Gutter Clearance | Handyman Near Me

I was recently contacted by someone who was having problems with their guttering leaking, all pretty standard stuff, except this was a concrete gutter, with an aluminium liner. Even before I looked, I told them it was likely that it was just full of muck, perhaps even blocking the downpipe.

You quite often find that the mixture of organic growth (leaves, moss etc) blocks the gutter, and then starts growing, as it has nowhere to go. In extreme cases, this can block the downpipe - see the picture.

Not much room in here!

But ... this new job was different.

The owner of the house had recently had the roof cleaned - scraped of all moss and deposits, and while I guess the cleaner removed much of the waste, they didn't do anything with the gutter.

When I inspected it, what I found was a mixture of mud and a sandy-type substrate, which I determined to be the scrapings from the roof tiles.

Gutter Cleaning

The result of a recent roof clean

You can clearly see the extent of the problem, and this was evident throughout the whole of the guttering.

If you've ever been to the beach and scooped up a handful of wet sand, you'll know how heavy that can be. After clearing the job, I weighed the sack of muck that I'd scraped up - 16.2Kg, which in real terms, is around 9.5 big bags of sugar.

It was partly down to trapping water, and partly due to all that weight, that there had been an issue. (With the weight pushing on, and extending the sealed joints).

After clearing the muck (or as the customer called it - "all the crap"), it gave me a chance to inspect the aluminium liner for damage.

The liner was completely undamaged, so with a thorough clean and remaking some of the sealed joints, the guttering was once again waterproof.

The rest of the job was purely cosmetic; cleaning off the mold/mildew/moss and repainting with masonry paint - on the exterior of the concrete gutter.

When finished, the job looked 1st class, and really made a difference to the external look of the house.