Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Cadnam and Bartley

Reading the boards. Plenty of the housing here is older, from before the First World War or between the wars, so painted softwood is still common and so is a deep overhanging eaves.

Softwood on Cadnam and Bartley houses rots from the back and the top edge, where the felt has been dripping onto it, so the front can look tolerable while the board is soft the whole way through. We test at the ends of each run and either side of every joint. Where it goes, the fascia, the soffit and the bargeboard come off together.

The structure underneath. With the boards off you can see the rafter feet, the wall plate and the bottom course of tiles, which is the only honest way to price the job. Soft rafter ends are cut back and spliced. The tilt fillet is reinstated so the bottom tile lies at its proper angle, and an eaves tray is fitted so the felt finishes over the gutter and not behind it. Capping over is the shortcut we will not take on wet timber, because the rot carries on under the plastic and the new fixings are holding into nothing. Over a dry, sound, firmly fixed board, capping over is a fair job and we will quote it that way.

Gutters and pipework. Everything that hangs off the fascia is priced as its own item: the gutter run, each outlet, the unions, the brackets, any hopper, each downpipe and the shoe at the bottom. Half round is the standard profile, ogee sits square against the fascia and reads better on an older elevation, and deepflow is the one to specify where a long slope empties into a short run and the gutter overflows every time it rains hard. uPVC, aluminium and cast iron all have their place, and on the older properties in Cadnam and Bartley we would sooner re-bed a cast iron joint and paint the run than take it down.

Hanging it so it empties. The fault to check for first is a run with no fall in it. Level looks tidy and works like a trough: water stands in the low spots, the outlet silts, and the timber behind a bracket never dries. So a line goes up, the run drops steadily to the outlet, and the brackets go in close enough that no length can bow, every one taking a screw into solid timber. Then we fill it from the far end and watch it leave at the shoe. Each downpipe is clipped back and made to deliver into a gully or a soakaway, because a pipe emptying onto a path puts the damp and the staining straight into the wall.

Ventilation and what lives up there. A deep soffit hides a lot. It is where birds and wasps nest, where moss and debris off the tiles collects, and where a loft quietly loses its air supply. While the boards are down we put in eaves ventilation, through the soffit or over the fascia, and make sure the air gap has not been closed off by insulation pushed too far into the eaves. Then the verge and the ends of each run are meshed so nothing gets back in, and every outlet is proved clear rather than left blocked.

A roofline is not priced per metre. A metre of fascia round a bay window on a Cadnam bungalow takes far longer than a metre along a plain gable.

Getting up there. The wide overhang on a bungalow can be reached from a tower on the drive. A detached house whose gable sits behind an oak, or a Bartley cottage with low eaves over a planted border, needs the platform built round what is in the way, and a conservatory under the gutter means bridging the glass. Because of the roofwork rules, access has its own line.

Behind the old board. When fascia has rotted, the real question is whether the rafter ends and the wall plate behind are still good, and nobody can say until the board comes down. Covering rotten timber with a plastic cap just hides it, so we strip the old boards off.

Counting the extras. Corners, bays, a dish or a cable in the way, plus each outlet, hopper and downpipe, are counted separately, and the new gutter is hung with a proper fall. Under the Cadnam and Bartley oaks and pines, leaf guards might be worth having; they are a separate line you can leave off.

Before you choose, ask the other firm: are the old boards being taken off or capped, what happens if the rafter ends are rotten, and is it the whole roofline or just the fascia?

Cadnam and Bartley are 17.5 miles from our Boscombe base, and we also cover Copythorne, Netley Marsh, Ashurst and the other villages along the top of the Forest in SO40. The New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority, and New Forest District Council handles building control.

You would be dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. The business belongs to Thomas Hannen, who walks round your house and writes the price. One verified customer on Checkatrade gave a score of 10 out of 10. The site visit is free, as is the itemised quote on paper. Before you book a visit in Cadnam and Bartley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Cadnam and Bartley 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.