Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Christchurch

Everything that makes up a roofline. The fascia carrying the gutter brackets, the soffit under it, the bargeboard up a gable, the capping over an older board. Then the gutter with its outlets, unions, brackets and stop ends, the hopper heads on taller town elevations, the downpipes and the shoes. Any one can be renewed on its own, and the quote separates them.

Salt, and what it does to a fixing. On a Christchurch roofline this close in, salt settles on the boards and keeps it damp between showers, which is exactly the condition that eats a mild steel screw or a gutter bracket. Cast iron rusts at the socket, and the nails holding a timber fascia to the rafter feet corrode to nothing while the board looks fine. So we use non ferrous fixings on the seaward elevations as a matter of course, and it says so on the quote. BS 5534, the code of practice for slating and tiling takes the same line about fixings in an exposed position on the roof above.

Diagnosis. A screwdriver into the fascia behind the gutter answers most of it: soft timber means the board has rotted and painting it again is money wasted. Peeling and blown paint, a run sagging between brackets, a length dropped away from the wall, a leaking joint at a union, or overflow at the back of the gutter are separate faults with separate fixes.

What we do about it. The gutter comes off, the old boards are stripped rather than clad over, and the rafter feet, wall plate and tilt fillet are checked while they are visible. The felt support tray goes in so the underlay drips into the gutter and not behind it, the bottom course of tiles and the verge go back, and the new gutter is re-hung to a fall with brackets at the right spacing. A gutter hung dead level holds water all year. Capping over sound timber is a fair, cheaper job and we say so when that is what you have.

Materials, air and water. uPVC on most houses, timber where a painted board suits a period frontage, cast iron repaired where it is original, aluminium on a long run. Half round, ogee, square or deepflow, chosen by how much water the slope sheds. New soffits carry vents so the eaves ventilation and the air gap into the loft survive the job, which is what Approved Document F is about, and a sealed eaves is how you get condensation. We check every downpipe discharges into a gully or a soakaway rather than at a wall, and close the soffit against birds and wasps.

Christchurch rooflines are not priced by the metre. A metre round a bay on a Victorian terrace is slower work than a metre along the plain gable of an eighties semi.

Reaching it. A Christchurch terrace with its gutter over the pavement, a block of flats with a shared path under the eaves, and a detached house with a conservatory at the back each need their own platform. A bungalow is done from a tower; anything taller gets scaffold. Access sits on its own line because of the HSE roofwork rules.

The timber behind. When a fascia has rotted, the question that matters is the state of the rafter ends and the wall plate it is fixed to, and that only shows once the board is down. Plastic cladding over rotten wood just hides it, so we take the old boards off.

Cast iron or uPVC. Replacing cast iron like for like on a period frontage costs more than uPVC and needs painting, but on some old Christchurch streets it is right. Stainless fixings add a little and last far longer in salt air.

The fiddly parts. Bay windows, corner returns, a satellite dish or a cable in the way, and every outlet, hopper and downpipe are priced one at a time, and the new gutter is hung to fall towards its outlet.

Blocks. The freeholder may have to consult leaseholders under section 20 before a large job begins.

Ask of any other quote: are the boards coming down or being clad over, what if the rafter ends have gone, and is the scaffold included?

From our base in Boscombe we are 2.7 miles from Christchurch, and we cover the town, Purewell, Stanpit, Mudeford, Somerford and Burton, broadly BH23. The council for all of it is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council. The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Christchurch, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Whoever answers the phone, it is Thomas Hannen, the owner, who walks round your building, looks at each run and prices it. There is a 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade from a verified customer. The visit and the written itemised quote are both free of charge.

Most repairs in Christchurch 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.