Gutter Cleaning in Handsworth

Overflow onto a bay roof, with no lawn to catch it

An overflow on a Handsworth terrace does not land on grass. It comes over the front edge onto the bay roof and the brickwork under it, or at the back it sheets into a small yard and down the entry that is already the only route to the bins. Where the run is continuous, water finds the low point, not the house that caused the blockage, which is exactly why neighbours end up disagreeing about whose problem it is. Add moss shedding off old tiled slopes into a run with barely any fall, and what sits up there by February is a compacted silt bed, well past loose leaf.

• Front runs continuous across several houses, so the blockage is often not above the house that suffers it
• Street planting around Handsworth Park and along Hamstead Road, filling the front runs each autumn
• Overflow landing on the bay roof and brickwork, with no garden to take it
• Rear runs above the back addition, reached down the entry or through the property itself
• Moss and silt off old tiled slopes settling in runs that have almost no fall

From the footway to third-storey height, silt and all

A pole-mounted vacuum works from the footway and reaches third-storey height, so no ladder blocks the pavement and no weight goes onto guttering four neighbours depend on. We lift the silt and moss out along with the leaf, because a run stripped of leaf alone will be holding water again before the new year. Every downpipe is then flushed, the rear one into the yard gully included, to prove the length actually carries water. A camera on the pole gives you pictures of anything sagging, split or parting from the fascia.

• Cleared from the footway, with no ladder and no load on guttering the whole row relies on
• Silt and moss lifted out as well as leaf, or it blocks again in January
• Every downpipe flushed, the rear yard gully included, as proof the length carries
• Damage photographed, which helps when the conversation has to include next door

More detail on the equipment and the order of work: the full gutter cleaning process.

Clearing a whole row at once

The time to clear is the end of October through November, once the park and Hamstead Road trees have finished dropping. A whole row on one visit beats one house in isolation, and on these streets that is usually arrangeable, because everybody can see the same overflow from the pavement. An owner with several doors on one road can book it that way in a single call. Rear access is the planning problem here, more than height: we need the entry unlocked and bins pulled clear, or somebody in to let us through. The front needs nobody present at all. Handsworth is covered on set days, so booking ahead is the way to secure one.

Pricing a single length of an unbroken run, or the row

We price on the length of run, the height and what is sitting in it, and a mid-terrace taken alone is a small job. Two things enlarge it. Where we are clearing one length out of a continuous run, the outcome is compromised before we start, so we would sooner clear several doors on the same visit, which is the version that works. And a rear run above a back addition left for years may need rodding before it will flush. Carrying the kit from a parked van is part of the job and sits inside the one figure you are quoted.

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Late autumn, and a spring clear near the park

Annually for most of this stock, booked for late autumn, not September while the trees are still holding on. Twice is genuinely worth paying for on the streets closest to the park and along Hamstead Road, where the front run fills fastest, adding a spring visit once blossom and seed have come down. If water is already coming over onto your bay, forget the calendar: that one wants the next set day.