Clearing gap between sectional garages

[amfisted]

Looking for what will hopefully be a simple solution that just hasn't occurred to me.

My neighbour and I have sectional concrete garages alongside each other, with a gap of about 10 inches between. Over the years leaf litter and other rubbish has accumulated between the garages to a depth of a few inches, so having moved in about 2 years ago, I thought I'd have a go at removing it. The gap is too narrow for me to squeeze in and use a brush, so I took a extending roller pole, taped a scraper to the end ( the gap closes to about 8 inches at the bottom and is too narrow for a brush) and used that to scrape out most of the rubbish from halfway down the 20ft length of the garage. Sadly I can't do the same from the other end because there's a full water butt and a fence post in the way.

OK, I could wait till summer, empty the butt, move it, temporarily uproot the fence post and tackle the other half of the rubbish using the same method, but I wonder whether anyone can suggest a solution in the meantime? I can get about 10ft into the gap with the extending pole, but obviously the more bits I tape to the pole, the less secure it becomes and the less efficient a scraper on the end would be. The gap is too long for me to be able to blast everything out with a leaf blower.

Any constructive suggestions welcome.

 

[robinbanks]

Extend the pole with a decent bit of slate batten or two (19 or 25 by 38, no knots, 4.8m) screwed, not taped, to either side of the existing pole (screw through the pole and battens).

Set the scraper at 90 degrees to the pole so you can scrape detritus towards you and the self weight of the pole will help. To finish the clean cable tie a hosepipe to the scraper so the jet is pointing back at you and send it to the far end, turn it on and pull towards washing the last bits of crud that won't scrape

 

[cdbe]

Pressure washer or just a hose pipe.

 

[amfisted]

Thanks both.

I was hoping to avoid using a hosepipe because amongst the detritus between the garages there's a fair bit of soil, which is likely to splash up the walls. Not that it really matters, I guess, because I can rinse the walls and floor off with clean water afterwards. I might combine the two suggestions, used the batten, pole and scraper to get rid of the majority of the mess and finish off with a good blast from a hose pipe.

 

[foxhole]

Baton joined to another to get total length , 5-6 nails thru the end to form a crude rake.

 

[amfisted]

Baton joined to another to get total length , 5-6 nails thru the end to form a crude rake.

Aye, that's probably do it.

 

[Deluks]

Angled hoe, extended with pole/batten, and a leaf blower.

 

[Koolpc]

Advertise for an extremely skinny person to help?

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Could you drop a rope down at the far end, by climbing on the roof? Add a grapple of some sort to the end of the rope, and just drag it towards the accessible end.

 

[Koolpc]

Could you drop a rope down at the far end, by climbing on the roof? Add a grapple of some sort to the end of the rope, and just drag it towards the accessible end.

Could do the same by adding a cat to the end of the rope!

 

[Nozzle]

Compressed air
Or burn the trash...

 

[StephenOak]

@amfisted I have a somewhat similar situation, roughly the same width and c. 4m long, however I can access both ends.

I have quite a few Gardena combisystem tools, including a telescopic handle 210 – 390 cm and a garden hoe,

cs Telescopic Handle 210 - 390 cm | GARDENA

combisystem ➔ best quality ✓ efficient ✓ modern ✓ for a beautiful garden ♥ Inform now!

www.gardena.com

Garden Hoe | GARDENA

combisystem ➔ best quality ✓ efficient ✓ modern ✓ for a beautiful garden ♥ Inform now!

www.gardena.com

For some time I have used the hoe sideways to drag material to near the end and a leaf blower to suck it up. In my case it is basically all leaves. They are far from cheap products but I had them already.

This always left some material I could not remove. Recently it occurred to me to try using my wet & dry vacuum cleaner to blow the last of the material to the other end. This helped a bit but I needed more reach and I realised that the pipe diameter of the metal tubes was the same as some plastic waste pipe that I had. So I bought a plastic compression straight coupling and with that on the end of the metal tubes I can reach anywhere in the gap and blow the material out.

Using that approach, you might be able to blow material out from the accessible end past the water butt & fence post, or maybe even suck it up into the vacuum cleaner.

 

[amfisted]

Advertise for an extremely skinny person to help?

Interesting shout but sadly, the only "skinny person" who could fit in that gap is a skeleton.

 

[Koolpc]

Interesting shout but sadly, the only "skinny person" who could fit in that gap is a skeleton.

Ask at the cemetery!

 

[amfisted]

@amfisted I have a somewhat similar situation, roughly the same width and c. 4m long, however I can access both ends.

I have quite a few Gardena combisystem tools, including a telescopic handle 210 – 390 cm and a garden hoe,

cs Telescopic Handle 210 - 390 cm | GARDENA

combisystem ➔ best quality ✓ efficient ✓ modern ✓ for a beautiful garden ♥ Inform now!

www.gardena.com

Garden Hoe | GARDENA

combisystem ➔ best quality ✓ efficient ✓ modern ✓ for a beautiful garden ♥ Inform now!

www.gardena.com

For some time I have used the hoe sideways to drag material to near the end and a leaf blower to suck it up. In my case it is basically all leaves. They are far from cheap products but I had them already.

This always left some material I could not remove. Recently it occurred to me to try using my wet & dry vacuum cleaner to blow the last of the material to the other end. This helped a bit but I needed more reach and I realised that the pipe diameter of the metal tubes was the same as some plastic waste pipe that I had. So I bought a plastic compression straight coupling and with that on the end of the metal tubes I can reach anywhere in the gap and blow the material out.

Using that approach, you might be able to blow material out from the accessible end past the water butt & fence post, or maybe even suck it up into the vacuum cleaner.

Thanks for that. I did try blowing the rubbish with a leaf blower through a length of 68mm downpipe, but the downpipe was wider than the nozzle so the results were disappointing. However, that did alert me to the solution that you've just expanded on, using narrower pipe.