Most house clearance work in Surbiton comes in one of two shapes: a flat somewhere within walking distance of the station, or a house with a loft and a garage out towards Tolworth. Abacus has been clearing both since 2007, and which of the two you have decides almost everything about how the day runs. Here is one of ours, start to finish.
A Wednesday in April, a two-bedroom flat on the third floor in KT6. Lift access — which changes a clearance more than anything else on the booking form. With a lift, a third-floor flat is barely harder than a ground-floor one. Without, it is a day of stairs and nothing else. Parking was round the rear of the block, so no suspension to arrange and no ticket to worry about. The instructions had come through as a plain list a fortnight beforehand, and it was the sort we like: carpets to be cleared, curtains to be cleared, no white goods, no cleaning wanted afterwards, and no garden, garage or loft to deal with. Nothing hazardous or verminous in there, he said, and no special requirements. A mattress was logged on its own, and so was one POP item, because both have to travel apart from general waste.
The line from that booking we still repeat to each other was about the post: "No paper work to be taken, I will take for disposal." Fair enough. Letters, files, old statements — people don't always want a stranger deciding what happens to them, and having it written down beforehand saves a conversation on the doorstep. He came down to let the team in himself; the address he gave us for the paperwork afterwards was up in Lancashire. He'd also squared it with somebody else in the block to hold a key, in case the roads went against him on the morning.
That's a fairly typical Surbiton job for us, if there is such a thing.
Where we go around Surbiton
Surbiton sits in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, in Greater London, though plenty of the letters we get still have Surrey on the bottom line and nobody minds. The two postcode districts that are Surbiton's own are KT5 and KT6. KT5 takes in Berrylands, Tolworth and the Surbiton Hill side; KT6 covers Surbiton proper, Long Ditton, Hook and Southborough. Around that, house clearance in Kingston upon Thames, house clearance in New Malden and house clearance in Chessington sit in their own districts and have pages of their own, as does house clearance in Worcester Park just over the Surrey boundary. Thames Ditton and Hinchley Wood are ten minutes down the road when the A3 behaves.
Surbiton station and its Art Deco frontage, 1937 and listed, is the thing everybody photographs. We're not arriving by train, obviously, but it tells you the shape of the place. The streets nearest the station are full of Victorian and Edwardian houses long since converted into flats. The further out you go towards Tolworth and Berrylands the more you get semis and detached places with gardens, garages and lofts that have been quietly filling up since the fifties. Berrylands has its own station on the main line; Tolworth's is round on the Chessington branch.
Two very different sorts of clearance, that. The flats are about stairs, lifts and where the van can legally sit. The houses are about volume.
The whole borough is inside the ULEZ boundary, which matters to us rather than to you — it's our vans that have to comply, and they do.
Flats, lifts and the parking question
One July we cleared a flat in a purpose-built block over near Berrylands, KT5, where the customer had a private car park behind the building. He told us at booking exactly how that would work: "There is a private car park, I will provide parking permit on the day for the team." He did, too, handed over at the door at nine, and the van sat twenty feet from the entrance all day instead of on a yellow line.
He'd also asked us in advance to bring proper boxes and packing for the plates, crockery and glasses in the kitchen cupboards, so we brought them. It's a sensible request and hardly anybody makes it. Kitchens are slow work in a flat clearance — cupboards look empty from the doorway and then turn out to be three deep in glassware. He had put it down as a small load when he booked. What actually came out of that kitchen and the rooms behind it was rather more, somewhere between a mid and a large by the time the tail lift went up for the last time.
Parking is the thing people forget to mention and the thing that holds up a morning. Controlled zone, a barrier across the entrance, a shared bay that somebody else will have taken by half eight, nearest legal stop for a caged tipper forty yards down the road — tell us at booking. We would much rather plan for it than find out at five past nine. In the older converted houses near the station it's usually the bay suspension that decides whether a house clearance in Surbiton takes one day or two.
Houses, lofts and garages towards Tolworth and Berrylands
Away from the station the stock changes. Thirties semis, post-war detached places, bay windows, side access down to a garage, and a hatch in the landing ceiling that hasn't been opened since somebody's father put the Christmas decorations up there. Those clearances are decided by the loft and the garage, not by the rooms you can see. A house that looks like a comfortable one-day job from the hall photographs can turn into two once somebody puts a torch up through the hatch.
So when you send pictures, send the loft as well. It is the single most useful photograph you can give us, and the one we most often have to ask for afterwards.
Garages out this way tend to hold the same things: a workbench, tins and jars on shelves, a lawnmower, bicycle frames, paint, tiles left over from a bathroom done in 1994. Some of that we can take and some of it we can't, which is worth knowing before the day rather than on it.
The kinds of house clearance we take on in Surbiton
Probate house clearance in Surbiton
A good share of our Surbiton work is probate work. The pattern is nearly always the same: the house has been sitting for a few months, the grant has come through, and the family wants it emptied so it can go on the market. A probate house clearance is slower than an ordinary one because things have to be looked for rather than just lifted — documents, jewellery, photographs, the small box everybody knows exists and nobody can find. Tell us what to set aside and the team will set it aside and hand it over at the end.
We can work to a solicitor's timetable or an agent's, collect keys and return them, and give you the waste transfer paperwork for the estate file. On a probate job the invoice goes to the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly and can be settled out of the estate rather than from anyone's own pocket. There is no deposit and nothing is asked for before the work is done. If the property is being sold, say so at booking; it changes what we do about carpets, curtains and the garden.
Flat clearance in KT5 and KT6
Flat clearance is its own trade. Lift or no lift, the width of the communal door, whether there's a fire door on a spring that needs propping, what the block's rules say about working hours, where the bins are. Both of the Surbiton jobs above were flats, and neither was difficult, because in both cases somebody told us the awkward part in advance.
Garage and loft clearance in Surbiton
We'll do a garage or a loft on its own, without the house. Same for a shed, a summerhouse, or a single item that two people can't get down the stairs.
End of tenancy clearance in Surbiton
Landlords and managing agents use us at the end of a tenancy, usually at short notice and usually with the property left part-furnished. We empty it, sweep through and lock up, and the photographs from the walk round go over to whoever is holding the deposit dispute.
Hoarder house clearance in Surbiton
A hoarder house clearance takes longer and needs a bigger team, and it needs sorting rather than shifting, because the things that matter are mixed in with everything else. We do this work regularly and there is no reaction from the crew, whatever the state of the place.
What leaves the house, and where it goes
Nothing goes into a hole in the ground if it doesn't have to. Furniture, tools, crockery, books and bric-a-brac that somebody would still buy get offered to charity shops and reuse schemes around Kingston before anything else is decided. What is genuinely past use goes to a permitted transfer station, gets sorted and weighed, and timber, metal, plasterboard and cardboard each go their own way from there. Abacus is fully insured and registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, licence CBDU419679, and every load has paperwork behind it.
Sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs and office swivels are treated as POPs — persistent organic pollutants, meaning the flame retardant in the foam. The rules say they can't travel mixed in with ordinary bulky waste, so they're kept apart on the van and destroyed under their own procedure. Same story with mattresses, and with fridges and freezers, where the gas has to come out first and be taken out by somebody certified to do it.
A short list of things we can't put on the van at all: tins of paint, gas canisters, car batteries, garden chemicals, anything containing asbestos. Those want a specialist collection, and we'll tell you who to ring rather than pretend otherwise.
What a house clearance day in Surbiton looks like
The team is at the property at nine. The team leader walks round with whoever has the keys, photographs the rooms as found, and confirms what's staying — carpets, curtains, fitted units, the things somebody wants keeping back. Then it's room by room, heaviest first, with the van shuttling if the load is going to run past what one trip will hold. At the end the place is swept through, the empty rooms are photographed as a record of what was done, and the keys go back to you or to the agent.
There's no need to bag or box anything up beforehand. People do it anyway, then feel daft when the van's loaded by lunchtime.
Alongside the clearance itself we can strip wallpaper, cut a garden back, or leave the property cleaned. Worth asking about if the house is going on the market, because an empty swept house photographs a good deal better than an empty grubby one.
Clearing a Surbiton house when you live somewhere else
Something like a third of our Surbiton work is instructed by people who aren't in the county, never mind the postcode — executors in the West Country, a son in Lancashire, a landlord abroad, a managing agent three hours up the M1. It works perfectly well. You send photographs of each room and the loft, we agree the day, somebody local or an agent lets us in, and the photographs from both ends of the day go to you the same evening. Nobody has to take a day off and drive down for it unless they want to.
The full house, however it's been left
We handle heavily soiled and verminous clearances as well as ordinary ones, and we've done both around here. Properties packed room to room, or shut up for a long time, are routine work for this crew. No reaction, no lecture. They start at nine, work through cupboards, wardrobes and drawers, lift carpets and underlay where you want them lifted, and sweep the place through before locking up.
Asking what a house clearance in Surbiton will cost
One answer only, and it's the honest one: ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send a few photographs of the rooms through the form on this page, and you'll get a figure back. Don't guess at it from a website and don't take a number off somebody who hasn't seen the property. Photographs take five minutes and they settle it.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Surbiton
Do you cover all of Surbiton? Yes — KT5 and KT6 in full, so Berrylands, Tolworth, Surbiton Hill, Long Ditton, Hook and Southborough, Kingston, New Malden and Chessington around them each have a page of their own.
How do I find out what my clearance will come to? Ring the office or send photographs of each room, and the loft if there is one, through the form on this page. We come back with the load size, the day we can do it, and a figure.
Do I have to be there on the day? No. Plenty of our Surbiton clearances are let in by an agent, a neighbour or a relative, and we'll return the keys wherever you tell us to.
Can you take carpets and curtains? Yes, if you want them out. Tell us at booking either way — half our jobs want them lifted and half want them left, and it changes how the day is planned.
Can you do a probate house clearance and work with the solicitor? Yes. We deal with executors, solicitors and agents regularly, work to their timetable, and hand over the waste transfer paperwork for the file.
What won't you take? Paint, gas bottles, car batteries, garden chemicals and asbestos. Fridges, freezers, mattresses and upholstered furniture we will take, but they're handled separately from everything else, as the regulations require.
To book, ring the office or send a few photographs of the rooms — and the loft, if there is one — through the enquiry form. We'll come back with the load size, the day we can do it, and a figure. If it's a probate matter, say so at the start, and we'll work to the timetable you and the solicitor are already on.
