Gutter and downpipe clearing in Cadnam and Bartley
Bungalow and house runs cleared by hand, outlets opened and every downpipe proved running. Free site visit and a free written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most of what stands here is single storey. That does more to the cost of a gutter clean than anything else about the place, because with no platform to hire, doing the job properly and doing it often stop competing with one another.
Nothing exotic comes down the phone. A run spilling over the front edge in heavy rain and washing the wall. A downpipe that gurgles, then stops taking water at all. A joint dripping in one spot until the soffit beneath it goes soft. And people who simply have not looked at the gutters in years.
All four run the same way once we are there. Debris out by hand, outlets opened and checked, water through each downpipe with a person watching the shoe. The free site visit takes in the whole property, and the written itemised quote keeps clearing, repair and access apart so you can see which is which.
The work
Clearing, flushing and putting a sagging run back straight
From the ground, on a pole. Where a border, a conservatory or soft ground rules out footing a ladder, the run gets emptied from below with a reach pole and a vacuum head. Oak leaf, holly, moss off the tiles and the grit arriving with it compact into one wet sludge, and that is what the head draws up. What we never do is flush that sludge sideways: it travels as far as the outlet and packs tighter there.
Off a standoff ladder, at the eaves. Most of the work around here happens from this one position, somebody footing the ladder and the standoff holding all the weight off the gutter itself. A scoop lifts the debris out whole, into a bucket and then into the van. Nothing gets tipped into the borders.
Off a tower, for what a ladder cannot have. Rear extensions are the rule here, not the exception, and each join between two pitches makes a valley. A valley gutter or a box gutter collects off both slopes with nowhere to overflow except into the roof, so it goes on the list even when the front of the house looks fine. Valleys, dormer cheeks and anything wanting both hands get a tower.
At the bottom of the downpipe, watching. Every length is flushed, and every pipe has water run through it while somebody stands at the shoe waiting for it. If it never arrives, the pipe is backing up below the eaves and a rod or a camera says where. Clearing without proving the pipe is guesswork.
Directly over the outlet, where it counts. A gutter blocks at its outlets and not along its length, so their count tells you more than the metres do. A garage or extension roof tipping into a lower run normally meets it at a hopper, and a full hopper sends the overflow behind the pipe rather than through it, onto the wall. A silted shoe holds water against the brickwork all winter.
Up there anyway, so the repairs get done. Dripping in one place means a union with no seal. Standing water mid length means brackets that have let go and a run gone sagging. Overflow on a clean gutter means the fall is running the wrong way. Refixing a bracket, replacing a union, re-hanging or realigning a length: all of it is repair, priced apart from the clear. When a run is genuinely finished, we say so.
How often, once getting up there costs almost nothing. First to suffer are the fascias and soffits. After them, green streaking on render, a dark band on brickwork, damp at the head of the wall, staining on a ceiling. Under this much oak an annual clear after the leaves are down is the minimum, and a spring seasonal visit is easy to justify here.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access, the length of run, the number of outlets and downpipes, any repair, and where the debris goes on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.
Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Clearing a gutter needs no permission and nothing from building control. Changing the look of the building can. There is no conservation area of its own here, but this is a National Park with a handful of listed entries, so new rainwater goods in a different material on a visible elevation are a planning question rather than upkeep, and on a listed building consent comes first.
Cost
What decides the price of a gutter clean
No rate per square metre, because a metre of gutter behind a conifer and a metre on an open gable are not the same metre.
Getting to it. A bungalow with the run within reach of a standoff, a chalet with a dormer over the gutter, and a two storey house with a conservatory in the way are three different set ups, and only the last of them is likely to want a tower. A bungalow run comes off a ladder or a pole, a three storey gable wants a tower, and a valley gutter between two roofs wants a proper platform. The work at height rules are why the access is a priced line rather than something absorbed into a rate.
What is in it, and how far it has travelled. Leaf litter lifts out in minutes. Moss washed off the tiles sets into a wet mat that has to be dug out, and silt in a long run behind a hedge is heavier and slower than anything a photograph shows. The number of outlets matters more than the length, because that is where it packs.
Whether it is a clean or a repair. A joint that drips once it is running again, a downpipe blocked at the shoe, a length of plastic that has sagged between brackets: none of that is clearing, and it is the part that decides whether you are booking an hour or half a day.
Comparing quotes? Ask whether the downpipes are being run through or just the gutter cleared, whether the outlets and hoppers are checked, whether it is a clear or a clear and a check for leaks, and who takes the debris away. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.
If it is overflowing now
Water coming over the gutter in heavy rain
Ring rather than use the form. Water running down a wall in a downpour soaks the brickwork and finds its way to a ceiling faster than most people expect, so a blocked outlet in a wet week goes to the front of the queue. We clear it, run water through to prove it, and tell you honestly if what you actually have is a broken joint rather than a blockage. On a single storey run we can usually be there and have it cleared quickly, because nothing has to be hired before anybody starts. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
On a single storey run the access stops being the expensive part
Roughly a quarter of the homes here are bungalows, and a good many of the rest are chalets whose main gutter still sits at first floor level rather than second. On almost any other kind of job the access line dominates the page. A two storey run often wants a tower, sometimes a scaffold, and that platform costs the same whether the gutter takes twenty minutes or half a day. Single storey has no platform in it at all. A standoff ladder or a pole reaches it, and the money goes on the work.
The useful part is what that does to frequency. Where access is most of the bill, people put it off and buy one heavy clear every third year, by which time the fascias have gone soft and the outlets are solid. Where access is almost nothing, twice a year reads as housekeeping rather than extravagance, and no run ever reaches the state that needs a repair. It also lets us be straight about the ladder. Fine for reaching a bungalow gutter. Not fine for working a valley or a second storey with both hands, which is the whole of what a ladder is and is not for.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Cadnam, Bartley, Copythorne, Winsor and the villages either side of the A31, broadly SO40, under the New Forest National Park Authority. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Cadnam and Bartley questions we get asked
Does a single storey run cost less to clear?
On the access line, nearly always. Nothing has to be hired: a standoff ladder or a pole reaches it, and hire is normally the figure that dominates a quote. The labour is not automatically less, mind. Bungalows often carry more metres of gutter than anybody expects. The saving sits in the platform.
Can it all be done from a ladder?
The eaves runs, yes, with a standoff and somebody footing it. A valley, a dormer cheek, or anything wanting both hands for a stretch is not ladder work at all, and we bring a tower for those rather than improvise. It appears on the quote as its own line.
How often is sensible with this many oaks about?
Twice a year for most properties here. A main clear late in autumn once the leaves are down, then a lighter one in spring for catkins, seed and moss. Under anything evergreen it moves closer to a standing arrangement, and we will say so rather than sell visits nobody needs.
Is the conservatory gutter part of the job?
Yes. Conservatory runs are usually the ones nobody has ever touched, and they sit where an upper roof discharges, so they fill fastest of anything on the plot. Garages matter as well, since a blockage there sends water down a wall with very little foundation under it.
Will you tell us if the guttering needs replacing rather than clearing?
Plainly, and with a photograph. Plastic gone brittle at the brackets, a run that will not hold a fall any more, a length distorted by years of standing water: none of that is worth clearing again. We would rather say it than take money twice a year for a run that has already failed.
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Get the whole run cleared while the access is easy
Thomas comes out, checks every run, outlet and downpipe on the property and sends a written itemised quote with the access priced separately. Free.