Gutter Clearing in Caterham

Gutter Clearing for homes and businesses in Caterham

Nearly all of the gutter clearing Caterham houses need is a question about the pipe rather than the trough. The town climbs the sides of a chalk valley cut into the North Downs, so a house on a valley side commonly drains through a downpipe run far longer than the one on a flat suburban plot. Emptying the gutter above it is ordinary work. Knowing that everything the roof sends actually arrives at the bottom of that pipe is the part worth paying for.

Gutter cleaning Caterham means proving the whole run

Clear has to mean something you can watch happen. On a short pipe an emptied trough and a quick pour tell you most of what you need to know. On a long one they tell you very little, because water tipped in at the top can vanish into a pack partway down and never reach the shoe at all.

So the debris comes out into a bag first, then water goes in at the top and the discharge at the bottom gets checked before the ladder moves on. A run that swallows water without delivering it is treated as blocked, and it is worked from below as well as from above until it does deliver.

Long drops, offsets and where blockages hide

A downpipe running three floors down has more length, usually more bends and often an offset near the top where it steps out from the eaves. Every one of those is a place where silt and leaf can settle, and a plug halfway down is invisible from either end.

The Caterham valley sides also deliver a mixed diet into the trough. Wooded slopes above put broadleaf into the gutter, while the chalk and the road grit contribute a fine sediment that sinks to the bottom, and the two together set into something more solid than leaf alone.

When the blockage is not debris

Sometimes the water will not move and almost nothing arrives at the bottom. Where rodding and flushing shift nothing, the fault is the pipework itself rather than the load inside it: a joint pulled apart at an offset, a crushed length, or a section that was never properly connected in the first place. We do not open up, re-joint or replace rainwater pipework, so that goes to a roofline installer or a drainage engineer with a photograph of what was found.

The other limit is what can honestly be seen. Working alongside a gutter puts the roof covering above it out of view, so nothing is reported about tiles, flashings or a ridge that nobody actually looked at. Autumn is still the right time to book, and where a property needs another trade for part of it, that is said before the visit rather than discovered halfway through.

How we work

1. 1
   Free quote and a look at the run

   We check the height, the gutter type and whether there is safe ladder access all the way round. Conservatory roofs, extensions and tight side returns are the ones that decide how a gutter job gets done.

2. 2
   Clear the gutters out

   Leaves, moss washed down off the roof, grit off the tiles and the odd tennis ball. It comes out instead of getting flushed along to the next blockage.

3. 3
   Check the downpipes actually flow

   A clear gutter that drains into a blocked downpipe still overflows. We run water through and watch where it goes before calling it done.

4. 4
   Take the debris away and report back

   Cleared material should leave with the job rather than going into your borders. Anything spotted while up there, a split joint, a sagging bracket, a slipped tile, is worth reporting back to you.

Other services in Caterham

Gutter Clearing near Caterham