Gutter cleaning in Rockbourne

The clear. Debris out by hand into a bucket where there is safe standing, with a scoop for the silt and sludge in the bottom of a long run. Where a ladder cannot be footed on soft ground it comes out on a gutter vacuum with a camera on the reach pole. It is bagged and leaves with us. Then each downpipe is flushed and the run proved with water until it goes at the shoe.

Long low ranges. A good deal of the building here is one and a half storeys, with deep eaves and long uninterrupted runs falling to a single outlet at one end. That is a lot of roof going through one hole. Block it and the whole length backs up at once, which is why a run like that is worth clearing on time rather than when it starts to complain.

Cast iron and old fixings. Older cottages here still carry cast iron on rise and fall brackets, sometimes with a hopper head taking two runs into one pipe. Those are cleared gently, the hopper cleared at the spigot, and the ironwork checked on the back face where rust lifts under the paint out of sight.

Below ground. A downpipe that runs into the ground usually goes to a soakaway, a land drain or an open ditch, none of which a water company maintains. We flush from the top and watch what happens at the bottom. If the water backs up at the shoe with a clear pipe above it, the fault is past the building and no amount of gutter clearing touches it.

Repairs that turn up. A dripping union that wants a new seal, a sagging length to re-hang to level, a bracket to refix into sound timber, a fascia and soffit gone soft under a joint that has leaked for years. Most of that is small money against the damp, the staining and the green growth on the brickwork it causes.

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 thatched or tiled cottage with deep eaves, a long farm range and a modern house on the edge of the village are three different jobs before anybody opens a ladder. 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.

Rockbourne sits low, with Sweatfords Water running through it, and parts of the village fall inside flood zones 2 and 3 on the flood maps. Nobody needs telling that the ground gets wet. What is less obvious is what it does to a rainwater system. Out here a downpipe almost never joins a public surface water sewer. It goes to a soakaway, an old land drain or straight into a ditch, and every one of those has a bad day when the ground is already saturated.

That changes what a gutter clean should include. If we clear a run, prove it with water and the water then stands at the bottom of the downpipe, the blockage was never in the gutter. It is a full soakaway, a collapsed land drain or a ditch nobody has cleared for a decade. The useful thing is that you can tell the two apart in ten minutes with a hose, and that is part of the visit rather than an extra. The second thing worth doing is aiming the water away from the building. A shoe discharging onto a path that falls back toward the wall, or straight onto ground that is already sodden, keeps the base of the masonry wet all winter, and on an old solid wall that is how damp gets inside. Getting that right costs very little and it is the part most quotes never mention.

We cover Rockbourne, Whitsbury, Breamore, Fordingbridge and the villages west of the Avon, broadly SP6, under New Forest District Council. 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.