Gutter Cleaning in Kensington Gardens

What we see in Kensington Gardens

Most jobs I do around Kensington Gardens are on solid brick homes from the 50s and 60s — well-built places that haven't had much done to the gutters in decades. When I climb up on these roofs, the first thing I notice is the sheer volume of gum debris. The street trees along Kensington Road and around the Kensington Gardens Reserve are big, established eucalypts, and unlike deciduous trees, they're dropping leaves, bark strips and seed pods every single month of the year. By the time a homeowner notices water spilling over the fascia, there's usually a solid mat of rotting leaf litter sitting in there.

The tile roofs on these older homes create another issue — debris collects in the valleys between pitches before it ever reaches the gutter. You pull it out by the handful. On homes that still have their original galvanised guttering, I'll often find rust patches on the inside of the gutter that the owner had no idea about. From the ground it looks fine. Up close, it's flaking through.

The 1990s rebuilds scattered through the suburb are in better shape structurally, but they're not immune. They've had thirty-odd years of the same gum debris landing in them, and the downpipes on a lot of these properties block up with compacted organic matter — you can flush the gutter clear but if the downpipe's blocked, the water's got nowhere to go.

This is also a suburb where people tend to stay put for a long time, which means gutters sometimes go five or six years between cleans. I'd suggest once a year at minimum here — ideally before the winter fronts come through from April onwards.