Cleaning Services Cost Blue Mountains NSW 2026 - Complete Pricing Guide

Cleaning Costs Across the Blue Mountains for 2026

Cleaning in the Mountains is organised around two things Sydney householders rarely think about, which are fire and damp. The Rural Fire Service puts the position plainly, describing its Blue Mountains district as one of the most bushfire prone areas in the world. The local government area runs to 143,000 hectares, of which around 70 per cent is World Heritage listed national park and only about 11 per cent sits in private ownership. Some 75,000 people live in or beside 27 towns and villages along a narrow ridge, with bushland on both sides of almost every street.

For cleaning that produces one unavoidable annual job. Eucalypts shed bark, leaf and twig continuously, and gutters on a ridge property fill with dry, light, highly flammable litter faster than gutters almost anywhere else in the state. Clearing them is ember protection first and drainage second, which is why gutter cleaning in bushfire zones at $220 to $500 for a single storey is the most important cleaning purchase a Mountains household makes.

The damp side is less dramatic and more constant. The upper villages sit above 1,000 metres, run several degrees colder than the coast, take more rainfall and spend real time inside cloud. Houses there are harder to keep dry, so mould in bathrooms, wardrobes and on ceilings is an ordinary recurring cost here, and a great many homes run a wood heater through winter, which brings soot and chimney cleaning with it. Interior pricing otherwise behaves much as it does anywhere else. Expect $135 to $245 for a regular three bedroom clean, $350 to $720 for a one-off deep clean and $490 to $980 for a bond clean on a three to four bedroom house, with condition driving hours far more than floor area does. Rates for the rest of the state are set out on the NSW cleaning services hub, while this page deals with what is genuinely different about doing it up here.

What Cleaning Costs in the Mountains

Rates here sit close to outer Sydney, and the differences show up in the minimum booking and in which jobs exist at all. Sole operators charge $50 to $85 an hour across the Mountains and two person teams $85 to $125, with the lower mountains at the bottom of each band and the upper villages at the top. The gap between the two comes from travel rather than skill. An operator living at Springwood can service Faulconbridge, Hazelbrook and Lawson with a few minutes between jobs, while running up to Mount Victoria and back is most of an hour on the highway each way.

Supply is thinner than in the city and that shows in lead time more than in price. A householder at Blackheath ringing for an end of lease clean with four days notice may find nobody available, where the same call in Penrith would turn up several options. Booking ahead is worth more here than negotiating, and a standing fortnightly arrangement secures a place in a run the cleaner has already worked out.

The job mix is genuinely different from a coastal market. Gutters, roofs, chimneys, soot and mould are recurring purchases up here, and a competent Mountains operator will raise all five without being asked. On the other side of it there is almost no salt corrosion work, very little sand, and the window cleaning cycle is longer than on the coast because there is no marine film to deal with. Seasonality is sharper than most people expect and it is worth planning around. Late winter and early spring is when gutters, roofs and chimneys all want doing at once, and that is also when every other household on the ridge is ringing. Booking that work in July gets you a better price and a choice of operator, and it puts the property in order well ahead of the season.

Bush Fire Prone Land and What It Means

Almost every residential street in the Mountains sits on or beside bush fire prone land, which changes how cleaning is prioritised. With roughly 70 per cent of the local government area inside Blue Mountains National Park and only about 11 per cent privately owned, the interface between houses and bushland is unusually long. Properties at Faulconbridge, Winmalee, Woodford, Hazelbrook, Katoomba, Blackheath and Mount Victoria commonly back directly onto reserve, and the fuel load sitting against the boundary is not something a householder can remove by themselves. Ember attack, not a flame front, destroys most houses in these events, and embers find fuel on the building. Gutters packed with dry eucalypt litter, leaf accumulated in roof valleys, debris on a flat roof or skylight, litter under a timber deck and material stacked against a wall are all ignition points. Each of them is a cleaning task, which is the unusual and useful thing about fire preparation on a Mountains property.

That reframes the gutter clean as a seasonal deadline. Twice a year is the sensible cycle here, and the important one is late winter through early spring so the property is clear before conditions turn. Guidance on preparing a property for the season, including what to clear and when, is published by the NSW Rural Fire Service, and householders in bush fire prone land should be working to that calendar and not to a general maintenance schedule. After a fire season, or after any significant smoke event, ash deposits on roofs, in gutters, on windows, on outdoor furniture and on painted surfaces across the whole ridge. Ash is alkaline and abrasive, so hose those surfaces down before any cloth touches them, and get it off glass and paintwork reasonably promptly and do not leave it through successive wet and dry cycles. Ash in gutters also washes into rainwater tanks on properties that collect, which is dealt with further down this page.

Gutters, Gutter Guard and Ember Attack

Gutter cleaning is the one recurring job in the Mountains that nobody should skip, and the pricing reflects how much comes out. A single storey property runs $220 to $500 and a double storey $420 to $820, which is above the state average because volume and access are both worse here. Eucalypts shed year round rather than seasonally, stringybark in particular drops long fibrous strips that mat together, and a ridge property with trees on two sides can fill a gutter in a few months. Gutter cleaning cost also rises with roof pitch, and Mountains houses built on slope often have one elevation that reads as two storeys.

Gutter guard changes the economics without removing the task, and the distinction is worth holding onto. Good quality mesh keeps the bulk of leaf out and does reduce ember risk, but fine debris and bark fragments still accumulate underneath, and the guard has to be lifted and reinstated to clean properly. That adds $90 to $220 to a visit. Owners who install guard and then stop checking the gutters entirely end up worse off than those with open gutters cleaned twice a year.

Roof valleys are the part most often missed and the part that matters most. A valley collects litter from two roof planes, holds it against the tiles or sheeting, and on a Mountains house in bush is where a dangerous amount of fuel accumulates. Ask explicitly whether valleys are included in a gutter quote, because a surprising number of operators clear the eaves and leave the valleys alone. Blocked gutters cause an expensive secondary problem independent of fire. Water backing up at the eave pushes under tiles and into the roof space, and that leak presents inside months later as a ceiling stain or as mould on an upstairs cornice. In a climate as damp as the upper mountains that moisture does not dry out on its own, so a gutter left full through winter frequently produces a ceiling mould bill in spring.

Cold, Mist and Persistent Damp

The upper mountains run cold and wet, and houses up there are harder to keep dry than houses anywhere on the coast. Katoomba, Leura, Blackheath and Mount Victoria sit above 1,000 metres, run several degrees colder than Sydney, take appreciably more rain and spend real time inside cloud. A house in those conditions has cold external walls, limited winter sun on the southern side and occupants who keep the place shut for months. That combination produces condensation, and condensation produces mould on the inside of external walls, in wardrobes, on bathroom ceilings and behind furniture.

Public health guidance is consistent that indoor mould signals excess moisture and that cleaning the growth without addressing the source means it comes back. Up here the likely sources are usually easy enough to identify. A bathroom fan discharging into the roof cavity relocates the moisture without removing it. Subfloor vents blocked by garden beds or later building work stop air moving under a suspended floor. Drying washing indoors through a wet fortnight puts litres of water into the air.

Treatment is modest once the cause is dealt with. Treating a bathroom costs $170 to $480 through bathroom mould removal, and ceiling mould removal $220 to $600 depending on area and height. Where growth has spread across large areas or got into plasterboard the job becomes remediation, material gets stripped out and replaced, and the figure moves into the thousands. Guidance on damp and mould in the home is published by NSW Health.

Chlorine bleach remains the standard mistake on porous surfaces. It removes the colour so a surface looks clean while growth survives in grout, silicone and plasterboard, and it returns worse. Exit Mould and similar purpose-made treatments, or vinegar with physical removal, do better on porous material, and silicone that has gone too far is better cut out and renewed with a neutral cure product such as Selleys, at $130 to $320 a room, than fought over and over. Soft furnishings absorb the damp smell without showing it, which is why upholstery cleaning at the end of winter resets a room more than another wall wash would.

Wood Heaters, Soot and Chimneys

Wood heating is a working arrangement here, and it leaves a cleaning footprint through the whole house. Frosts through Katoomba, Blackheath and Mount Victoria make a slow combustion heater or open fire a working appliance across four or five months of the year. The soot it produces is fine, greasy and travels much further through a house than people expect. It settles on the mantel and the wall above the heater first, then on ceilings, curtains, upholstery, bookshelves and the tops of doors across the whole living area.

Soot does not respond to ordinary wiping, and this is the single most expensive mistake available in a Mountains house. It is carbon suspended in an oily carrier, so a damp cloth smears it into paint and fabric and makes the mark permanent. The correct sequence is dry removal first using a chemical sponge or a vacuum with a brush head, then a degreasing detergent, then a rinse. A householder who starts with a wet cloth on a sooted wall usually ends up repainting the room.

Chimney and flue cleaning is a separate trade and a safety matter well before it is a cosmetic one. Chimney cleaning costs $190 to $420 and removes creosote from the flue, and creosote is the fuel in a chimney fire. Annual cleaning before the season is the standard recommendation for a heater in regular use. Burning unseasoned or green timber accelerates the build-up considerably, which is a live issue on properties cutting their own firewood from a block.

Soft furnishings carry the rest of it and they hold the smell without showing the stain. Curtains, lounges, rugs and bedding absorb soot and woodsmoke across a winter, which is why a living room can look entirely clean in November and still smell of last July. Rug cleaning and upholstery work booked once the fires are out resets the room properly, and doing it in spring means the house is pleasant through the months when the windows are open.

Federation Homes and Guesthouses

The Mountains carry a stock of Federation and interwar buildings that reward careful cleaning and punish careless cleaning quickly. Leura, Katoomba, Wentworth Falls and Blackheath hold guesthouses, cottages and substantial homes built largely between the 1890s and the 1930s, from the era when the Mountains were Sydney holiday country. The original fabric in them is not what modern products assume: tessellated verandah tiles, leadlight panels, cedar and silky oak joinery, pressed metal ceilings, slate, sandstone and lime-based mortar. All of those respond badly to chlorinated and caustic cleaners.

Tessellated verandah tiles are the usual casualty of a modern product. They are unglazed and porous, so acid etches them, bleach greys the pigments and a hard pressure lance blows the mortar out from between them. A pH neutral cleaner, a soft brush and patience is the correct method, and a competent operator doing tile and grout cleaning on heritage tessellation will say so before being asked. Restoring a damaged verandah costs many multiples of the clean that ruined it.

Lead paint applies across most of this housing and it is the serious one. Lead went into household paint as a matter of course until the 1970s, and disturbing an old coating releases dust that is dangerous to small children and to pregnant women. For cleaning that rules out dry sanding, scraping and hard pressure washing on any pre-1970 painted surface, since all three turn a stable coating into airborne or waterborne lead. A damp cloth and a low pressure soft wash are the safe routes.

Guesthouses add a commercial dimension to the same problem. A trading guesthouse needs its heritage surfaces cleaned frequently and gently, often between bookings, which is a different proposition from doing it once a year on a private home. Operators working this market know to use neutral products on the verandah, to keep water out of the pressed metal seams, and to treat leadlight with a barely damp cloth rather than a spray.

Cottages, Cabins and Weekend Turnover

Short stay accommodation here runs on a weekend cycle driven almost entirely by Sydney, and winter is the busy season rather than the quiet one.

Leura, Katoomba, Blackheath, Wentworth Falls and Medlow Bath carry cottages, cabins and guesthouses let to visitors within two hours of home. The pattern is a Friday arrival and a Sunday departure, which packs changeovers into a few hours on Sunday and Monday. Reckon on $110 to $180 for a two bedroom cottage and $200 to $360 for a larger four bedroom house, with linen either included or handled by a commercial laundry. The seasonality inverts what coastal hosts are used to. Winter is peak here, because people come up for the cold, the fires and the Yulefest trade through June and July, and the shoulder months of autumn and spring carry the walking and garden visitors. That means short stay turnover cleaning demand is strongest when a coastal operator would be quiet, and a Mountains host competing for a Sunday morning slot in July needs a standing arrangement.

Scope has two local additions that inexperienced changeover cleaners miss. A property with a wood heater or fireplace needs the hearth cleared, the glass cleaned, ash removed and kindling restocked between guests, and that is fifteen minutes nobody allows for. And in damp weather a cottage shut up between bookings develops a musty smell that guests notice immediately, so airing the place and running a dehumidifier is part of the turnover itself. Deep work sits outside the changeover and belongs in the quiet weeks. The usual pattern is a couple of deep cleans a year, with upholstery and rug cleaning once the heating season ends, and hosts who schedule that for late spring get the property right before the autumn visitors arrive. The state short term rental registration and fire safety framework applies here as elsewhere, administered through the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, and the Blue Mountains is outside the Greater Sydney day cap.

Upper Mountains Against Lower Mountains

Treating the Mountains as one market produces misleading quotes, because the top and the bottom of the hill are different places. Lapstone, Glenbrook, Blaxland and Warrimoo sit low, warm and close to Penrith. Houses there are drier, wood heating is less universal, the mould pressure is lower and operators from western Sydney will travel in. Expect the bottom of every band on this page, with short lead times, because the pool of available cleaners is effectively the outer Sydney pool.

Springwood, Faulconbridge, Hazelbrook, Woodford and Lawson occupy the middle. These are the villages with the deepest local operator base, the most competitive pricing for the Mountains proper, and a fairly even mix of the problems covered on this page. A householder in that stretch has more choice than anybody above or below them. Wentworth Falls, Leura, Katoomba, Medlow Bath, Blackheath and Mount Victoria are the upper mountains and they carry the full set. Colder, wetter, more wood heating, more mould, more tourism accommodation, more heritage fabric and more highway travel for anybody coming up. Expect the top of each band, with a longer job list on a typical house.

Mount Victoria and beyond is where the market thins noticeably. Past there the next populated market is Lithgow and the central tablelands, and a Mountains operator running that far is making a dedicated trip. Properties at that end benefit most from the batching approach, combining the house, the windows, the gutters and anything seasonal into a single longer visit.

Tank Water and Pressure Cleaning

A number of Mountains properties collect their own water, which limits what a contractor may safely do on the roof. Houses on the fringes of the villages and on larger blocks off the ridge frequently run on rainwater tanks wholly or in part. A pressure washer draws somewhere between six and fifteen litres a minute, which means a few hours of exterior washing can take several thousand litres out of a tank. Ask the contractor where the water is coming from before the day, because one who assumes a tap is a tap can empty a tank without noticing.

The collection side matters more here than the consumption side. On a tank-supplied house everything applied to the roof, and everything washed out of gutters and off fascias, runs into the drinking supply unless the first flush diverter is working or the downpipes are disconnected during the work. Any contractor cleaning a roof or gutters on a tank house should be diverting before they start, and if they do not raise it then you should.

Ash makes this a specifically Mountains problem. After a fire season or a significant smoke event the roof carries ash, and ash washing into a tank affects both the taste and the water quality. The usual approach is to disconnect, clean the roof and gutters, let a decent rain flush everything, and only then reconnect. Guidance on rainwater tanks and household water quality is published by NSW Health.

There are two practical substitutes worth knowing about. A soft wash uses markedly less water than high pressure blasting for the same result on walls, and a number of operators who regularly service properties off the mains carry their own water on a trailer and run a petrol unit from it instead of plumbing a Gerni or Karcher into your tank. Both are worth asking about before you reschedule, since pressure washing is easy to move to a wetter month if neither is available.

Eucalypt Litter, Roofs and Valleys

The volume of organic debris a Mountains property collects is the thing that surprises people moving up from the city. Eucalypts do not drop their load once in autumn and then stop. They shed bark, leaf, twig, nut and blossom continuously through the year, and species differ in how awkward the result is. Stringybark drops long fibrous strips that mat into a dense plug in a gutter. Scribbly gum and peppermint drop fine leaf that packs down and holds water. Angophora drops heavy bark sheets that can block a downpipe outright.

Where that litter lands determines how much trouble it causes. Eaves gutters are the obvious place and the one everybody checks. Roof valleys collect from two planes at once and hold far more. Box gutters and flat roof sections on the mid-century houses in the Mountains hold everything that lands on them. Skylight surrounds, solar panel edges, air conditioning platforms and shed gutters all accumulate quietly and are almost never in a quote unless asked for.

Litter on the ground matters as much as litter on the roof. Debris accumulated under a timber deck, against the base of external walls, behind a retaining wall or in a garden bed hard against the house is both ember fuel and a damp reservoir. Raking it back from the building does two useful things at once, and it is the cheapest hour anybody can spend on a Mountains property.

Removing the trees is not the answer. They are the character of the place, and on a bushland block it is usually not permitted in any case. It is a reason to put the clearing work on a fixed calendar rather than doing it when somebody notices. Twice a year for gutters and valleys, with the important one in late winter, plus an annual rake-back around the building, handles the great majority of it.

Steep Driveways and Escarpment Blocks

Access on a Mountains block is a real cost factor and it is one the householder can do something about.

Houses here are built on slope, often with a steep short driveway off a narrow street, sometimes with the entrance below road level and a flight of steps down to the front door. A cleaner arrives with a vacuum, a mop, a bucket and a caddy of products, and carrying that down thirty steps and back up at the end forms a real part of the job. Properties where a carpet machine has to be hauled down a slope are quoted accordingly. Wet weather makes some driveways unusable, not merely awkward. An unsealed or steeply pitched driveway after a week of Mountains rain is a vehicle recovery risk, and operators who have been caught once will not park on it again. Where that applies it is worth saying so when booking and agreeing where the vehicle will actually stand.

Escarpment and bushland blocks add a further wrinkle for exterior work. A house with one elevation falling away down a slope has an effective two or three storey wall on that side, which changes gutter cleaning, window cleaning and any wall washing from a ladder job into an access job. That is the usual reason a single storey house gets quoted at double storey rates, and it is a fair reason rather than an opportunistic one. What helps here is specific, cheap and entirely within your control. Tell the operator at quoting time how many steps there are and whether a vehicle can get to the house, clear the path of pots and bins before they arrive, make sure outdoor lighting works for winter afternoon visits, and provide a tap and a power point that reach the area being worked on. Those four between them remove most of the access loading on a Mountains quote.

Moving Out and Getting the Bond Back

End of lease work is the most common one-off cleaning purchase in the Mountains and the one most likely to end in a dispute. Expect $490 to $980 on a three to four bedroom house and $310 to $520 on a two bedroom unit or flat, with both bands assuming ordinary lived-in condition. Bond cleaning up here takes in the cooking appliances, the wet areas, internal surfaces throughout, cupboards inside and out, skirtings and light fittings, the internal glass with its tracks, and wall marks where they come away without taking paint with them. Two line items catch Mountains tenants that coastal tenants rarely meet. If the property has a wood heater, the hearth, the glass, the surround and any soot on the wall above it are going to be inspected, and soot is not something a general bond clean includes. And the yard on a Mountains block usually carries a season of eucalypt litter, so garden cleanup at $150 to $450 belongs in the budget from the start, well before the final inspection.

The carpet add-on is where most Mountains tenancies run into trouble. If the carpets were done professionally when the tenancy began, many agents will want a receipt showing the same at the end, and the lease generally says so. End of lease carpet cleaning at $38 to $75 a room adds $150 to $300 on a three bedroom house. In a damp upper mountains property book the extraction for a morning when the place can be opened up, because carpet that stays wet in a cold house develops an odour within a fortnight.

Read the guarantee conditions, not the headline figure. A genuine bond back guarantee commits the cleaner to return within a stated window and rectify anything the agent itemises at no charge. The weaker version covers only the work originally quoted, which means the carpets, the soot and the yard you declined fall outside it. Availability also matters more than price up here, so book two or three weeks ahead and not four days.

What the Tenancy Law Asks of You

A single phrase in the residential tenancy legislation settles most contested bonds in this state. A tenant has to keep the premises reasonably clean while in occupation, and at the end hand them back as near as practicable to the condition the ingoing report recorded, with fair wear and tear set aside. Official state guidance lists the routine duties in plain terms, covering dusting, keeping cobwebs down, washing windows, changing light globes and keeping the garden in order. On a Mountains block with a yard full of litter that last item carries real weight.

Reasonably clean describes a condition and not a method, and it stops well short of saying professionally cleaned. Where a lease carries a professional cleaning clause, it has to survive scrutiny on the facts of that tenancy, and the body doing the scrutinising is the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal rather than to an agent at the final inspection. The second half of the test, fair wear and tear, gets misapplied in both directions. Wear that comes from simply living somewhere across a tenancy is not a cleaning failure, so worn hallway carpet after four years, faded paint and scuffing at handle height are not deductions. Grime allowed to build, oven carbon, shower mould left untreated and soot on a wall are not. Reasonableness here is judged against how old the building is, what rent was charged and how long the fittings were meant to last.

Documentation decides contested claims, and in a damp climate it is worth being particularly careful about mould. A tenant who reported mould in writing when it appeared is in a very different position from one who cleaned it quietly for two years and then got charged for it at the end. The bond itself sits with the state and is released on agreement or by order, with the forms, time limits and dispute pathway published on the New South Wales Government website.

Runoff Into World Heritage Bushland

Around 70 per cent of this local government area is national park, and on many blocks the boundary is at the bottom of the garden. That proximity makes one ordinary decision matter more here than it does in a suburb, which is what goes into the wash water. Detergents, degreasers, chlorine products and the runoff from a roof or driveway clean leave the property somewhere, and on a bushland block that somewhere is frequently a stormwater line discharging to a creek, or simply the slope below the house running into reserve.

The practical approach is unglamorous and costs nothing. Use the smallest effective quantity of the mildest product that will do the job, which on most exterior surfaces is a neutral pH detergent. Keep wash water on the property where you can, directing it onto lawn or garden and keeping it out of a kerb. Avoid chlorine products entirely on anything draining straight to bush, and never tip a bucket of cleaning solution into a stormwater pit.

Operators working this area should already be doing this and it is fair to ask. A contractor who talks about containing runoff, using biodegradable products on bushland blocks and keeping discharge off the slope has worked here before. One who does not have a view on it has probably only worked in suburbs where everything goes to a treatment plant. Water pollution and discharge to waters is regulated in this state by the NSW Environment Protection Authority.

A householder does not have to become an expert in any of this. Ask what products are being used, ask where the water will go, and choose the gentler option where there is a choice. On a block adjoining World Heritage bushland that is a small amount of thought for a genuinely useful outcome, and it also happens to be the approach that protects heritage surfaces and tank water as well.

Pricing Village by Village

Where a property sits on the ridge changes the quote through travel, climate and housing age, and the three compound.

Travel is the most mechanical of the three. The Great Western Highway is the only real route, so an operator based at Springwood reaches Faulconbridge, Hazelbrook and Lawson quickly and Mount Victoria slowly, with no alternative road to take. That produces the familiar pattern of a lower minimum booking in the middle villages and a longer one at either end. Climate is the second, and it changes the job more than the rate. The upper villages are colder, wetter and spend more time in cloud, so a house there typically needs something about damp and something about a heater on top of the ordinary clean. That is why an upper mountains quote on the same floor area comes back higher even where the hourly rate is identical.

Housing age is the third, and the least obvious of them. The Federation and interwar stock through Leura, Katoomba and Blackheath is slow to clean because of the detail in it, with picture rails, timber joinery, tessellated entries, leadlight and awkward wet areas. A 1990s brick and tile house at Glenbrook of greater floor area cleans faster and more predictably, and quoting both by bedroom count is how operators lose money. Beyond the ridge the market changes character entirely. East of Lapstone the pricing becomes outer metropolitan and connects to the much deeper Sydney cleaning market, while west of Mount Victoria the next population centre is Lithgow and an operator is making a dedicated trip either way.

The nearest comparable markets sit on the coast and price on completely different problems. The Central Coast spends its exterior budget on salt and fine sand, and the Newcastle market adds deposited port dust on top of that.

Two inland regions share some of the Mountains character without the fire exposure. The Southern Highlands has the same cold, damp and wood heating pattern, while the Hunter Valley prices almost everything on travel distance.

Down on the coast the seasonal logic inverts entirely. The South Coast peaks in January when the Mountains are quiet, because visitors there come for the beach and visitors here come for the cold.

What to Look Out For in a Cleaning Quote

A Mountains quote has a few more ways to go wrong than a suburban one, and all of them are visible before you accept it. Be most wary of a firm fixed price offered over the phone with no photographs, no video walk-through and no look at the property. Condition sets the hours, so an operator committing to a number without seeing the oven, the shower, the hearth and the gutters will either ask for more on the day or trim the job to fit. An honest range, narrowed after they have seen it, is the better sign.

Scope in general terms is the second thing to watch, and up here the specific items are different from the city list. External windows, carpets and blinds are the usual ones, and to those add the wood heater and the soot above it, the roof valleys as distinct from the eaves gutters, the yard litter, any shed gutter and the underside of a deck. A quote that itemises inclusions and exclusions is worth more than a cheaper one that does not.

Three questions are specific to the Mountains and belong in the first conversation. Are the roof valleys included in the gutter price, or only the eaves? Is the property on tank water, and what does that mean for any pressure work? And on a pre-1970 house, what is the operator going to do about lead paint before they put anything at pressure on a painted wall? An operator with ready answers to all three has worked up here.

Four smaller checks are worth a couple of minutes each. Request the public liability certificate of currency as a document rather than a reassurance, check that the goods and services tax is already inside the figure, and find out who brings the equipment and consumables and whether they are charged on top. Where work goes above ground level, confirm the access method and the fall protection. On a property that has to be cleared before cleaning can even begin, rubbish removal and hoarder cleanout are separate services with their own pricing.