Fascias, soffits and guttering in Blandford Forum

Reading the run before quoting it. Nearly everything starts at the gutter. A joint drips onto the path, a run has dropped at one end, or the whole thing has pulled away from the wall where a bracket has torn out of a soft fascia. Blown and peeling paint, a green stripe of staining down brickwork, and a soffit sagging where it should be flat all say the same thing, which is that water has been getting behind the boards for a while. We survey each elevation off a ladder or a tower, press a screwdriver into the timber, and photograph what we find so you are not taking our word for it.

Stripping out. The fascia, the soffit, the bargeboards up the gable and the old gutter all come off together. That is the only way to see the rafter feet and the wall plate behind them, and on the older town houses those are the parts that decide whether you are buying boards or buying carpentry. Rotten rafter ends get spliced, a felt support tray goes in where the underfelt has torn back over the eaves, and a tilt fillet lifts the bottom course of tiles so they drip into the gutter instead of behind it. Tiles disturbed at the verge or the eaves go back the way BS 5534 expects.

What goes back up. On the newer housing that is uPVC in white, black or a woodgrain finish, with a vented soffit or an over fascia vent so the eaves ventilation is not lost, and the air gap over the loft insulation kept clear. Choke that gap and the condensation simply moves indoors. On the older frontages the original is often cast iron on painted timber, and repairing, re-bedding and repainting it is usually the better job. Aluminium is worth pricing on a long unbroken run because it can be formed in one length with no joints at all.

Fall, profile and where the water goes. A gutter is re-hung on new brackets at proper centres, falling to the outlet. Level looks tidy and holds water year round, which rots joints and softens boards from the inside. Half round copes with an ordinary roof, while a steep slope or a long catchment in driving rain wants square, ogee or deepflow to take the volume without going over the back edge. Downpipes are clipped straight, unions resealed, hopper heads checked, and the shoe at the bottom set so it discharges into a gully rather than at the brickwork. Then the gaps get closed: birds and wasps nest behind an open soffit corner, and moss and debris off the tiles settle at the back of a blocked gutter and keep everything wet.

No rate per square metre, because a metre of fascia over a bay is not the same metre as one on a straight gable.

Getting to it. A town terrace with the eaves over a public footway, a semi with a conservatory under the back run, and a bungalow with clear lawn all round are three different jobs before a board comes off. A bungalow run comes off a tower, a two or three storey gable wants a scaffold, and a run over a conservatory or a bay window means building the platform around it. The work at height rules are why the access is a priced line rather than something absorbed into a rate.

What is behind the boards. Rotten fascia is a symptom. The question is whether the rafter feet and the wall plate behind it are still sound, and nobody knows until the old board comes off. Capping over with plastic hides that instead of fixing it, which is why we take the old boards off rather than clad them.

The run, not the metre. A straight gable is quick. Bay windows, a conservatory in the way, a corner return, a run that has to be worked around a satellite dish or a service cable, and every outlet, hopper and downpipe are priced one at a time. So is putting the fall back: a gutter hung level looks fine and holds water all year.

Comparing quotes? Ask whether the old boards are coming off or being capped over, what happens if the rafter feet or the wall plate turn out to be rotten, whether the gutter, outlets and downpipes are all being renewed or only the fascia, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

A good deal of the housing in the town is terraced, and on a terrace the gutter is usually one continuous run crossing two, three or more houses. That changes the job. You cannot renew your share of it neatly and stop at the party wall, because the joint you leave sits in the worst possible place, over the boundary, where nobody is quite responsible for it and where the next dropped bracket puts water down both walls.

So the practical advice is to talk to the neighbours before you book anything. Doing a whole run in one visit is quicker per house, the scaffold or tower is up once instead of three times, and the fall can be set properly along the full length to a single outlet. We are happy to survey the whole terrace and give each household its own written itemised quote, so nobody is asked to pay for anyone else. Where a neighbour will not join in, we finish at the boundary with a proper stop end and union rather than a cut edge, and we tell you plainly that the neighbouring section is now the weak point.

We cover Blandford Forum, Blandford St Mary, Bryanston, Pimperne and Charlton Marshall, broadly DT11, under Dorset Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.