We have been doing house clearance in Newton Abbot and the villages around it since 2007, and the calls tend to arrive in the same shape: a house that has to be emptied, a date that has crept up on somebody, and a question about whether the whole thing can be done in a day. Often it can. Rather than describe a typical day, here is a real one.
A day's house clearance at Kingskerswell, TQ12
A Thursday at the end of July 2021, a house at Kingskerswell, TQ12, a couple of miles down the road from Newton Abbot on the Torquay side of the hill. One load out, cleared in the day by the house clearance team, and the van gone before the school run.
Most of what came out was ordinary household contents — the sort of accumulation any house that has been lived in properly will produce. Three items on the sheet had to be treated separately from all of that: two mattresses and a fridge freezer. Mattresses now have their own disposal route and cannot simply be tipped in with a mixed household load. A fridge freezer has to go to a permitted facility to be de-gassed before anything else happens to it. So three items out of a whole houseful accounted for a fair share of the paperwork, and the regulated recycling and disposal tickets came back to the office with the crew, as they always do.
Nothing about the clearance itself was dramatic, and that is worth saying, because most house clearance in Newton Abbot is not dramatic. It is a crew, a day, a van, and a house that is empty at the end of it.
The part of that job we still quote to each other came afterwards, when the invoice went over. The customer wrote back: "I don’t have quick books so will pay a BACS transfer? I will use the invoice number as a reference."
People apologise to us for that far more often than they need to. A bank transfer is entirely fine, and quoting the invoice number as the reference is the single most useful thing anyone can do for our office — it saves somebody an afternoon of matching payments to jobs. We are not fussy about how the bill is settled, only about who it goes to, which matters more than people expect when a house is being cleared for an estate.
Fridges, freezers and the things that need their own paperwork
Ashburton, December 2020, a house behind the town's old streets in TQ13. That one was two loads as well, plus a mattress, one under-counter freezer and two under-counter fridges. Four separate items on the sheet that could not simply be tipped in with everything else.
Cooling appliances have to be de-gassed by a permitted facility — the gas in the circuit and the gas in the foam insulation both count — and that is a separate journey and a separate ticket. Same with mattresses, which have their own route now, and same with anything upholstered. Sofas, armchairs, padded headboards: they fall under the POPs rules, so they travel apart from the general load and are destroyed at a plant licensed to do it. Nobody enjoys explaining that on the phone, but it is better said before the van arrives than after.
We are registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, licence CBDU419679, and we are insured for the work and the property we are working in. Every load that leaves a Devon address goes to a permitted transfer station, and the tickets come back with the crew.
Two twenty-foot containers at Kingsteignton
Not every clearance is a house. In September 2023 we cleared two twenty-foot storage containers on an old transport depot site at Kingsteignton, TQ12 — one packed solid, the other about half. The customer had photographs and sent them over beforehand, which meant the job was quoted properly from Chessington before anyone drove down.
Container work is its own thing. You cannot walk round a container and see what is in the middle of it; you empty from the doors backwards and everything comes out onto the yard first. In this case there was a long list of things to be kept — electrical items, televisions and consoles and the media that went with them, a washing machine, a tumble dryer, an aquarium, an electronic organ, and collector's pieces that had been boxed years earlier and never opened again. So the day was as much sorting as lifting. Boxes opened, checked with the customer stood there, marked keep or go. One sofa had bird droppings dried onto it from a gap in the container roof, which meant gloves and a separate wrap before it went anywhere near the van.
That is the sort of job where standing about while somebody decides about a box of photographs is simply part of the work. We would rather the decision was made properly on the day than regretted a week later.
The area we cover round Newton Abbot
The town sits where the Teign valley opens out, and everything we do here runs off the A38 and the A380. Newton Abbot station is on the main line between Exeter and Plymouth, and the crews know the Penn Inn roundabout better than they would like to.
Across TQ12 we work in Newton Abbot itself, Kingsteignton, Kingskerswell, Abbotskerswell, Ogwell, Ipplepen and Denbury. TQ13 takes us out to Bovey Tracey, Chudleigh, Chudleigh Knighton and Ashburton, with Buckfastleigh, Heathfield and up onto the Dartmoor edge as far as Moretonhampstead. TQ14 is Teignmouth, Shaldon and Bishopsteignton, down on the estuary. EX7 covers Dawlish and Dawlish Warren, with Starcross up the estuary in EX6. Teignbridge District Council covers most of that ground, and their rules on what a household can and cannot put out are worth reading before you decide to do a clearance yourself in a car boot.
Access is the thing that varies most here. Ashburton and the older parts of Chudleigh have lanes a Luton box van will not turn in, so we check the approach before the day and sometimes park at the top and barrow down. Teignmouth's terraces mean loading on a hill with a handbrake you keep looking at. Newton Abbot's own streets are easier, though the town centre bays fill early and a permit or a suspension saves an hour of carrying. Tell us what is outside your door and we will plan round it.
If your property sits over the boundary, the neighbouring towns have their own pages: house clearance in Torquay and house clearance in Exeter for the two big ones either side of us, and house clearance in Teignmouth and house clearance in Dawlish down on the estuary.
The kinds of house clearance we do in Newton Abbot
Probate house clearance in Newton Abbot
A good half of our work here is probate work, and a good half of that comes from executors who live nowhere near Devon. Somebody in Yorkshire or in London is holding the keys to a house in TQ12 and cannot keep driving down for it.
A probate house clearance runs slightly differently from an ordinary one. We go slower over paperwork, letters and anything that looks like a document, and we hand it to you rather than to the van. If there are items the family still wants, they need to be named before the day, not spotted going out of the door. And we are used to working to a solicitor's timetable, because the estate agent's photographer is usually booked for the week after.
On the invoicing: we bill the solicitor, the trustee or the executor direct if that is easier, and payment can come out of the estate once things are in order. There is no deposit, and the invoice follows the work rather than preceding it. That is the part executors most often ring to check before they instruct anybody, and it is why probate clearances are the calls we are most used to taking.
Flat clearance in TQ12 and TQ13
Flat clearance is a different day from a house. Stairs, no lift more often than not, a shared hallway you cannot block, and neighbours who have to get past while your wardrobe is on the landing. In Newton Abbot a good deal of the flatted stock is conversion — big old houses cut into two or three — which means narrow returns on the stairs and doors that were never meant to have a three-seater through them. End of tenancy work falls into this too, where the landlord or the managing agent wants it stripped and swept by a fixed date.
Garage and loft clearance
Garage and loft clearance is the job people put off longest, and then it turns out to be the one holding up the sale. Lofts in the older Newton Abbot semis are boarded badly or not at all, so we bring our own board and light and work from the hatch. Garages out at Kingsteignton and Heathfield are often the family's overflow store: paint, garden chemicals, a decade of tins. Some of that we can take and some we cannot, which is covered further down.
How we quote for house clearance in Newton Abbot
You get a figure before anyone sets off, and you get it over the phone or by email after a few questions, not from a salesman stood in your hallway. If photographs are easier, send photographs through the form on this page — the container job at Kingsteignton was quoted that way without anybody making the trip first. The quote is free and it does not commit you to anything.
There is no deposit. Where the property is being cleared under probate, the bill can be settled out of the estate, and we will invoice the solicitor or executor direct. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 if you would rather just talk it through.
The ones people are embarrassed about
Some houses have got away from the people living in them. Rooms you cannot get into, a hallway with a track worn through it, kitchen surfaces that have not been seen for years. We clear those, and the crew will not make a face or a comment about it, because they have done a great many of them and it is not their business to judge a house.
Two things we do ask. If there is anything of the medical or verminous sort — spoiled food in quantity, animal mess, needles — say so when you ring, so the crew comes with the right kit and the right cover rather than finding out at ten in the morning. And if money, jewellery or paperwork might be buried in there, tell us, and we will slow down and pass anything we find straight to you rather than into the van.
What happens to it all
Anything still sound gets a second life if we can find one for it. Furniture, working appliances, books, tools — the Devon charity shops and community furniture schemes take a fair amount, and the rest of the reusable stuff goes to a dealer or the yard's reuse pile. Metals are separated. Electricals go to WEEE recycling. What genuinely cannot be used again is documented at the transfer station and processed there.
The exceptions are the ones every clearance firm has to make. Paint tins, thinners, propane and butane cylinders, old chemicals from the garden shed, and anything containing asbestos — none of those can ride in a mixed household load. Tell us what is in the shed and we will point you to the Devon County Council recycling centre at Newton Abbot, or arrange a specialist collection separately.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Newton Abbot
Can you invoice a solicitor or an executor for a probate clearance? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the trustee or the executor direct, and payment can be made from the estate once probate is settled and the funds are available. No deposit is taken, and the invoice goes out after the work, not before it.
How long does a house clearance in Newton Abbot usually take? Most three-bedroom houses in TQ12 and TQ13 are a single day. Two days if the loft, the garage and a shed are all full, or if there is a lot of sorting to do with somebody stood there deciding.
Do I have to be there on the day? No. Plenty of our executors are hundreds of miles away and never see the house. We can work from keys held by an agent or a neighbour, provided we have written instructions about what stays and what goes, and we will send photographs when it is done.
What will you not take away? Paint, solvents, gas cylinders, garden and pool chemicals, and anything containing asbestos. Fridges, freezers, mattresses and upholstered furniture we do take, but they leave on their own permitted routes rather than in the general load.
Do you cover the villages, or only the town? The villages as much as the town. Kingskerswell, Abbotskerswell, Ipplepen, Denbury, Chudleigh Knighton, Bovey Tracey, Ashburton, Buckfastleigh and out to the moor edge at Moretonhampstead are all normal working days for us.
Can you clear a flat or just a garage rather than a whole house? Yes. Flat clearance, garage and loft clearance and single-item collections are all jobs we do on their own. It does not have to be a whole house.
If you have a house, flat, bungalow, garage or container to clear anywhere between Dawlish and Buckfastleigh, ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page, and describe the worst room first. That is the one we most need to hear about.
