The morning after a Sydney storm: a ten-minute check from the ground
Walk a ten-minute lap of the house from the ground — no ladder, no roof. Look for overflow streaks on the fascia, leaf dams in the gutters, downpipe outlets that ran or did not, debris on paths and solar, staining under the eaves, blocked drains. Photograph everything before you tidy it. Then book the clear-out before the next front, not after.
Ten minutes, both feet on the ground
Sydney storms arrive in a hurry and leave in one. The Bureau of Meteorology puts NSW severe thunderstorm season across the warm months, roughly September to March, which means for half the year there is a decent chance of waking up to a yard full of evidence. The check that matters takes ten minutes and happens entirely at ground level. Put on shoes, take your phone, and walk a full lap of the house before you touch anything.
No ladder. No roof. Especially not the morning after, when the tiles are wet, the moss is slick and the wind has not finished with the trees. Almost everything worth knowing after a storm is visible from the lawn or the path, because water leaves marks on its way out. Your job is to read those marks, not to climb toward them. If the lap turns up something that needs height, that is a phone call, not a Saturday project.
The lap: what you are actually looking at
Start at the fascia. Overflow leaves a signature — a clean vertical streak down the boards where water went over the edge, usually with a fan of grit washed out at the bottom. Then sight along the gutter line itself. From the ground you can often pick a leaf dam as a dark lump breaking the straight line, or a run that sags where the weight sat all night. Grit on the path directly under a joint says the same thing more quietly.
Then the exits and the flat surfaces. Check every downpipe: at the top for a packed throat, at the bottom for whether it actually discharged. Look at the stormwater grates and any spoon drain for a lid of leaves. Scan the paths, driveway and lawn for what came down — twigs, bark, half of somebody's shade sail. Look at the solar array from the ground for debris sitting on the panels. Finally, look up under the eaves for fresh staining or a damp line where the wall meets the soffit.
Photograph it before you tidy it
Before you sweep, rake or hose anything, take pictures. A wide shot of each elevation, then close-ups of the overflow streaks, the blocked outlet, the debris on the ground, any staining under the eaves or on the ceiling inside. Phones date and locate photos automatically, which is the entire point. Ten minutes of documentation on the morning is worth more than an hour of description three weeks later, once everything has dried out and the yard is tidy again.
This is not paranoia. Water damage accounts for around 24% of Australian home insurance claims according to QBE, so a storm claim is one of the most ordinary conversations an insurer has. It is also one they look at closely. Suncorp is explicit that insurers can decline water-damage claims where the cause is poor maintenance, blocked gutters included. Photos taken on the day, plus a receipt for your last clean, move the discussion from your word against theirs to a dated record.
What a ground-level lap cannot tell you
The ten minutes has limits and it is worth being straight about them. You cannot see valleys, box gutters, the back of the brackets or anything under a tile from the lawn. A gutter can look clean along every visible metre and still be packed solid where two roof planes meet, which is exactly where the volume goes. So a clear lap is good news, not a guarantee. It tells you nothing urgent is showing, which is most of what you need on the morning after.
Cleaning has limits too. Clearing a gutter fixes a blockage. It does not fix a rust hole, a split seam, or a run that ponds because it was hung flat years ago. And if the ceiling already carries a stain, no amount of gutter work removes it — that is a plasterer, and possibly a claim. The clear-out prevents the next one, which is the honest version of the offer. Anyone promising that a wash will make an existing water stain disappear is selling you the wrong job.
Book the clear-out before the next front, not after
Timing is the whole argument. The storm that just passed restocked your gutters with the leaves and grit that will block them during the next one, and the season runs for months, not days. So the job belongs in the diary this week rather than after the following ceiling drip. Schmick gutter cleaning starts at $180, and most single-storey homes land between $220 and $430 depending on gutter length; two storeys adds about 50% for the access. Every job includes the hand clear, the downpipe flush and before-and-after photos.
Book it while the mess is still fresh in your mind. The instant quote returns a firm, bookable price in about 60 seconds and it holds unless the place is materially different from what you told us — no site visit to arrange, no three-day wait for a number while the radar fills up again. Bundle the gutters with a roof or window clean on the same visit and the combined price drops 5-15%. After that, the next front is just weather.