Gutter cleaning in Rockbourne

Debris comes 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 in Rockbourne 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 in Rockbourne 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.

We do not charge by the metre, because a gutter behind a big tree and one along an open gable are not the same work.

Height and access. A cottage with deep eaves, a long farm range and a newer house on the edge of Rockbourne are each different. A low run comes off a ladder or a pole, a tall gable needs a tower, and a valley gutter between two roofs needs a proper platform. The work at height rules make access a separate cost.

What is in it. Leaves come out quickly. Moss washed off the roof sets into a heavy mat, and years of silt behind a hedge is slow. The outlets, where it packs tight, take more time than the length.

Clean or repair. A leaking joint, a blocked downpipe shoe or a sagging length of gutter is a repair, and it is priced separately.

While we are up there. Rockbourne is well out from Boscombe, so if the fascias or the roof edge need anything, it makes sense to look at them on the same visit rather than come back.

Ask other quotes whether the downpipes are flushed, whether outlets and hoppers are checked, and who takes the debris away.

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 in Rockbourne 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.

Our base in Boscombe is 16 miles from Rockbourne. We clear gutters in the village, Whitsbury, Breamore, Fordingbridge and the villages west of the Avon, all SP6 and all under New Forest District Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Rockbourne, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

You will deal with Thomas Hannen, who owns the firm and does the pricing visit in person. Checkatrade carries a 10 out of 10 from a verified customer. There is no charge to look or to write the itemised quote.

Most repairs in Rockbourne 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.