Loft Conversion Leads: Screen Roof Type, Head Height and Budget With AI

Collect five facts before booking any survey: roof type, measured head height, property type, a budget band and any planning or access constraints. Let an AI assistant sort replies into A, B and C leads and draft the follow-up, while a person books surveys and makes every feasibility promise. Track cost per qualified lead, not per enquiry.

A survey visit eats hours: travel, measuring, the conversation, the write-up. Multiply your own figure by the number of surveys that never lead to a quote and you have the price of not screening. Most facts that end a loft job can be learned in a five-minute exchange, which is where AI earns its place: it asks, sorts and nudges, and you decide.

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Five questions that decide whether a survey is worth the drive

Ask these in a web form, a text exchange or the first call. Each removes a type of job that cannot be done, cannot be afforded or cannot start this year.

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Two of these are answered wrongly more often than the rest. Head height is the first: homeowners measure floor to ceiling in the bedroom below, which says nothing about the loft. The wording in your form must say "from the top of the joists to the underside of the ridge", with a photo of the tape as proof. Budget is the second: a stated $40,000 might include fees and decorating, or might be the builder's bill alone.

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Planning flags to ask about, without answering

Ask whether the house is in a protected heritage area or is itself a protected building, whether the roof has been extended before, whether the property is a flat, maisonette or leasehold, and whether a neighbour shares the party wall. Planning and building control are separate questions, and both are for the relevant authority to decide, so your reply is always "we confirm this at survey and with the authority". Never tell an enquirer that permission is or is not needed. The right answer depends on local rules and on the house, and a wrong answer costs more than the visit would have.

Asking a homeowner to measure and photograph the loft

The five facts depend on two photos and one measurement. Send this as a text or email, in this order, as soon as the first reply arrives.

Hi [first name], it's [your name] at [firm]. To tell you whether a survey makes sense I need three things from the loft. First, a photo of the whole roof structure from the hatch. Second, a close-up of where the timbers meet at the very top. Third, a tape reading from the top of the ceiling joists to the underside of the ridge at the highest point, with a photo of the tape. Only go up if the hatch and ladder feel safe, and never step between the joists, because the ceiling below will not take your weight. If there is no safe way up, tell me and we will book a survey instead.

What the photos tell you is simple once you have seen a few. A cut roof shows a handful of large rafters meeting horizontal purlins, with a wide open triangle of space. A trussed roof shows many thinner timbers in W patterns that fill the middle of the loft. Trade guidance says most houses built before the 1960s have cut roofs and most from the late 1960s onward have trusses, but the age of the house only suggests a roof type. The photo settles it.

Scoring leads A, B and C

A rubric turns judgement into something an assistant can apply consistently and you can audit. Set the thresholds from your own jobs. The figures below are illustrative, with a firm whose cheapest conversion starts at $45,000.

• Grade A, 10 or more points. Head height and budget both known and above zero. Book a survey within three working days.
• Grade B, 6 to 9 points, or an A with a missing measurement. Chase the missing fact first; survey once it is in.
• Grade C, under 6, or a zero for head height or budget that the customer will not change. Decline kindly, or park for 90 days.

Here is the rubric applied to one real-looking enquiry. A homeowner in a freehold semi-detached house sends a photo showing a cut roof, a measured 2.35 metres, a budget band of $55,000 to $65,000, a wish to start in four months and a heritage-area flag. Roof 2, height 2, property 2, budget 3 (the band starts more than 15 per cent over the $45,000 floor), timing 2, planning 1: twelve points, grade A, survey within three days, with the heritage flag noted for the visit.

A month of 40 enquiries, 15 surveys and 3 signed jobs

All figures in this section are illustrative. A firm spends $3,000 a month on search ads, a lead platform and a small social budget, and receives 40 enquiries.

Before screening, it offered a survey to nearly everyone who asked. Say 28 surveys were booked, at three hours each including travel, which is 84 hours. Twenty quotes went out and three jobs signed. After screening, the same 40 enquiries sorted into 9 A leads, 13 B leads and 18 C leads. All nine A leads were surveyed, plus six B leads once their missing facts arrived: 15 surveys, 45 hours. Twelve quotes went out and, again, three jobs signed.

Notice what did not change: three signed jobs and a cost per signed job of $1,000. Notice what did: 39 fewer survey hours, which at $50 an hour of surveyor time (your own rate will differ) is $1,950. Cost per survey went up, from $107 to $200, because the firm surveyed fewer people, and that is the point; a rising cost per survey with a steady signed total is a sign of a better screen, not a worse one. If the freed hours let you reply to A leads within a day and one more job signs, cost per signed job falls to $750. That last step is a hope, not a promise, so do not budget on it.

A prompt to sort the enquiry and draft the first reply

Paste the rubric and your own facts into the prompt, strip phone numbers and email addresses from the enquiry, and keep the instruction about promises exactly as written.

You work for a loft conversion firm. Read the enquiry below and return:

1. The five facts, each marked stated, unclear or missing: roof type,
   head height (top of joists to underside of ridge), property type,
   budget band, planning or access flags.
2. A score using this rubric: [paste the rubric table here].
   Score "unclear" as zero. Do not infer roof type from house age.
3. A grade (A, B or C) and the single most important missing fact.
4. A reply of under 90 words in plain, friendly English that asks only
   for the missing facts. Offer a survey only if the grade is A.
   Never state a price except the starting figure below. Never say that
   planning permission is or is not needed. Never say the loft is
   suitable or unsuitable.

Firm facts: our smallest conversion starts at $45,000 including fees.
We survey within three working days of an A grade.

Enquiry:
[paste the enquiry text]

Run it on this illustrative enquiry: "Hi, we have a 1970s three-bed semi-detached house and want a bedroom and shower room in the loft. Roughly $40k budget. Not sure about the height, there's a water tank up there. Can someone come out this week?"

A good reply to that prompt looks like this. Facts: roof type unclear, head height missing, property stated as semi-detached (freehold unconfirmed), budget stated at about $40,000, planning flags missing. Score: roof 0, height 0, property 2, budget 0, timing 2, planning 0, total 4, grade C. Most important gap: the budget sits below the firm's starting figure. Drafted reply: "Thanks [first name]. A bedroom and shower room is a sensible use of a loft. To give you a straight answer I need two things: roughly what your $40,000 includes (design, engineer and building control fees, finishing), and a tape reading from the top of the joists to the underside of the ridge. For context, our conversions start at around $45,000 including fees, so it is worth knowing whether the figure can stretch before anyone drives out. [your name]"

What I would fix by hand. Left to itself, an assistant may write "1970s so probably trussed" and give the roof a point, which is why the prompt forbids inferring from age; here the roof is correctly scored as unclear. The water tank should not lower the score, because it is something the survey deals with. One slip is easy to miss: the property scored 2 although freehold is unconfirmed, so either score it 0 until the customer confirms or add the tenure question to the reply. And the reply must be read against the three "never" rules every time, because a tool that has been told not to promise feasibility will still occasionally say "this sounds perfect for a dormer". Check twenty replies a month, and tighten the prompt whenever one slips.

A follow-up cadence that ends before it becomes nagging

Most loft enquirers are comparing three firms and answering none of them quickly. A short, finite sequence beats an open-ended chase. Use the channel the person used to contact you, and log each send in your sheet.

The Day 8 text can be as plain as this: "Hi [first name], still thinking about the loft? If you send the photos I can tell you within a day whether a survey is worth booking. No pressure either way. [your name]." Ask an assistant to write three variations in your voice and pick one, but keep the length under 40 words and never let it add urgency such as "only two survey slots left". If you invented that scarcity, a customer who checks will remember.

The sequence suits a human-led process. If you want it automated, link a form to a sheet and let a no-code tool send the messages, then read nurturing enquiries with an AI sequence for the trade-off between speed and sounding like a robot. For booking and confirming visits, qualifying, booking and confirming site visits covers the plumbing in more detail.

Where the AI step goes wrong in loft work

• The wrong height. A homeowner reports "2.5 metres, no problem" and the assistant grades the lead A. At survey the loft measures 1.9 metres at the ridge, because the number was the bedroom ceiling. It showed up as a string of A leads that never reached a quote. The cure is the tape photo and the exact wording "top of the joists to underside of the ridge".
• House age as roof type. The assistant sees "built 1975" and writes "trussed". Many homes of that period are, but the photo decides. Keep unknown scored at zero.
• Budget confusion. A band of $40,000 to $50,000 is read as total project cost; the customer meant the builder's price before fees and finishing. Ask what the band includes, and write the answer in the sheet.
• A flat treated like a house. "Our top-floor flat" is read as a freehold house. The rubric scores a flat at zero for property, which forces a human look at consent.
• A promise slipping into a reply. The assistant writes "your roof sounds ideal". It cannot know that. Search your sent messages for "ideal", "perfect" and "no problem" once a month.

Photos deserve a separate warning. Assistants can describe a picture of roof timbers, but they can mistake trusses for rafters and misjudge heights from an angle. Use them to speed up your own look, not to replace it.

Cost per lead that survives a second look

Keep one sheet with a row per enquiry: date, source, channel, grade, survey date, quote date, signed date, job value. Allocate your monthly spend to each source, then compute the same ratios per source. Using the month above, the illustrative split looks like this.

Loft jobs sign weeks after the survey, so a month is too short to judge a source. Group enquiries by the month they arrived and revisit each cohort after 90 days. Social ads show nothing signed here, yet two surveys are still live. Cutting that line today would be a decision based on an unfinished month. Cost per qualified lead is the early signal, and cost per signed job is the verdict.

The same arithmetic, with a survey step, appears in solar lead cost per survey and fast follow-up, and the questions you ask change by trade, as the garage conversion screening questions show. For the scoring idea in general, what AI lead scoring is and whether a small business needs it explains where a rubric stops and a model begins.

Checking the screen against what happened

At the end of each month, compare grades with outcomes. If fewer than half of your A leads reach a quote, the rubric is too generous, so look at which factor is being scored too kindly. If C leads you declined turn up as somebody else's signed jobs, it is too strict. Both are rules of thumb rather than laws, but they give you a trigger to review. Read the twenty oldest declined leads and ask whether any should have been B.

Also check the human side. How long did an A lead wait for a call? Did every B lead get the photo guide? A rubric can be right while the process around it leaks, and the usual leak is the gap between the form arriving and a person looking at it.

A form, a sheet and an assistant: what the kit costs

The minimum kit is a form, a sheet and a chat assistant. Forms and sheets are free in the major office suites, and a paid chat assistant such as ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro lists at about $20 a month. If you want messages sent automatically, Zapier's Professional plan lists at $19.99 a month on annual billing or $29.99 monthly, for 750 tasks, and Make has a free plan with 1,000 credits a month. Five action steps for each of 40 enquiries is roughly 200 tasks, because Zapier does not count the trigger, but an AI step can use more than one task, so check before you rely on that sum. Prices change, so read the vendor page on the day you buy.

If you would rather map this with someone who has set it up before, that is what my AI implementation consultation covers; you can reach me through the contact page. Otherwise start with the five questions and the rubric. They work in a paper notebook, and the assistant only makes them faster.

Screening loft enquiries: questions owners ask

Should I ask for a budget in the first message?

Yes, as a band rather than a figure: under a number, between two numbers, above a number. Ask what the band includes, because homeowners often mean the build only and forget design, engineer and building control fees and finishing. A band lets you compare with your smallest job without sounding like a quote.

Can AI tell if a loft is suitable from photos?

Treat it as a pointer, not a verdict. An assistant can describe what it sees in a photo of roof timbers, but it can mistake trusses for rafters or misjudge height from an angle. A person should look at the photos and a measured head height decides whether a survey is worth booking.

How many follow-ups should I send before stopping?

A sequence of five or six contacts over about two weeks is plenty for a high-value job: a call, a text with the photo guide, an email, a short check-in and a closing note. Stop at once if the person asks, and park the rest for one note after 90 days.

Is it fair to turn down a lead for low head height?

Yes, if you say so honestly and kindly, and offer what is true: some lofts need the roof raised, which is a different and costlier job. Declining early saves both sides a wasted visit, and a polite note keeps the door open for a later project.

Further reads

• Loft Conversion Quote Template: Stages and Provisional Sums With AI — What to send after the survey: stages, provisional sums and exclusions.
• Remodelling Leads: An AI-Drafted Follow-Up Sequence for Open Quotes — A follow-up sequence for open quotes once the survey is done.
• Window Replacement Leads: Reply Fast and Book the Survey With AI — Another survey-led trade, with fast replies that book the visit.
• Foundation Repair Leads: Screen Crack Photos With AI Before the Visit — How photo screening works for a trade that also needs a survey.
• MyBuilder vs Checkatrade for Plumbers: Cost per Job, With AI Replies — Cost per job on shared-lead platforms, worked through with AI replies.
• AI Receptionist for Builders: Take Calls While You Are on Site — Catch enquiries while you are on a roof or a site.
• Insulation Leads: What They Cost and How AI Qualifies Them — Real price ranges for insulation leads by source, how to turn them into cost per booked survey, and an AI qualifying script that protects survey slots.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: builders' trade-body guidance on loft conversions (head height, roof types, conversion types), Zapier and Make pricing pages and vendor price lists for chat assistants (read 1 November 2026).