Gutter Cleaning Melbourne — Ercildoune Street, Caulfield North

The gutters were packed solid with compacted debris, to the point where grass had taken root and was growing out of the channel. Once a gutter holds that much organic matter it behaves like a garden bed: it stays damp, holds weight, and water no longer reaches the outlets. From the ground nothing looks wrong until rain spills over the fascia, and on a double-storey house that overflow runs down the walls and into the ground next to the footings.

The full length of guttering was cleared by hand and flushed through, with the rooted growth lifted out rather than broken up and pushed toward the outlets, where it would only recompact. Outlets and downpipes were checked separately to confirm water ran away freely, since a clear-looking gutter can still hold water if the outlet is blocked below the visible line. Work was kept off the gutter base to avoid scoring the coating.

• Access set up to the second-storey gutter line
• Removal of compacted debris and rooted growth from the full gutter run
• Flush-through of gutters to confirm fall to outlets
• Downpipes checked for free flow
• Debris removed from site

• Gutters clear along the full run, with water reaching the outlets again
• Downpipes running free
• Overflow onto the fascia and walls resolved