An ever increasing amount of people living in tenement buildings in cities like Edinburgh, are experiencing serious problem making use of their gutters and downpipes. For the most part the problems are the effect of a simple blockage / vegetation growing in the gutters or minor maintenance problems such as for example seam lining, which have been allowed to go on untended for too long without gutter cleaning or gutter maintenance.

The reason these guttering problems haven’t been simply looked after long ago is obvious; there aren’t many affordable, quick and easy answers to cleaning gutters or gutter maintenance on tenement blocks / at height. People are understandably extremely cautious with having to pay out huge sums for scaffolding to permit workers to access the problem area. What’s more the various red tape connected with erecting scaffolding on public streets causes delays and complications. Similarly, the expense of a cherry picker and operative, that is another potential solution (in which a cherry picker can actually gain access to the road) is much too high for what’s essentially at its basic level, just the minor task of maintenance, clearing unblocking or gutter cleaning.

This is where rope access comes in. Rope access technicians can perform work effectively in awkward situations and will easily access tricky areas such as roof tops, gutters, building facades along with other areas at height, either by rigging from the rooftop or by finding another access point. Rope access is less obtrusive and more often than not quicker and cheaper than the alternatives such as scaffolding or a cherry picker, and a rope access team can be in and out with the the least disruption for a fraction of the price.

The problem is that insufficient people know about rope access as a viable treatment for maintenance problems such as gutter cleaning. Either they don’t find out about rope access at all, or think of it as a thing that can be used only in construction or offshore settings. More help is that despite still being rare, there are always a growing number of rope access technicians and companies who work onshore and can happily provide domestic services. As well as rope access skills they bring using them combinations of other valuable skills such as for example roofing, maintenance, stonework, civil engineering and more, making rope access the perfect solution for some maintenance issues at height, from small issues such as for example gutter cleaning to larger maintenance and repair jobs.

The reasons to use rope access for these types of jobs is obvious. Unlike other answers to gutter cleaning in tenement buildings along with other maintenance problems at heght, the time taken up to install access systems is minimal with reduced impact on structure and surroundings including traffic flow and pedestrian access. Rope access has extremely safe codes of practice (the very best record in neuro-scientific difficult access), and work can safely be carried out safely, quickly and cost effectively at any height in almost any situation, saving time, money and preventing the complications that other gutter cleaning solutions might present.