Fascias, soffits and guttering in Burley

Reading it from the lane. Paint blown and flaking off a fascia. A soffit gone dark and soft. A gutter pulled away from the wall or sagging between brackets. A leaking joint at a union. A clear run overflowing in heavy rain. Sound timber stops a screwdriver; rotten timber takes it like cork, and then the board is done and the brackets have nothing to hold. Fascia, soffit, bargeboard and capping come off as one detail.

Cast iron is usually worth keeping. It rusts from the inside, because the back of a run is the one face no brush reaches, and that rust holds water against the board behind. A sound length is worth taking down, wire brushing, painting internally and re-bedding at the joints rather than swapping for plastic. Where a length has gone, cast iron is still made, and there are aluminium and heavy uPVC profiles moulded to the same ogee shape that read correctly from the pavement.

Boards, and the rest of the run. Painted timber wants the end grain sealed and primer on all four faces; left alone it goes at the joints and the ends. uPVC does not rot and does not want painting, but a thin board flexes between rafters and works the screws loose. The run is lengths, unions, brackets, the outlet, the hopper head, the downpipe and the shoe, and nearly every fault is one of those rather than the length between them. Brackets go back at the spacing the profile is made for, unions keep their expansion gap, and the whole run is re-hung to a fall off a line.

Under a heavy tree canopy the profile matters. Half round is the ordinary domestic gutter, ogee sits flat to the fascia and holds more, and square is the modern version. Where oaks stand over a roof, a run that was already at its limit spills every autumn, and the answer is a deepflow profile or a second outlet rather than a bigger downpipe. Strip the fascia and the eaves opens up. What you want to find is hard rafter feet, a dry wall plate beneath them, a tilt fillet holding the bottom course of tiles at the angle that sheds properly, and the underlay running out over a felt support tray so its drip lands in the run. BS 5534 is the code that covers it, and it is the first thing left out when a roofline is done as a facelift.

Air, water and wildlife. Every cold roof breathes in at the eaves, and the soffit is where that happens, so vent discs or a strip vent go back in, or an over fascia vent where there is no soffit to take one. Leave the air gap blocked and the trade is a warm bedroom for condensation on the felt and mould across the rafters. What is expected of eaves ventilation sits in Approved Document F. Downstairs, a downpipe is only as good as what it empties into: a gully with a grating, or a soakaway placed far enough from the footings to be doing something. Let water get behind the run and it will put staining down brick and render for years. Birds will take any open joint in a board as a way in and wasps go higher up, which can hold a job back a month, and a season of moss and debris off the tiles will pack the outlet solid.

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 cottage with low eaves at the back, a two storey house set behind a hedge and a barn conversion carrying one long unbroken run are three different set ups. 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.

We cover Burley, Bransgore, Sopley, Thorney Hill, Ringwood and Poulner, broadly BH24, inside the New Forest National Park. 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.