Gutter cleaning in Sandford, the whole run

Clearing a run that crosses a boundary. A continuous gutter over a pair of semis or a row of four in Sandford has one or two outlets serving the lot. Everything that lands anywhere on that roof ends up at those outlets, so the far end can be spotless and the house with the downpipe gets all the trouble.

We work the whole length from both ends, lift out leaf, moss, silt and sludge rather than flushing or sweeping it towards the hole, and take it away with us.

Outlets, downpipes and where it really packs. Once an outlet is choked, water stands the length of the run and finds the nearest joint. Each outlet is cleared by hand, the downpipe run through from the top and rodded from the shoe where water is backing up, and any gully at the bottom is checked so the pipe is not simply discharging into a blockage. Then every downpipe is proved with water in front of you.

Joints, brackets and a run out of fall. Most of this housing went up between the mid 1940s and the early 1980s, and a good deal of it is on its original plastic. Over that long a run there are a lot of unions, and a union is where a gutter leaks. The seal hardens and the joint starts to drip, and a new union seal is part of the visit. Once a bracket lets go and a length sags, re-hanging it is gutter repair in Sandford, priced separately.

The extensions and the odd corners. Nearly every property on these Sandford roads has picked something up along the way: a rear extension, a porch, a conservatory, a garage with its own short run and a downpipe into nothing much. Those short runs are the ones nobody clears, and where a flat roof meets the main roof there is often a box gutter or a valley gutter that cannot be seen from the ground and floods inwards. Where the angle is awkward a camera goes up on a reach pole so you see it too.

What the overflow costs you. Water going over the front edge soaks the brickwork below and keeps it wet through the winter, which is where the green staining on a render panel comes from. Water going behind the gutter rots the fascia and travels along the soffit. On a terrace it rarely stops at one house, so soft fascias and damp patches get photographed and reported whether they are yours or the run's.

Gutter cleaning is not charged by the metre. A run nobody has touched for years takes longer than one cleared last autumn.

Shared runs. On a Sandford terrace, a couple of downpipes may take the water from several roofs. If the blockage sits at an outlet on a neighbour's length, clearing it may need their say so, and it is better to sort that out first.

The roof above. Concrete tiles from the sixties and seventies grow moss, and every storm washes some down. In the gutter it sets into a heavy black sludge that has to be dug out with a trowel, and it packs hardest at the outlets.

Getting up there. A bungalow is quick from a ladder or pole. A valley gutter between two roofs, or a gutter over a conservatory, needs a proper platform, and work at height rules settle which one we use.

Fixes along the way. Once water flows again, you sometimes find a seal that weeps, a downpipe shoe packed solid, or a plastic section bowed between clips. Sorting those is repair rather than clearing, and it is the part that stretches the visit.

Worth asking anyone else: do they rod the downpipes or only scoop the gutter, do they look inside the hoppers, do they test for leaks with water once it is clear, and where does the waste end up?

We are 11.7 miles from Sandford, at our base in Boscombe. For gutter clearing we cover the village, Wareham, Holton Heath, Organford, Lytchett Minster and across to Upton, under Dorset Council. On paper we are Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. Before you book a visit in Sandford, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen runs it as his own business, and he looks at the gutters and puts the price together himself. One verified reviewer on Checkatrade gave us 10 out of 10. There is no charge for the visit, and the written quote with each item listed is free too.

Most repairs in Sandford 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.