Fascias, soffits and guttering in Broadstone

One, the fascia has gone. That is the board running along the front of the rafter ends, and on a house of this age it is painted softwood with the paint peeling off it. Very often a cover board was screwed over the top of it years ago, which keeps rain off the paintwork and keeps damp locked into the wood. The gutter is then hanging on brackets fixed to a board with nothing left in it. Everything comes away, soffit and bargeboard included, and uPVC goes back on. We will only cap over where the wood underneath is properly dry and firm.

Two, the length has lost its fall. A run that dips in the middle stands full of water and is overflowing long before autumn. Renewing it means the whole set: brackets at sensible centres, unions, outlets, any hopper, the downpipes and their shoes. Profile is worth a moment. Half round is the usual choice, ogee sits flush to a square edged fascia, and deepflow shifts a great deal more, which is what a broad hipped roof pouring into one length wants. Cast iron is scarce on these roads, though aluminium earns its keep on a long exposed elevation, and we always follow the pipe down to see whether it finishes in a gully or simply soaks the border.

Three, the water is getting in behind it. With the fascia away you are looking at rafter ends, the wall plate under them, and the tilt fillet that lifts the first row of tiles. Wet ends are sawn off and made good. A felt support tray then carries the underlay over the front edge so its water lands in the channel, which is the single detail that decides whether a wall dries out after new guttering. Tiles lifted on the way are bedded back to the pattern given in BS 5534.

Four, the eaves got sealed up. These lofts breathe at the edges and nowhere else, so a soffit going on without vents in it is a condensation problem waiting for a cold February. We fit vented soffit panels, or over fascia vents where the board is too shallow, keeping an air gap clear above the insulation. Not every call ends in a replacement either. A dripping joint, a perished seal, a bracket torn out of soft wood, a snapped downpipe, an outlet packed solid with moss and debris off the tiles: those are refixed, re-hung or swapped individually, and anything nesting behind a soffit is dealt with humanely before it is closed up.

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 bungalow with a hedge tight to the boundary, a chalet with a dormer sitting in the run and a semi with the garage in the way are three different jobs. 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.

Most of Broadstone went up in one long stretch after the war, and a lot of it in the late fifties and early sixties. Whole roads went up within a couple of years of each other, with the same eaves detail, the same softwood and the same gutter run. That is why the roofline here tends to fail street by street rather than house by house: if next door has had theirs off, and the pair over the road are showing black staining under the soffit, yours is the same age and the same specification.

Two useful things follow from that. Ask the neighbour who has had it done what was behind the boards, because if their rafter feet were sound yours very likely are too, and that is the part nobody can price from the ground. And if two or three of you go together, the access is the line on the quote that shares best. A tower or a scaffold that is already up and inspected costs less to move next door than to bring back in six months.

We cover Broadstone, Corfe Mullen, Merley, Canford Heath and Upton, broadly BH18, under Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 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.