Most of the house clearance work we do in Welling arrives from someone who doesn't live in the borough any more. A house in DA16 that has been lived in for thirty or forty years, a key left with a neighbour, and the person arranging it all at the other end of a telephone. One of our DA16 clearances was exactly that shape — the paperwork went out to an executor living over near Canterbury, while the house itself stood empty here in Welling waiting for a date.
What came out of it, and this is off our own record of the day rather than off memory: one full van load, three mattresses and a small fridge freezer. Three mattresses tells you a fair bit about a house. Three bedrooms that had genuinely been slept in, and beds nobody in the family had room to take on. Mattresses are handled separately from mixed waste at the transfer station, so they get listed in their own right on the paperwork whatever else is on the van that day. A fridge freezer of any size is named separately too. The gases in it make it hazardous waste and it can't go in with the general load.
The day runs the way most of our Welling clearances run. Van on the kerb early. The team leader walks the house first and photographs every room before a single thing is lifted, then we start upstairs and work down, because carrying furniture up past a half-cleared landing is how people get hurt. Nobody needs to bag anything up beforehand — we go through the drawers and the kitchen cupboards ourselves, and anything that looks like it might matter to somebody goes on the kitchen table rather than into the van.
Two loads in a day, and what that actually means
Saturday, the twelfth of December 2020. Another Welling house clearance in DA16, and not one that was going to fit in a single run. The crew loaded, drove out to tip, and came back for the rest rather than leaving half a house standing over a weekend. Out of that one came a mattress, a fridge freezer and a smaller fridge freezer besides, along with everything you would expect from a house lived in for decades.
A second run in the day is a decision the crew makes at the property, and they make it out loud. You hear about it from the house while the van is still on the kerb, not afterwards.
The tail end of that job belonged to December 2020 rather than to us. The post was in the state the post was in that month, the payment went astray somewhere between here and south-west London, and the customer wrote to say they had been advised to "leave it for a couple of days because of the post situation" before starting again. Fair enough. Nobody was chasing anybody, and it sorted itself out the way these things do.
Where we go around Welling
Welling sits in the London Borough of Bexley now, part of Greater London for every official purpose, though half the post that reaches us still has "Welling, Kent" written on the envelope. The postcode is DA16 more or less throughout, with Bexley village, Bexleyheath and Erith all a short run away, Sidcup a little further, and Belvedere and Barnehurst on the far side of the borough. Go west and you're straight into the SE districts — Eltham in SE9, Shooters Hill and Plumstead in SE18, Abbey Wood in SE2, Thamesmead in SE28. East Wickham, Falconwood, Blackfen, Blendon and Danson Park are all inside the ten-minute mark for us.
Several of those places have a page of their own on this site, so if the house you're dealing with is a mile or two out, start there instead. house clearance in Bexleyheath for the streets over that way, house clearance in Sidcup further south, house clearance in Erith down towards the river, and house clearance in Belvedere beyond it. Same crews, same vans, different day sheets.
Welling station is on the Bexleyheath line, five stops from Lewisham and straight through to Cannon Street or Charing Cross, with Falconwood the next one along. It matters less than you'd think for a clearance, but it matters a lot for the people booking one. A good proportion of the Welling houses we empty belong to families who now live in Kent proper, or Essex, or the north. Are coming down by train for the day to hand over a key and go home again. If that's you, we can take a key from a neighbour or an agent instead and send you photographs of the empty rooms at the end.
Access, parking and the shape of the houses
Most of Welling is interwar semis and terraces off the A207 Bexley Road, with bay windows, a hall, a straight staircase and a long back garden. That's a kind house to clear. The stairs are wide enough for a wardrobe to come down in one piece, and there's nearly always a side passage so we're not carrying a sofa through the front room.
Parking is the variable. On the streets closest to the High Street and around the station, controlled bays and residents' permits mean the Luton or the tipper can end up parked further away than we'd like. Every extra fifty metres of carry adds up over a day. Tell us when you book if there's a driveway we can back onto, a restricted hour in the morning, or a one-way that the van needs to come at from a particular direction. That sort of detail is worth more to the crew than a photograph of the lounge.
The kinds of house clearance we do in Welling
Probate house clearance in Welling
Probate work is the bulk of it here, and it has its own rhythm. Nothing happens for months while the grant is waited on, then everything has to happen in a fortnight because a sale has been agreed. We're used to both halves of that. A probate house clearance in Welling can be booked by an executor who has never set foot in the property, arranged around a solicitor's timetable, and finished with photographs of every empty room sent the same evening. If you want the fuller explanation of how we handle estate work, it's on our probate house clearance page.
Garage and loft clearance in Welling
A garage and loft clearance is the part people forget when they describe the job over the phone, and it's the part that decides whether the house is finished by four o'clock or not. Welling lofts tend to be boarded and full — suitcases, Christmas boxes, offcuts of carpet, a water tank nobody has touched since the boiler was changed. Garages here are often too narrow for a car and have been a workshop or a store for thirty years, with a door that has dropped on its hinges and doesn't lift any more. Say so when you book. We'd rather bring the right ladder and an extra pair of hands than find out on the day.
End of tenancy and flat clearance in DA16
Landlords and managing agents get a shorter version of the same day: the flat emptied, the carpets left or lifted as instructed, and the keys back where they came from. If it's only a few items rather than a whole property, that's house rubbish removal instead, and it doesn't need a whole crew.
What it costs
There is one honest answer to that on a page like this: ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and talk it through room by room, or send photographs through the form on this page. You'll get a figure back for your property. Estimates given blind, off a template, by anybody who hasn't seen the rooms, aren't worth the screen they're written on.
On who pays: we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly when that's how the job is being handled, and payment can come out of the estate rather than out of anybody's own pocket. No deposit is asked for. The quote is free and doesn't commit you to a date.
Items that have their own rules
Upholstered furniture — sofas, armchairs, footstools, anything with padded fabric — is classed as a POP item. Persistent organic pollutants, meaning the flame retardants baked into the foam. Since 2023 that material must be kept out of landfill and out of ordinary mixed waste, and it goes for incineration on its own, separately from everything else on the van. Fridges and freezers are the same story for a different reason: the gases in them make them hazardous waste, and they're handled individually depending on whether they're under-counter, upright or a chest. Mattresses, as above, are their own category again.
Paint tins, gas bottles, solvents and old chemicals from the shed can be dealt with, but they need naming when you book so the right arrangements are in place. Sharps, drug paraphernalia, decaying food, animal mess and anything approaching a badly soiled property fall under our verminous property service, which is a different crew brief altogether. Mentioning it costs you nothing and hiding it costs everybody a wasted morning.
Rooms packed to the ceiling don't faze us and don't earn any comment from the team. We've been into Welling houses where the hallway was a corridor between two walls of boxes, and if that's what you're facing, the hoarder house clearance page describes how those days are run.
What happens to the contents
Sound, sellable things are put aside for a reuse outlet or a charity depot rather than tipped — furniture, white goods that still run, books, tools. Bric-a-brac is sorted at the property, which is part of why a clearance takes the hours it does. The rest is weighed in at a permitted facility, and transfer notes come back for every load, so there's a paper trail if an executor or a managing agent ever needs one. We're registered with the Environment Agency as an upper tier waste carrier under CBDU419679, we're insured for the work, and we've been doing it since 2007.
Bexley's own reuse and recycling arrangements are fine for a boot-load, but they're not built for a three-bed house and a shed. A skip on a Welling street means a permit, a week of your neighbours' goodwill and doing the loading yourself.
Common questions about house clearance in Welling
Can a probate house clearance be invoiced to the solicitor?
Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, whichever suits the way the estate is being administered, and payment can come from the estate. There's no deposit, and the paperwork can be addressed however the solicitor needs it worded.
Do you clear the whole house in one day?
Usually. Clearances start at nine and most Welling properties are finished the same day, with a second run out to the tip and back where the house needs it. A very full house, or one with a loft and a garage still packed, can run into a second day — we'll tell you which we think it is before we start.
Do I have to be there?
No. Plenty of our Welling clearances are done with a key from a neighbour, an agent or a solicitor's office, and photographs of the empty rooms sent over at the end.
Do you do the garage and loft as well?
Yes, and it helps enormously if you say so at the booking stage. A garage and loft clearance changes the shape of the day and sometimes the size of the crew.
What won't you take?
Nothing that needs a licensed specialist rather than a clearance team — asbestos sheeting, live gas bottles we haven't been told about in advance, clinical waste. Everything else, name it when you book and we'll tell you straight whether it's on the van or not.
Booking a clearance in Welling
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and talk it through room by room, or send photographs and a rough note of the property size, floor, parking and anything unusual — a stairlift, a piano, a full garage. We'll give you a figure and a date. Clearances start at nine and we aim to finish the house that day. If probate is involved, the invoice can be addressed to the executor or the estate's solicitor and settled from the estate.
