Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement 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 Blandford Forum 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 Blandford Forum 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.

A metre over a bay window and a metre on a plain gable are different jobs, so we price the run, not the metre.

The building. Estates built through the 1970s and early 1980s make up a big part of Blandford Forum, and on them the timber fascias and soffits are often reaching the end of their life, with the first plastic gutters sagging between brackets. Georgian terraces in the centre may have cast iron gutters and timber boards that need matching.

Access. Bungalows come off a tower. A three storey town house needs a scaffold, and one over the pavement needs a licence. Conservatories and bays need the platform built around them. The work at height rules are why access is priced separately.

Behind the board. Rot in the fascia has often reached the rafter feet and wall plate. Nobody knows until the board is off, and that repair can change the price.

Material. uPVC, timber, cast iron and aluminium are all different costs, and a listed front may decide it for you.

Ask other quotes whether the old boards are coming off or being capped over, what happens if the rafter feet are rotten, and whether the gutters, hoppers, outlets and downpipes are all being renewed.

A good deal of the housing in Blandford Forum 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.

Up the A350 from our base in Boscombe, Blandford Forum is 16.8 miles away. Roofline jobs take us around the town and out to Blandford St Mary, Bryanston, Pimperne and Charlton Marshall, all in DT11, where Dorset Council is the authority.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns it and comes out in person to look along your eaves and price the fascias, soffits and gutters. On Checkatrade, a verified customer scores us 10 out of 10. The site visit costs nothing, and nor does the written quote, broken down run by run. Before you book a visit in Blandford Forum, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Blandford Forum need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.