Gutter Cleaning in Leichhardt

Leichhardt's street trees grow close to its rooftops. In the Scarvell Estate, the remnant brush box on North Avenue and South Avenue stand in the carriageway itself, directly in front of rows of single-storey cottages on lots about 20 feet wide. Those small woody capsules can work their way along a gutter and lodge in an outlet. Carlisle Street's crepe myrtles, a 1960s planting that council lists for retention, shed spent flowers through summer and then their leaves in autumn, and around Norton Street the blend of native and deciduous species means litter arrives in more than one season.

Then there is the room to work. Many of the Whaleyborough Estate's 50-foot allotments ended up holding two or three terraces each, and down on the lower Excelsior land some frontages were only 16 feet. With houses packed that tightly, there is often no safe spot to stand a ladder beside a wall. Where a property backs onto one of the suburb's rear lanes, a high-reach gutter vacuum can be worked from the ground in the lane, on the footpath or in a small courtyard.

The lie of the land matters once water overflows. The suburb's high point is the Norton Street ridge where it crosses Marion Street, and from there the Excelsior streets fall west and southwest to the low ground east of Flood Street, while the Scarvell Estate runs gently down toward Whites Creek. On those lower, flatter sections, water spilling from a blocked gutter has less fall to carry it clear of walls and footings, so outlets and downpipes are checked on every clean.

A clear gutter keeps rainwater in the downpipe, and on the oldest Leichhardt houses that protects more than paintwork. The heritage study for the Excelsior Subdivision notes that most of its bricks probably came from small Leichhardt and Petersham brickmakers and were less durable, which is why those walls were generally plastered. Overflow sheeting down that plaster soaks into it and into the brick behind, and council's guidance is to keep original plaster and its pressed mouldings rather than strip or replace them. Keeping the water in the downpipe is a much smaller job than repairing what it does.

Each gutter clean also comes with a roof inspection report and before-and-after photos. On a house that may be well over a century old, that gives you a dated record of the roof's condition without anyone in the household going up a ladder.

That paperwork is useful in a suburb where 40.4% of dwellings were rented at the 2021 Census. A landlord or property manager can show exactly when the gutters were last cleared and what the roof looked like at the time.

Vacuuming also means the debris is collected rather than flushed down the downpipe into the stormwater system that feeds local waterways such as Hawthorne Canal. If you would rather not deal with the bags of leaf afterwards, green waste removal can be added to the job.