Most of the house clearance work we do in Kingswood starts the same way. A phone call about a property on the eastern edge of Bristol that nobody has lived in for a few months. A person on the other end who is not certain whether they want the whole house emptied, one room done, or something narrower than either. We have been clearing houses since 2007. Below are two recent jobs from this side of the city, and after them the practical part. Access, coverage, what cannot go in the van and why, and who gets the invoice.
A BS3 booking that was not a house clearance at all
Not everything we are called to is a clearance. Over in BS3, on the Southville and Bedminster side, we were booked for wallpaper stripping. Several rooms of it, in a house that was being emptied and put back to a blank state before anything else happened to it. That was the entire instruction. Strip the paper, leave the rest alone. No loft, no garage, no furniture to shift.
The only note the customer sent the office was this, and it is the sort of thing people actually write to us: "I’d prefer to pay by card. Could you send me the link?"
We take that kind of work because it is the same crew, the same van and the same disposal route as a full clearance: the paper and paste come off in bags and go to the same transfer station as everything else. If stripping is all you need, wallpaper removal has its own page. If the paper is coming off because the house is being cleared anyway, we will normally do the two together in one visit rather than have you book us twice.
That is the sort of job this page is about. Kingswood sits on the eastern edge of Bristol, in South Gloucestershire. A unitary council of its own, within the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire — and the housing here is mostly what you would expect from an old boot-and-shoe and coal town that got swallowed by the city: long Victorian terraces off Two Mile Hill and Soundwell, inter-war semis on the estates towards Warmley, and a good number of post-war bungalows where the older residents have stayed put for forty years. Each of those clears differently. The terraces have narrow hallways and staircases that turn twice. The semis usually have a loft hatch that has not been opened since the last owner but one.
The BS4 flat clearance, and what came off it
The second one was a flat in BS4, on the Totterdown side of the city. A whole-property clearance this time, everything out, and a small job by floor area. But small flats carry the two things that slow a clearance down more than a three-bed semi does. There was a mattress. And in the kitchen there were two small fridge-freezers, which is one more than most flats ever have.
Neither of those goes on the van with the rest of it. The mattress is kept apart from the general load. The fridge-freezers have to have the gas taken out under controlled conditions before the cabinets can be scrapped. They travel separately and go to a facility set up to do it. The rest of the flat — furniture, kitchen contents, the bags that come out of every wardrobe in the country — came out in the ordinary way.
Jobs like that are booked from a distance more often than people imagine. The person paying is rarely the person who lived there. Quite often they are hundreds of miles away, working from a set of photographs and a phone call. So we photograph everything on arrival, ring in from site if what we can see does not match what we were told. Send a second set of pictures when the last van pulls away. Nobody has to drive down to stand in an empty hallway to find out what happened. And if something in the house needs a plumber or a builder rather than a clearance crew, we say so plainly and leave that side alone. We would rather tell you what is outside our remit than take on work a tradesman should be doing.
What comes out, and where it goes
Furniture that is sound, kitchenware, books, tools, unopened bedding. Those get set aside on the van rather than tipped. We run them to charity shops and community reuse schemes around Kingswood, Staple Hill and Downend wherever they will take them. A fair amount goes to the smaller outfits who will collect from us rather than the big high-street names. What genuinely cannot be reused is taken to a permitted waste transfer station and weighed in under our waste carrier licence, CBDU419679. A ticket kept for every single load. If you are an executor and need those tickets for the estate file, ask and we will send them across.
Sofas, armchairs and padded dining chairs are handled separately from general waste. Since the persistent organic pollutant rules came in, upholstered seating with foam in it has to be kept apart from other loads and burnt at a permitted facility. Is why a sofa never simply goes in with the rest of the house.
Mattresses are the same story, kept out of the general load from the moment they leave the bedroom. Fridges, freezers and fridge-freezers too, for the reason described above.
Then there are the things we simply cannot take on a standard van at all. Half-used tins of gloss, thinners, garden chemicals, gas canisters from a camping stove, car batteries, fluorescent tubes from a garage strip light. Those need a separate consignment through a licensed hazardous waste route. They are not something a crew can decide about on the doorstep. If you know there is a shelf of that sort in the garage, say so when you ring. It gets arranged properly instead of being left behind for the next person.
Vans, kerbs and the Ring Road
Kingswood is easier than central Bristol and harder than the newer estates. Regent Street and the streets running off it are busy in the daytime and the terraces behind them were laid out long before anyone owned two cars. A 3.5-tonne Luton often ends up thirty or forty metres from the front door. That is fine — we plan for the walk. What we do need to know beforehand is whether there is a resident permit bay, a dropped kerb we would be blocking, or a rear lane we can reverse into.
The Avon Ring Road makes the rest of it straightforward. From Kingswood we are into Mangotsfield, Emersons Green and Oldland Common in ten minutes. Up to Bradley Stoke, Stoke Gifford, Patchway and Filton in twenty. The nearest railway stations for anyone travelling in to meet us are Lawrence Hill and Stapleton Road. Keynsham a short run south and Filton Abbey Wood the one most people use for the northern fringe. Yate has its own station too, which matters more than you would think. Half the clearances we do out that way are booked by someone coming down from the Midlands for the day.
The area we actually cover from here
Kingswood and Hanham in BS15, Downend, Fishponds and Staple Hill in BS16, Longwell Green, Warmley and Bitton in BS30. Northwards through BS34 for Filton, Patchway and Stoke Gifford, BS32 for Bradley Stoke, BS35 for Thornbury and BS37 for Yate and Chipping Sodbury. Out east the postcodes turn to GL — Badminton and the villages around it in GL9. There is a second Kingswood entirely, up by Wotton-under-Edge in GL12, which catches people out when they are booking. Tell us the postcode district and we will know which one you mean.
The neighbouring towns have pages of their own, and if the property is over that way you will get a better answer from them than from this one: house clearance in Bristol for anything inside the city, house clearance in Yate for the northern fringe and the villages behind it, and house clearance in Clevedon if you are down on the coast side. Same crews, same licence, same way of working.
Types of house clearance we do in Kingswood
Probate work is the bulk of it. A probate house clearance is usually booked by a solicitor or by an executor who lives nowhere near Kingswood. It runs to a slightly different rhythm: nothing is thrown until the family have had their look through, paperwork and photographs are put to one side rather than bagged, and the house is left broom-clean for the agent. Probate house clearance is also where the disposal tickets matter most, because they end up in the estate file. There is a fuller account of how those days run on our probate house clearance page.
End of tenancy clearances are the opposite — quick, usually one visit, usually a landlord or a managing agent who needs the flat back in a lettable state by a date that has already been agreed with somebody else. Garage and loft clearance we do on its own as well. In Kingswood that often means a loft nobody has been up into since the boiler was moved. For a single sofa, a bed frame or a few bags, house rubbish removal is the right page rather than this one.
Quotes, and who we invoice
On cost this page says one thing only: ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs through the form on this page. You will get a figure back. We do not put numbers on a web page for a job we have not seen. The same three-bed semi can be an afternoon or a full day depending on the loft, the shed and the garage. The estimate is free and it puts you under no obligation.
Who pays is a fair question and the answer is simple. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. You do not have to settle it personally and claim it back afterwards. Payment can come from the estate, and executors often settle once the property sale completes rather than out of their own pocket. There is no deposit, ever: the invoice goes out by email after the work is finished and photographed, never before we start.
Rooms that have filled up over the years
Some properties have forty years of belongings in them and a path worn between the rooms. We do a lot of those, and we do them without commentary or raised eyebrows. The crew have seen every version of it and none of them are going to make a family member feel small in their own hallway. A hoarder house clearance is booked differently from a normal one: more time, more crew, sorting done room by room rather than by the vanload. Everything checked before it goes out of the door. If there is cash, jewellery or paperwork that might be lurking in a drawer, say so and the team will bag anything of that sort and hand it over rather than let it go out on the van. Our hoarder house clearance page covers how those days are run.
South Gloucestershire runs its own Sort It centres at Mangotsfield and Yate for household loads. For a couple of bags that is often the sensible route. For a whole house, a garage, a loft and a garden that has not been touched in years, ring us. We are fully insured, we have been at this since 2007, and there is no charge for the estimate.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Kingswood
Do you do probate house clearance in Kingswood?
Yes, and it is most of what we do here. We work from the executor's instructions, hold back anything that looks like paperwork or valuables. Send photographs of every room before and after, so that a solicitor or a family member at the other end of the country can see the state of the property without travelling.
Can you invoice the solicitor or the executor directly?
Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. Payment can come from the estate rather than from your own account. There is no deposit and nothing is due before the work is done. The invoice follows afterwards, with the waste transfer tickets if you need them for the file.
How much does a house clearance in Kingswood cost?
We will not guess at that on a web page. Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs of the rooms, the loft and the garage through the form on this page. You will get a figure back for your property. It is free, and there is no obligation attached to it.
Do you take everything, or do we have to sort it first?
You do not have to sort anything. Tell us what stays — a chair, the carpets, a wardrobe the buyer has asked to keep — and the rest goes. Some people empty the drawers themselves first and some leave the lot to us. Both are normal.
What can you not take away?
Paint, thinners, garden chemicals, gas canisters, car batteries and fluorescent tubes cannot go on a standard clearance van. Neither can anything a plumber or a builder should be dealing with. Tell us on the phone and it gets arranged as a separate consignment instead of being left in the garage.
Do you cover the rest of the Bristol postcodes?
Yes — BS1 through to BS16 for the city and its eastern edge, plus BS30, BS32, BS34, BS35 and BS37 out towards Yate and Thornbury. The GL9 and GL12 villages beyond. If you are not sure which side of the boundary you are on, give us the postcode district and we will tell you.
