A living room, one room only, wallpaper to come off the walls and every last strip of it taken away. Porthcawl, on the south Wales coast. That was the job, and the whole thing nearly fell over on parking. The customer had no car, so no resident permit could be issued in their name, and the day-ticket sort the council offered wanted a vehicle registration. We sent ours over — a Luton, reg on the email — and they went off to sort the paperwork. In the end they told us to come anyway and they would cover whatever the warden left on the screen. Booked one afternoon, done the next morning. Walls back to plaster, paper bagged and gone. That is house clearance in Porthcawl in miniature: one room, one obstacle, and the obstacle settled on the phone before the van moved.
We do the same work along this bit of coast. Porthcawl, Glamorgan coast, sits at the end of the A4229, its own spur off junction 37 of the M4, about five minutes down, and the whole of CF36 is on our patch. The seafront terraces, Nottage, Newton, the streets running back from the Eastern Promenade, and the older stone properties up towards Rest Bay.
Where we go around here
Beyond CF36 we work right across Bridgend county: Brackla and the rest of CF31, Coychurch Lower and Pencoed in CF35, Pyle and Kenfig Hill in CF33, and up the valley to Maesteg in CF34. Ogmore-by-Sea and the Vale side too. Porthcawl lost its own railway line a long time ago, so the nearest platforms are Pyle, four miles inland, and Bridgend, which is where most people arrive from Cardiff or Swansea. If you are handling a property here from somewhere else. And a fair number of the calls we take are exactly that. Bridgend station to a front door in Porthcawl is a short taxi ride, and you can be there for nine when the team pulls up.
Some of the places round about have pages of their own. If the property you are ringing about is not in CF36 you may want house clearance in Bridgend instead, or house clearance in Cardiff if it is over that way. Up the valleys we write separately about house clearance in Treorchy and house clearance in Aberdare. Same team, same van, different postcodes.
A job that ran to several days
Not everything is a house full of furniture, and not everything fits inside a day. One clearance we booked in November 2023 ran across two dates back to back, the last day of that month and the first of December, because it was a four-bedroom house with a garage on it and the family wanted the lot gone in one go rather than in instalments.
We send the same set of questions out before we come, and the answers are what shape the day. Size of the property and the outside areas, who will be there to let the team in, anything hazardous or verminous inside. On that one the answer came back without any dressing up — "Yes, kitchen is filthy, decaying food present". Carpets and flooring had gone, some of the walls and ceilings had mould on them, and a few of the upstairs bedrooms had mouldy contents in them as well. So: masks and gloves from the first hour, the soft goods bagged where they stood instead of being carried through the house, and windows open. The owner's son met the team and stayed for both days, which always helps — a question gets answered on the spot rather than by email at seven that evening.
The other answer that mattered was about what was staying. Asked whether any items were to be left, the reply was "No, all items to be removed, we will have identified any items to keep prior to arrival". That is the sentence a clearance team wants to read. The family had been through the house first and taken out what they were keeping, so nobody spent the second morning standing in a bedroom holding a shoebox and wondering. Everything else went: four bedrooms of furniture, the kitchen, and the garage, which had the usual layer of tools, tins and garden things nobody had touched in years.
The reason that story sits on a Porthcawl page is simple. Half the properties round here have a lock-up, a garage on a shared block, a caravan, or a shed on the drive that nobody has opened in years. When you ring, count those in. It changes the van we send and it changes how long the day runs, and neither of us wants that discovered at half past nine on the morning of the job.
What a normal day looks like
The team arrives at nine, three of them and a Luton, and most standard houses are done and swept the same day. A three-bed with the loft still full and a garage behind it. Garage and loft on top of the house itself — is a typical Porthcawl booking, the owner meeting the team at the door at nine as arranged. Lofts add time. So do garages where the door has not been lifted since the last owner. If we can see that we will not finish in a day we say so on the phone rather than at four in the afternoon.
Part clearances and flats
You do not have to empty the lot. One flat clearance we did was a strip-out of the rubbish and the surplus while the sofa, the bed, the table, the sideboard, the chairs, the wardrobe, the carpet, the fridge and the washing machine all stayed put, because the place was being handed over furnished. That one was booked at a day's notice. Flat clearance brings its own problems — communal stairs, a lift you cannot block, a bin store the neighbours need access to. In Porthcawl the equivalent is the seafront blocks and the converted houses off John Street, where the van has to sit on the road while everything comes down a staircase built for one person at a time.
Other clearances we take on in Porthcawl
End of tenancy clearance in Porthcawl
Landlords and letting agents tend to ring at the point where a tenancy has ended and the place cannot be re-let as it stands. End of tenancy clearance is usually a shorter day than a full house clearance: what the last tenant left behind, a sofa, the bags in the hall, whatever is in the shed. We can work from a key safe or meet an agent on site, and the transfer notes go over by email afterwards, because a deposit argument is easier to settle with paperwork than without it. If it turns out to be bags rather than furniture, that is nearer house rubbish removal, and we will tell you so rather than send a Luton out for four sacks.
Garage and loft clearance in Porthcawl
Plenty of the calls here are not the house at all. Garage and loft clearance on its own is a proper job in CF36. The garages behind the terraces off the Eastern Promenade, the lock-up blocks, the loft in a Nottage semi holding forty years of Christmas decorations, camping gear, suitcases and paint tins. Lofts want two people, one up and one at the hatch, and a board across the joists if there is not one already. Garages want the door lifting first, and if it has not been lifted since the nineties that is the first ten minutes of the day gone before anything is carried.
Parking, and the summer
Worth saying plainly: the middle of Porthcawl in July is not the same job as the middle of Porthcawl in February. The harbour car parks fill, the streets behind the promenade fill, and the Elvis weekend in September takes the town over completely. None of that stops us working, but it does mean we would rather know the week before than the night before, so we can start earlier or bring the van in from the Nottage side. If there are yellow lines outside and the council will issue a suspension or a waiver for the day, that is by far the cleanest route. One household in a coastal town elsewhere arranged exactly that for us and the team parked on the restriction all day without a ticket.
Executors, probate and paying from the estate
A good share of what we clear is a house that has changed hands through a will, and probate house clearance in Porthcawl runs the same way as it does anywhere else in Bridgend county. We invoice after the work, not before, and we are used to waiting on the grant. More than one executor has told us the paperwork was still sitting with the court and the invoice could not be authorised until probate came through, and that is fine. We would rather hear it on the first phone call than guess at it later. The bill can go to the executor, to the estate, or to a solicitor handling the estate, and payment can come out of the estate itself; we have done all three. No deposit, no payment on the doorstep. There is more on how we work with executors and solicitors on our probate house clearance page.
If online banking is a nuisance, say so. We have taken payment over the phone for people who could not get a transfer to go through, and we have sent a card link instead. It is not a problem worth anybody's evening.
What we do with what comes out
Sorting happens on the van and at the depot. Furniture and household goods still worth using are offered on to reuse schemes and charity shops in Bridgend county before anything else is decided — a wardrobe that would sell is not tip material. What is genuinely finished goes to a permitted transfer station and gets weighed in under our own paperwork. We hold waste carrier licence CBDU419679 and the transfer notes are kept, so if a landlord or an executor ever needs proof of where a load went, it exists.
Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating are handled apart from the general load. Since the persistent-organic-pollutant rules came in, upholstered seating has to be kept separate and burned under permit rather than tipped. That Is why a three-piece suite is booked as its own item and not simply thrown in with the rest. Fridges and freezers are the same story for a different reason — degassing. And there are things we simply cannot put in a mixed load at all: half-used tins of paint, gas cylinders, solvents, asbestos sheeting off a garage roof. Tell us and we will point you at the right route; on one job the tins stayed in the garage and we left the owner with the name of the site that takes them.
Full houses, badly overfilled houses
Some properties have forty years of things in them and every room is at chest height. Those are routine for us, not a reason to raise an eyebrow, and the team turns up with masks, gloves and enough sacks for the whole day. See hoarder house clearance for how that sort of day is run. We also go slowly where paperwork, photographs, jewellery or cash could be sitting in a drawer. If someone asks us to look out for family papers and set them to one side, we do, and it gets flagged before the load moves.
Getting a number to work with
A photograph or a short video off your phone is usually enough for us to give you a costed answer while you are still on the call, rather than a range that shifts once the van is on the drive. Ring 0800 046 5555 or send pictures through the form on this page. Each room, the loft hatch, the garage and the shed — tell us the postcode district and whether anything is staying, and we will tell you what the day involves and which day we can do it. The quote is free and there is nothing to sign at the end of it.
Questions we are asked about house clearance in Porthcawl
Do you cover the whole of CF36? Yes. The seafront terraces, Nottage, Newton, Rest Bay and the streets behind the promenade, and the rest of Bridgend county besides, from Pyle and Kenfig Hill across to Pencoed and up to Maesteg.
Can you invoice a solicitor or an executor? Yes. On probate work the invoice can go straight to the executor, to a solicitor acting for the estate, or be settled from the estate itself. We invoice after the work is finished, never before, and we do not ask for a deposit.
How much is a house clearance in Porthcawl? We do not publish figures, because no two houses are the same and a printed number would be wrong for most of them. Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page and you will get a costed answer on the call, free and with nothing to sign.
Do I have to be there on the day? No. Plenty of the properties we clear in CF36 belong to executors living a long way off. Someone has to let the team in — a neighbour, an agent, a key safe — and we send photographs of the rooms as they empty so you can see it happening from wherever you are.
What will you not take? Paint, solvents, gas cylinders, asbestos and anything similar cannot travel in a mixed load. Upholstered seating and fridges are taken but handled separately under the POPs and degassing rules. Tell us on the phone and we will point you at the right route for the rest.
Can you do just a garage, a loft or one flat? Yes. Garage and loft clearance on its own, a flat clearance, an end of tenancy strip-out, or a single item that will not fit in a car — all of those are normal bookings, not favours.
