Gutter cleaning in Wimborne Minster, three storeys up

Same work, three ways up. Which one you need is the whole conversation.

From the ground. A vacuum on a reach pole will clear a run at three storeys from the pavement, with a camera on the head so you can see what is coming out. It needs no scaffold, no permit and very little standing room, which on some of these streets is the only workable answer. What it will not do is let anybody put a hand on a bracket or take a joint apart.

From a tower. Where there is room to build one and level ground to stand it on, a tower gets somebody up to the run properly, so the outlet can be cleared by hand, the fixings checked and a union taken apart and re-sealed. On a narrow footway that means managing the pavement while it is up, and that time is part of the cost.

From a scaffold. Only where a run is being re-hung or replaced along an elevation, or where a parapet or a valley has to be worked on for a day or more. It is the expensive answer and we say so rather than default to it, since work at height rules ask for the right platform, not the biggest one.

The clearing itself. Leaves, moss off the tiles, roofing grit and the silt and sludge they compact into, scooped into a bag rather than dropped onto a pavement. Every outlet cleared, every downpipe flushed through with water while you watch, and a rod down anything that will not run. Older frontages here often drain into a hopper head at high level with the pipe carried down the face of the building, and those collect everything the run sends them.

Repairs. Sagging between brackets, a perished union seal, a bracket into soft timber, a length out of fall. Photographed and priced first, then refixed, realigned, re-hung or replaced. Sound cast iron is worth clearing, wire brushing and painting rather than removing. Left backing up, any of it puts green staining and damp down the render or the brickwork below, with the fascia and soffit behind the run soft by the end of a winter.

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 three storey town house on a narrow pavement, a cottage with a rear yard reached through a passage, and a bungalow on an open plot are three different jobs. 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.

A gutter at three storeys holds no more debris than a gutter at one. What changes is everything underneath it. A pavement that has to stay usable, a road with cars parked along it, a passage too narrow to carry a tower through, ground that falls away at the back: any of those turns half an hour of clearing into most of a morning, and none of it shows in a price quoted per metre. It is also why two quotes for the same building can be so far apart, because one of them has thought about the access and the other has guessed.

So ask about the platform before you ask about the gutter. Ask what is actually being used, whether it is a pole from the pavement, a tower or a scaffold. Ask whether the pavement has to be managed and whether that is included. Ask whether the outlets are being cleared by hand or only from below, because a pole clears a run well and cannot examine a bracket. And where a building is split into flats, settle who is instructing before anybody prices it, since on a converted house the gutters and downpipes belong to the freeholder rather than to a flat. We show access as its own line on every quote for exactly this reason: on a tall building it is the honest bulk of the cost, and it should be visible rather than buried. On frequency, most town frontages want one clear in late autumn after the leaves are down, with a spring look at the outlets and hoppers alone, which is a seasonal check rather than an annual repeat of the whole job.

We cover Wimborne Minster, Colehill, Merley, Canford Magna and out to Corfe Mullen, broadly BH21, under Dorset 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.