Why you should clear gutters before winter
Atlantic depressions hit Carmarthenshire first. Your gutters will be tested every week from November to March.
What South Wales winters do to a blocked gutter
We get rain. A lot of it, in sustained bursts driven by westerly Atlantic systems. A blocked gutter in this climate doesn't just overflow occasionally — it overflows constantly through three months of weather. That's the difference between a damp patch on a wall and a soaked wall cavity.
And then there's freeze-thaw. Even mild Welsh winters give us several frosts. Water sitting in a blocked gutter freezes, expands, splits joints, pulls brackets off the fascia. A clear gutter doesn't have water sitting in it long enough to freeze.
What overflow does to your house
- Soaked external walls — render dampens, paintwork blisters, mould blooms on the inside
- Damp at window heads — water finds the top of the lintel and tracks inside
- Rotten fascia and soffit — wooden trim can be eaten through in 18 months of constant wet
- Foundation damp — water that overflows close to the wall pools at the base, saturating bricks below the damp-proof course
Best window for a pre-winter clean
Mid-October to mid-November. Most of the leaves are down, the storms haven't really started, and our calendar isn't yet rammed. Book a December clean and we're often out two weeks because of weather days.
What we do that other cleaners don't
Camera on the pole means we don't just clear the visible bit — we see down the runs at the back of the house, behind dormers, around chimney breasts, into hidden boxes. Photos of every run before and after. You see exactly what we found and exactly what we did.
