Corfe Castle gutter cleaning, valleys included

The hidden runs first. A Corfe Castle stone house with two ranges has a valley gutter between them, and a house with a raised gable end often has a box gutter tucked behind the parapet. Neither can be seen from the ground and neither has anywhere to spill except inwards.

Leaf and moss collect at the head of the valley, silt builds under it, and then one heavy afternoon the water backs up over the upstand and into the roof. We clear them out by hand, check the outlet at the low end, and where the angle is awkward a camera on a reach pole shows you what is there before and after.

The ordinary runs. Eaves gutters in Corfe Castle fill with a mix of moss off stone slate and tile, leaf from the village trees, and grit. Loose debris is scooped out, packed material is dug out or lifted on a vacuum, and the run is cleaned down to the bottom so the fall works again. None of it goes down the outlet, because a gutter emptied into a drain is a drain job later.

Outlets, hoppers and downpipes. Older properties in the village usually have a hopper head at the top of the pipe, and a hopper fills silently. We empty every one by hand, clear the outlet, run the downpipe through from the top and rod from the shoe where water is backing up. Then every downpipe is proved with water while you watch.

Cast iron and what it needs. A good deal of the rainwater goods on the older houses is cast iron, and it should never be jetted or levered. It is emptied by hand, the bolt through each joint is checked, and the brackets are looked at, because cast iron gives way at its fixings rather than along its length. On plastic runs added to extensions, a union whose seal has hardened gets a new seal on the day, while a dropped bracket or a sagging length that needs re-hanging is gutter repair in Corfe Castle, priced on its own.

Why it is worth doing. Water over the front edge keeps brickwork and render wet through the winter and brings the green with it. Water behind the gutter takes the fascia and runs along the soffit. And water out of a valley goes straight to a ceiling. Soft fascias, damp staining and anything else we find gets photographed and reported.

We don't price a clear by the metre. A run of open gutter on a newer bungalow and the same length of valley between two stone roofs take very different time.

Reaching it. Low eaves on a bungalow can be done with a ladder or a long-reach pole. A tall gable needs a tower, and a valley or parapet may need a scaffold. On a street frontage with nowhere to put one, the setting up can take longer than the clearing, and the work at height rules put access on the quote as its own item.

What has built up. Corfe Castle's stone slate roofs shed moss and lichen that settle into a heavy, wet mat, silt collects in runs under trees, and leaves come out easily. It packs at the outlets and hoppers, so we count those, not the length.

Clearing or mending. A joint that drips when water flows again, a downpipe choked at the bottom bend, or a length sagging between brackets is mending, and that is what turns a short visit into a half day.

Where it goes. The ground round the village can shrink and swell, so a downpipe emptying against a wall, not into a gully, is worth putting right while we are up there.

Ask any other firm whether they rod the downpipes through, whether valleys and hoppers are in the price, and who takes the debris away.

Our base is in Boscombe, about eleven and a half miles from Corfe Castle. We clear gutters in the village and out to Kingston, Church Knowle and Harmans Cross, and over to Wareham and Swanage, broadly BH20, where Dorset Council is the authority.

Thomas Hannen owns the business and is the one who comes to look and put a price on it. It trades as Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. A verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Coming out to look is free, and the written quote, with every line set out, costs nothing either. Before you book a visit in Corfe Castle, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Corfe Castle need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.