Gutter Guard in Everton Park

Everton Park lies about nine kilometres north-west of the Brisbane CBD, in pronounced ridge-and-gully country draining toward Kedron Brook. It takes its name from the Everton estate subdivided in the district in the nineteenth century, and it developed mainly through the 1950s and 1960s. The housing responded to the terrain in the standard Brisbane way: high-set timber and brick homes lifted on stumps or a lower level so the floor could stay flat while the ground fell away. Many have since had the lower level built in, and most have added patio or carport roofs.

That building form creates a specific gutter problem. On the uphill side, the gutter is a comfortable ladder height. On the downhill side it can be seven or eight metres above the ground, over a sloping surface where a ladder can't be footed safely at all. It's not a matter of owners neglecting the job. On a lot of these houses, the rear gutter genuinely can't be cleaned without proper equipment.

The vegetation compounds it. The gully lines and older street plantings carry mature jacarandas, poincianas and eucalypts, and gully-side blocks often back onto the greenery along the Kedron Brook corridor. Leaf falls straight onto roofs that are already hard to service.

Then there's the water itself. Steep catchments concentrate runoff quickly, and Brisbane's summer storms are intense and short. A gutter that has lost half its capacity to compacted leaf will overflow within minutes on a sloping site, and on a downhill elevation that overflow lands directly against retaining walls and foundations rather than dispersing across a lawn.

That's what we plan for. At the free quote, we work out safe access to every side of the house. The mesh goes on to let the rain through and keep the leaf out. And the back gutters nobody can reach get the same free clean and downpipe check as the front, because those are the ones that were failing.