Estimate calories and kilojoules burned doing home-exterior maintenance and DIY work around the outside of the house, across three common tasks — cleaning gutters, hanging storm windows, and roofing work — based on your body weight, task type, and how long you spent on the job. These figures come from the Home Repair section of the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, the standard reference researchers and health professionals use to estimate energy cost for everyday activities and household tasks around an Australian home.
Home exterior maintenance calorie burn depends on the task, captured here as three tiers: cleaning gutters (MET 5.0), hanging storm windows (MET 5.0), and roofing work (MET 6.0). The formula is calories = MET × body weight (kg) × duration (hours). An 85 kg person spending 4 hours on the job burns 1,700 kcal (about 7,113 kJ) cleaning gutters, 1,700 kcal (about 7,113 kJ) hanging storm windows, and 2,040 kcal (about 8,535 kJ) doing roofing work. All three MET values used on this page are flagged by the Compendium as estimated figures rather than literature-confirmed values — see the disclosure below for full details.
| Task | MET | Calories | Kilojoules |
|---|
The calculation combines a MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) value for the specific task, your body weight, and how long you spent on the job. This calculator uses three MET values taken directly from the Home Repair section of the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities: cleaning gutters (code 06100, MET 5.0), hanging storm windows (code 06120, MET 5.0), and roofing (code 06180, MET 6.0).
| Task | MET | Calories (85 kg, 4 hr) | Kilojoules |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaning gutters | 5.0 | 1,700 kcal | 7,113 kJ |
| Hanging storm windows | 5.0 | 1,700 kcal | 7,113 kJ |
| Roofing | 6.0 | 2,040 kcal | 8,535 kJ |
Cleaning gutters typically means working from a ladder to clear leaves, twigs and sediment out of roof guttering by hand or with a scoop, then repositioning the ladder repeatedly along the fascia and often flushing the downpipes with a hose. It's a task built around repeated climbing, reaching, and steady upper-body effort rather than continuous heavy exertion, which is why it sits at a moderate MET value alongside storm windows rather than at the top of the scale.
Hanging storm windows involves lifting, carrying and fitting window panels or screens into place around the exterior of the house — often working from a ladder or step stool, aligning frames, securing fasteners, and moving between windows around the building. Like gutter cleaning, it's a task of intermittent lifting and positioning punctuated by climbing and repositioning, giving it a comparable overall energy cost.
Roofing is the most demanding of the three tasks captured on this page, and its higher MET value of 6.0 reflects that. Roofing work involves sustained kneeling, crouching and moving across an inclined, often uneven surface while carrying and manoeuvring materials such as tiles, sheeting or tools, all while maintaining balance and constant core engagement on a sloped surface. That combination of whole-body stabilisation, materials handling, and working against gravity on an incline makes roofing noticeably more physically taxing per hour than either gutter cleaning or hanging storm windows.
The table below holds the task constant at roofing (MET 6.0) for a 4-hour session, so you can see how much body weight alone changes the total.
| Body Weight | MET | Calories (4 hr) | Kilojoules |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 kg | 6.0 | 1,440 kcal | 6,025 kJ |
| 65 kg | 6.0 | 1,560 kcal | 6,527 kJ |
| 70 kg | 6.0 | 1,680 kcal | 7,029 kJ |
| 75 kg | 6.0 | 1,800 kcal | 7,531 kJ |
| 90 kg | 6.0 | 2,160 kcal | 9,037 kJ |
| 95 kg | 6.0 | 2,280 kcal | 9,540 kJ |
Here body weight is fixed at 85 kg while both session length and task change, so you can compare how much a longer job and a harder task each add to the total.
| Duration | Cleaning Gutters (MET 5.0) | Hanging Storm Windows (MET 5.0) | Roofing (MET 6.0) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 425 kcal / 1,778 kJ | 425 kcal / 1,778 kJ | 510 kcal / 2,134 kJ |
| 2 hours | 850 kcal / 3,556 kJ | 850 kcal / 3,556 kJ | 1,020 kcal / 4,268 kJ |
| 3 hours | 1,275 kcal / 5,335 kJ | 1,275 kcal / 5,335 kJ | 1,530 kcal / 6,402 kJ |
| 4 hours | 1,700 kcal / 7,113 kJ | 1,700 kcal / 7,113 kJ | 2,040 kcal / 8,535 kJ |
Australian nutrition panels list energy in kilojoules, not calories, so it's worth converting your maintenance session into the same unit your food packaging uses. Multiply your calorie figure by 4.184 to get kilojoules. An 85 kg person spending 4 hours cleaning gutters burns about 1,700 kcal, roughly 7,113 kJ — a useful figure to weigh up against the energy value printed on a snack or meal eaten before or after a weekend of exterior home maintenance.
How many calories does home exterior maintenance burn?
It depends on the task and how long you spend on it. Using this calculator's three tiers for an 85 kg person over a 4-hour session: cleaning gutters (MET 5.0) burns about 1,700 kcal (7,113 kJ), hanging storm windows (MET 5.0) burns about 1,700 kcal (7,113 kJ), and roofing work (MET 6.0) burns about 2,040 kcal (8,535 kJ). Lighter or heavier people, and shorter or longer sessions, will see proportionally lower or higher totals, so enter your own weight and duration above for a personalised estimate.
How is calories burned on home exterior maintenance calculated?
The calculator multiplies a MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) value for your chosen task by your body weight in kilograms and by your session duration in hours: calories = MET × body weight (kg) × duration (hours). The three MET values used — 5.0 for cleaning gutters (code 06100), 5.0 for hanging storm windows (code 06120), and 6.0 for roofing (code 06180) — come directly from the Home Repair section of the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities. The result in kilocalories is then multiplied by 4.184 to give the equivalent figure in kilojoules, the unit used on Australian food labels.
Which MET values on this page are estimated rather than literature-confirmed?
All three MET values used on this page are flagged in the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities as estimated figures rather than values confirmed by dedicated published research: cleaning gutters (MET 5.0, code 06100), hanging storm windows (MET 5.0, code 06120), and roofing (MET 6.0, code 06180). Every tier on this page carries this flag, not just one of the three. We're disclosing this plainly rather than presenting these figures as more precise than they are — treat every result on this page as a reasonable planning estimate rather than a lab-measured figure for these specific tasks.
Why does roofing burn more calories than cleaning gutters or hanging storm windows?
Roofing carries a MET of 6.0 compared with 5.0 for cleaning gutters and hanging storm windows, reflecting the extra physical demand of sustained kneeling, crouching, and balancing while carrying and manoeuvring materials on a sloped, often uneven surface. Gutter cleaning and storm window hanging both involve repeated climbing and lifting, but roofing adds continuous whole-body stabilisation against an incline, which pushes its energy cost noticeably higher per hour.
Is working on ladders or roofs for home maintenance safe?
Ladder and roof work carries a genuine fall risk that's worth taking seriously rather than ignoring. Sensible precautions include using a stable, correctly positioned ladder or proper access equipment, avoiding working at height alone, steering clear of wet, windy, or otherwise poor conditions, wearing suitable footwear, and having someone aware of what you're doing nearby. For roofing specifically, many Australian homeowners choose to engage a licensed tradesperson rather than attempting the work themselves, given the height and surface risks involved — this calculator estimates energy cost only and isn't a substitute for proper work-at-height safety practice.
Does body weight change how many calories home exterior maintenance burns?
Yes. Because calories equal MET multiplied by body weight in kilograms multiplied by duration in hours, body weight is a direct multiplier in the formula. At the roofing tier (MET 6.0) for a 4-hour session, a 95 kg person burns roughly 2,280 kcal compared with about 1,440 kcal for a 60 kg person completing the identical job in the identical time.
How do I convert calories burned on home maintenance into kilojoules?
Multiply the calorie figure by 4.184, the standard conversion between kilocalories and kilojoules used on Australian food labels. An 85 kg person doing 4 hours of roofing work (MET 6.0) burns about 2,040 kcal, which converts to roughly 8,535 kJ — a useful number for comparing against the energy value on meals or snacks eaten during a weekend of exterior home maintenance.
Does hanging storm windows burn the same calories as cleaning gutters?
Yes, both tasks share the same MET value of 5.0 in the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, so for the same body weight and duration they produce identical calorie and kilojoule estimates on this calculator. Both involve a similar mix of climbing, lifting, and repositioning around the exterior of the house, which is likely why the Compendium assigns them the same energy-cost figure.