Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Crossways

Where a Crossways roofline fails. Paint blown off a timber fascia. A soffit gone soft. A gutter pulled away from the wall. A run sagging between brackets. A leaking joint at a union. A clear gutter overflowing in a downpour. Only two of those are a full strip and renew, and the screwdriver settles which. When it is a renewal, fascia, soffit, bargeboard and capping come off as one set rather than four separate jobs.

The run. The run is made of parts, and the fault is nearly always in one of them rather than in the length of gutter between: the union, the bracket, the outlet, a hopper head, the downpipe, the shoe. Out comes the old run. Brackets are set at the spacing that profile was made for, each union is left the gap it needs to expand, and the run goes back up to a fall pulled off a string line. A gutter hung dead level looks right from the garden and holds a film of water in every length all year, and that standing water is what perishes the seals.

Profile, and the materials. Half round is the ordinary domestic gutter and fits most of the 1970s and 1980s houses in Crossways. Ogee has a flat back against the fascia and carries more. Square is the modern sharp edged version. A long slope or a valley discharging into an eaves run wants deepflow or a second outlet. Boards go back in uPVC on most of the estate, and thickness matters more than colour because a thin board flexes between rafters and works the screws loose. Painted timber suits the older cottages, cast iron rusts from the inside where no brush reaches, and seamless aluminium is rolled on site and hung in one piece with no joints.

What is behind it all. The interesting part starts when the fascia is on the ground. Rafter feet first, because that is what a new board screws into. The wall plate under them next. Then the tilt fillet, which sets the bottom course of tiles at the angle that sheds into the run. Then the underlay, which too often stops on top of the old board instead of running over a felt support tray and dripping clear. BS 5534 sets out that eaves detail. Cap over dry, hard, painted timber and you have saved a strip out you did not need. Cap over anything else and you have only hidden it, with the new brackets biting into wet wood.

Air in, water away. Your loft draws its air in at the eaves, through the soffit, which is why a solid board fitted where a vented one came off changes the whole roof. Vent discs, a strip vent or an over fascia vent all put that intake back, and the air gap over the insulation has to stay open or January brings condensation on the felt and mould across sound rafters. Approved Document C and BS 5250 cover it. At the other end of the system the pipe has to finish somewhere real, a gully with a back inlet or a soakaway set well clear of the footings, and Approved Document H governs where rainwater may go. Water getting behind the run stains a render for years and driving rain keeps it wet. Birds take an open joint in a board as a front door, and a winter of moss and debris off the tiles is what blocks an outlet.

Roofline work is priced run by run, not by the metre. A bay or a dormer slows things far more than a plain stretch of eaves.

The platform. A Crossways bungalow with long, straight eaves is worked from a tower. A two storey house needs scaffold, set round any conservatory or carport beneath the gutter. The work at height rules decide which, so access has a figure of its own.

Behind the boards. The soft fascia you can see tells you little. The rafter feet and wall plate behind it decide the job, and you only find out once the old board is off. On Crossways houses where plastic was capped over the original seventies timber, what is underneath has often gone further.

Shape of the house. Crossways bungalows have one long run each side. Chalet style houses have short runs broken by dormers and returns. Every hopper, and all the outlets and downpipes, have their own figure, as does hanging the gutter on a true fall.

Where the water lands. The clay here swells and shrinks, so a downpipe that dumps water at the foot of the wall can unsettle the footings. Running it into a drain is shown as a separate item.

Before you choose, get any rival firm to confirm in writing that old boards come off rather than being capped, what happens if the rafter feet are rotten, and whether scaffold is in the price.

We fit fascias, soffits and gutters in Crossways, 21.8 miles from our Boscombe base, and in Warmwell, Woodsford, Moreton, Broadmayne and Owermoigne, all DT2 addresses under Dorset Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Crossways, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Its owner, Thomas Hannen, measures the runs and writes the price in person. Checkatrade carries a 10 out of 10 rating for us from a verified customer. The site visit and the written quote, with every item listed, cost you nothing.

Most repairs in Crossways 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.