House clearance in Cheadle nearly always starts with a date. A completion date, a handover date, a date the keys have to go back — and a house that has to be empty before it. That is the shape of most of the house clearance work we do in SK8: a family home going up for sale, or a flat being handed back. We have been doing it since 2007. The office number is 0800 046 5555, and there is a form on this page if you would rather send photographs than talk it through.
Take a house clearance in Heald Green, at the airport end of SK8, early in 2020. Three men, one day, the whole property emptied — house, attic, garage and outhouses, which is a longer list than it sounds. Nobody from the family was in Cheadle at all. The instructions came from an executors' service dealing with the estate from the other end of the country. That Meant everything had to be settled in writing before the van left and photographed room by room once it was done. Garage and loft clearance was part of the same booking rather than an afterthought, and so were the kitchen appliances. White goods disconnected and taken out properly rather than pulled off the wall and left in the hall.
Two mattresses and a small fridge freezer came out of that house and were kept apart from the rest of the load. The fridge degassed, the mattresses down their own route — because the rules for those items do not allow them to go in with the wardrobes. The garden was on the same job, and one line of the written scope for that address, in the words it was set down in, reads: "To cut back overgrown brambles, clear debris and remove all waste." That is not tidying. That is most of a day on its own, and it was agreed before anyone set off rather than raised at four in the afternoon. Once the house was bare the lads cleaned it through, which is what an executor selling a property usually wants before the agent's photographer arrives.
That job says more about how we work than any promise would. No family at the door, nobody to ask on the spot, so nothing gets decided on the spot either. It all goes in writing first and comes back as photographs after.
Where we go around Cheadle
Cheadle sits in the borough of Stockport, in Greater Manchester, with the Cheshire boundary a few miles south, beyond Cheadle Hulme. The village itself, the streets off the high street, Gatley, Heald Green and Cheadle Hulme are all SK8; Cheadle Heath, down towards Stockport, is SK3, and we work the whole of that block regularly. Beyond it we cover Bramhall and Hazel Grove in SK7, Stockport town centre in SK1, Edgeley in SK3 and the Heatons in SK4, Marple and Romiley out in SK6. Handforth and Wilmslow in SK9 once you cross into Cheshire. Across the Mersey it becomes Manchester rather than Stockport, and we clear in Didsbury and Northenden too. Some of our neighbours have pages of their own: house clearance in Stockport for the borough town itself, house clearance in Macclesfield over the SK10 and SK11 side, and house clearance in Knutsford out in WA16. Any of those and a Cheadle job can fall in the same week without anybody driving silly distances.
There's no station in Cheadle village these days. Most people going into town walk or drive to Cheadle Hulme. That Puts you into Stockport in a few minutes and Manchester Piccadilly not long after, or to Gatley on the Styal line that runs down to the airport. Handy to know if you're coming up from elsewhere to meet the team at a property and would rather not drive. If you tell us which station you're arriving at and roughly when, the lads will work around it. They start at nine as a rule, but a property that needs someone present to unlock and point things out can wait half an hour.
The same executors' service put a second SK8 house our way at much the same time, and it ran on the same lines: three men, one day, house, attic and outhouses emptied. Food waste was written into that one, and food waste goes first, before a stick of furniture moves — otherwise you spend the afternoon carrying wardrobes round bin bags. Every electrical appliance in the property was disconnected and taken out down the regulated route, two small fridge freezers among them, both degassed, and a mattress went for recycling. The garden furniture went with it. Then the post-clearance clean, food waste removal included, so the house could be handed over ready for photographs. Two properties, the same instructing party, and in neither case a relative within a few hundred miles: that is a fair picture of probate house clearance in SK8 as we actually get it.
Getting the van near the house
Half of Cheadle is inter-war semis on wide-ish roads, and those are straightforward — the van goes on the drive or right outside and the walk to the tailgate is ten paces. The trouble spots are the older terraces with back entries, where the only way to the rear of the house is a narrow alley. The newer apartment blocks along the main roads where the parking is all allocated bays and a visitor space that somebody's already in. Flat clearance in Cheadle turns on three things more than anything else. Whether there's a lift and how small it is, how far the front door is from the nearest place a Luton can legally stand, and whether the block has rules about which door you're allowed to carry through. Worth establishing a week before rather than at nine on the morning.
Tell us which you've got. If there's a lift, a service door, a barrier code or a concierge who needs telling, that changes how many hands we bring and how long the day runs. If the nearest we can stop is fifty yards up the road, that's fine too — it just means more walking per item, and we'd rather know than pretend it doesn't exist. Around the A34 and the roads feeding the airport we try to avoid the school run and the afternoon crawl, because a team sat in traffic is a team not emptying a house.
What actually leaves the property
Not everything goes to the tip, and it shouldn't. Furniture that's sound, crockery, books, bedding in decent condition, garden tools, unopened household bits. We'd sooner run those to a charity depot or a reuse scheme than send them to landfill, and around Stockport there are enough of them to make it worth the detour. Metal gets separated for scrap. Everything left after that goes into a permitted transfer station, weighed and recorded, and we can send you the paperwork for it if you want it on file for an estate.
We hold a waste carrier registration with the Environment Agency, number CBDU419679, and we're insured for the work. If a solicitor or a managing agent asks you for proof before releasing keys, that's the number they want.
Sofas, armchairs, mattresses, footstools and anything else with fitted foam are handled apart from the general load. The chemicals used in older upholstery are controlled now, so those pieces are counted at the door, written down on the paperwork and taken through the disposal route the regulations set out for them. Nothing to do with weight — everything to do with where that foam is allowed to end up. Fridges and freezers go their own way for a different reason: they are degassed before anything else happens to them.
There are things we genuinely can't put on the van. Paint, thinners, garden chemicals, propane and butane cylinders, car batteries, asbestos sheeting from an old garage roof. Those need their own arrangements, and a shelf of half-used tins in an outhouse is worth telling us about before the day rather than on it. Ask us in advance and we'll tell you straight whether it's on the van or off it.
How the money works
You won't find a figure on this page, and that's deliberate — a number typed on a website is a guess about somebody else's house, not yours. What we can do is work it out properly before anyone sets off. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe the property: bedrooms, loft, garage, shed, whether the carpets are coming up, whether there's a fridge freezer or a mattress in it. Photographs on your phone are usually enough for a decent estimate; a video walk-through room by room is better still, and either can come through the form on this page. The estimate is free and it commits you to nothing.
Nobody arrives and starts again on the doorstep after clocking how much there is. If the team opens a loft nobody had looked in, or a garage stacked to the door, they stop and ring you before they touch it, and you decide what happens next. Where the clearance is probate work, we can send the invoice and the waste paperwork straight to the solicitor or the executor dealing with it rather than to you, and it can be settled out of the estate.
Probate, landlords and houses that have got out of hand
A lot of what we do around Cheadle and Cheadle Hulme is probate work. A property that has to be emptied for a sale, often by someone dealing with it from another county, sometimes with a completion date already fixed. That's the routine job, not the difficult one. We'll work to the date, send photographs at the end, and invoice in a form that an estate account or a landlord's bookkeeper can process without argument. Probate house clearance in Cheadle is most of our diary in SK8, and executors who have never done it before are the people we spend the longest on the phone with — quite rightly. Estate work also tends to bring the garage and loft with it, because those are the parts of a house nobody has opened in years, and they are the parts a family living elsewhere cannot judge from photographs.
End of tenancy work is the other half. A landlord or a managing agent in Gatley or Heald Green wants the flat empty, the carpets up or left, and the keys back on a fixed day. Same method: written scope, photographs at the end.
If the house has got badly overfilled and you're dreading the reaction when the door opens — there won't be one. The lads have opened plenty of those doors, they'll work through it room by room, and anything that looks personal, official or valuable gets put aside for you rather than binned. Documents, photographs, jewellery, cash tucked in a drawer: it's set out on a table and shown to whoever's instructing us before we finish. Hoarder house clearance takes longer and needs more hands, and we'd rather book two days and finish early than book one and leave you with a half-empty house.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Cheadle
Do you cover the whole of SK8?
Yes — Cheadle village, Gatley, Heald Green and Cheadle Hulme, plus Cheadle Heath in SK3 next door. The rest of the Stockport districts too, as set out above.
Can you invoice a solicitor or an executor instead of me?
We can. Give us their postal and email address when you book and the invoice and the waste transfer paperwork go to them directly. On a probate clearance that is the normal arrangement, and it can be paid out of the estate.
I live nowhere near Cheadle. Do I have to be there?
No. We can collect a key from an agent, a neighbour or a key safe, work to your written instructions, and email photographs of every room once the property is empty. That is how the Heald Green house clearance above was done.
Do the carpets and curtains go?
Whichever you tell us. Carpets and underlay can come up and go on the van, or stay exactly where they are — say so in writing when you book, and it goes on the team's sheet for the day.
How long does a house clearance in Cheadle take?
Most three-bedroom houses in SK8 are a day with the right number of hands. A loft, a full garage or a garden that has been left for years can push it into a second day, and we'd tell you that at the estimate rather than at four in the afternoon.
Do you take fridges, freezers and mattresses?
Yes, but they travel separately from the rest of the load and go down their own disposal route, because that's what the regulations require. Tell us how many and what sort — under-counter, upright, chest — when you ring.
Call the office on 0800 046 5555, or send the details of the property through the form on this page. Postcode, number of bedrooms, whether there's a loft, garage or shed, and anything that has to stay — and we'll come back to you with a date and an estimate for it.
