How To Clean Downpipes

How To Clean Down Pipes

When it comes to keeping your gutters clean then its important to always start with the your downpipes and work your way around the property. This ensures that the pipe is unblocked when you start cleaning the guttering and forcing the water towards the unblocked downpipes making sure its not overflowing again. When it comes to gutter cleaning and property maintenance blocked down-pipes on a factory or warehouse roof is a daily occurrence.

This is quite an easy job to do and doesn’t take a much effort to regularly conduct preventative maintenance on the guttering to help increase the lifespan and effectiveness of your roof guttering. So don’t be scared of a bit of non pressurized plumbing work around the home, it is quite simple to do.

Find yourself a decent ladder, there is likely one in the back shed or behind the house. Make sure its reasonably sturdy, there are a lot of falling and roofing accidents each year in South Australia. So it good to always stay on the side of caution when working from ladder or on top of roofing. Always try and pick good sunny days to work on ladders and roofing because when its raining the ladder and roof will become extremely slippery and increase the chance of an roofing accident.

How To Clear Down-Pipes

So if you come across a severely blocked up downpipe it may be impossible to unblock it because its been left for years to get all clogged up with rubbish, leaves and animal waste. I remember a large commercial job site we worked on for Telstra and there was a downpipe that was literally 10 meters tall and filled all the way up with a dead pigeons, nests and bird crap.

It took a total of four hours to unblock that downpipe. We interchangeably used a wet and dry vac and pressure washer to eventually clean out the blocked downpipe. So not all downpipe are easy to clear out and sometimes with large commercial downpipes you need a large steel rod to ram through the hardness of what is inside a commercial downpipe. This job was one of the filthiest we ever done, because the place was just caked with pigeon droppings and it had built up for 5 years.

So if your not keen to learn how to clear downpipes, then its best if these types of dirty and difficult guttering jobs are not attempted by the local backyarder or the handy husband or wife. Always make sure that you are adequately equipped with the correct safety equipment and work gear that isn’t going to fall apart or break the first time you actually use it correctly. Don’t bother buying novelty gutter cleaning tools either, the current one is made out of plastic and breaks within 2 weeks, I think its called the gutter raider tool.

More like the raider of your purse, it might be fine to clean and unblock downpipes once a year I suppose. However when we used them as a regular tool, completing about 6-7 single story residential homes per day every day of the week, the gutter raider last 2 weeks maximum and the plastic just broke.

We are professional property maintenance team and if the gutter cleaning tool is poor quality for commercial use, it might be sufficient for simple residential use once a year or so. So when it comes to learning how to clean down pipes, Gutter Guys Adelaide have been doing it for over 10 years and believe we have mastered the art of downpipe unblocking and clearing out blocked gutters with no fancy gutter cleaning tools, just a bucket, ladder and some gloves.