A simple gutter realignment in Deal, £20, ten minutes, saves the wall.

What the job actually is

A simple gutter realignment. The run has dropped a fraction on one side, which means the joint at the corner is sitting wrong, water spills over the back of the gutter rather than going down the pipe. Up the ladder, slacken the bracket fixings, lift the run back to the right fall, retighten, run a bit of water through it to test. Ten minutes' work for someone with the right ladder and a steady head for heights.

£20

That's the price for a job like this, a simple realignment with no parts replacement. The bit that costs is the ladder time, not the gutter or the brackets. If the gutter run is genuinely failing (sections cracked, brackets sheared off, downpipe come away) then it's a different visit and a different quote, but that's far less common than people think. Nine times out of ten the gutter just needs setting back to where it should be.

Don't risk it yourself

Working at gutter height is the part that goes wrong. A wobbly ladder on a paved drive, a wet rung, a shift of weight to reach the bracket, gutter-related ladder falls land a fair number of homeowners in A&E every year. £20 to have it done properly is fair money compared to a broken wrist. If you've got a gutter spilling at the back, give us a call rather than borrowing a ladder.

Why it matters to fix

Water shed onto a wall behind a gutter doesn't just stain the brickwork. Over a couple of winters the mortar softens, the bricks take on water, the next frost lifts the face off them, and the corner of the wall starts to need actual repair. The realignment costs £20. The corner-of-the-wall fix costs many times that. If you can hear water dripping behind a downpipe in the rain, or see a damp shadow on a wall under a gutter, get someone up there.

If you've got a gutter doing the same thing

If you've got a gutter joint that drips at the back, water shed against the wall on a wet day, or a downpipe that's started to lean, drop us a message. We cover Sandwich, Deal, and the surrounding East Kent villages, and most of these are £20 visits.