Gutter cleaning around Merritown and Hurn

We work down the system in order, because that is the only way to find out which part has failed.

The run. Leaves, moss, roofing grit and silt, scooped out by hand from a ladder, or lifted with a vacuum on a reach pole where the ground is too soft to foot one. It comes out into a bag and goes with us. On an exposed site like Merritown a lot of what collects is not from the property at all: twigs, heath litter and dust blown in on a south westerly and packed hard at the stop ends.

The outlets and the downpipes. Each outlet is cleared, each pipe has water run through it while you watch, and a pipe that will not take it is rodded or looked at with a camera. Where a hopper serves more than one run it gets opened up too, because everything upstream ends there.

Where the water goes next. This is the part most gutter cleans skip. A shoe discharging onto a path, a gully choked with leaf mould, a soakaway that has silted and no longer takes anything, a boundary ditch grown over: any of them backs the system up from the bottom, and the symptom shows at the top as an overflowing gutter. Approved Document H sets out what rainwater is supposed to discharge into. We check what we can reach and tell you plainly what we cannot.

Outbuildings. On a Merritown property, stables, workshops, garages and the odd barn have more roof between them than the house does, and their gutters are the last thing anybody looks at. A run over a stable door that overflows all winter soaks the brickwork below it, leaves green staining and damp across the render, and rots the fascias and soffit behind. By then the sludge in the gutter is the least of it.

Repairs. Sagging between brackets, a union that has lost its seal, a length blown out of fall, a bracket into rotten timber. Photographed, priced, and only done once you have said yes. A seal or bracket can be done on the same visit if you agree the price first, and re-hanging a length is gutter repair in Merritown, priced separately.

We do not charge by the metre, because a metre under a hedge and a metre on an open gable are not the same metre.

Height and ground. A bungalow run from a ladder is quick. A tall gable or a valley gutter needs a tower, and the work at height rules make that its own line. Ground that stays wet for days after heavy rain means boarding under the ladder feet, which adds time.

What is in it. Dry leaves lift out fast. Moss off the tiles sets into a heavy wet mat, and silt that has built up behind a hedge takes longer to dig out and bag. Outlets are where it all packs, so the number of outlets matters more than the length.

Where the water goes after. Merritown ground carries a high surface water rating, so a gully or soakaway at the foot of a downpipe that has silted up is worth clearing at the same visit. If it is not, the water leaves the gutter and pools at the wall instead.

A clean, or a repair. A leaking joint, a downpipe blocked at the shoe, or a length of plastic sagging between brackets is repair, not clearing, and it is priced separately so you can decide.

Ask anyone else quoting: are the downpipes being rodded through, or only the gutter scooped out? Are the gullies at the bottom included? Who takes the debris away?

In a street, rainwater leaves the downpipe and goes into a public surface water sewer, and that is the end of it. Around Merritown it usually does not. It goes to a soakaway in the garden, or a boundary ditch, or a watercourse, and the ground it has to soak into is a high surface water flood risk with the Moors river under a kilometre away. You can look up your own address on the government flood risk service.

The practical effect is that the bottom of your rainwater system needs as much attention as the top, and hardly anybody gives it any. A soakaway silts up over years and then simply stops taking water, at which point the downpipe backs up and the gutter above it overflows even though the run is clean. A ditch that has not been cleared grows in and does the same. So before you spend money on clearing a gutter twice, check where the water is going: lift the gully grate, watch what happens at the shoe in heavy rain, and walk the boundary ditch. We do the first two as part of the visit and will tell you honestly when the answer is a drainage job, not a gutter one. On frequency, an open Merritown site like this is not a twice a year job: clear it in late autumn after the leaves are down, then look again in spring at the outlets alone.

Merritown lies 3.6 miles north of Boscombe, where we are based, in the Hurn corner of BH23, and its council is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. We clear gutters out to Christchurch and Parley as well.

The business trades as Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and its owner Thomas Hannen comes to see your gutters himself, so the person quoting is the person answerable for the work. We hold a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. You pay nothing for the visit, and nothing for the written quote with every item listed. Before you book a visit in Merritown, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Merritown 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.