publish copper prices. LI Gutter Service’s copper page does, and its numbers run a little higher at the top end than the company’s copper figures already in our gutter installation cost guide:
| Item | Published price |
|---|---|
| Half-round copper gutter, installed | $35 to $50 per linear foot |
| K-style copper gutter, installed | $28 to $42 per linear foot |
| Copper downspouts | $32 to $48 per linear foot |
| Leader heads | $125 to $450 each, by style |
| Pre-patinated copper | adds 25 to 35 percent |
Half-round copper usually pairs with round copper downspouts, and K-style with rectangular ones, according to the same copper page.
Where copper fits on a Long Island house
LI Gutter Service gives copper a life of 60 years or more when it is installed right. That is a long time to hang under a roof that may be replaced in between, so copper makes the most sense on a house whose roof is built to last too.
If you are pricing a slate roof or a cedar roof, price the gutters in the same conversation, since the crew will be working along the eaves anyway.
Copper does not have to go all the way around. LI Gutter Service’s split option puts copper where the street sees it and aluminum where it does not, which cuts the footage of the expensive metal. For the aluminum side of that choice, and how it compares with steel, start at our gutter installation hub.
