Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Ferndown

Diagnosis comes first. A failing roofline shows itself through paint peeling and blown on the face of a fascia, a board soft enough to take a screwdriver, a run that has dropped or sagged between brackets, a gutter pulled away from the wall, a leaking joint at a union, or an overflow in heavy rain when there is nothing in the run at all.

The last one is the one people misread. If the gutter is clear and it still goes over, the problem is fall or profile, and no amount of clearing will fix it.

Off and open. Fascia, soffit, bargeboard and gutter come off together. That is the only point at which anyone can see the rafter feet, the wall plate and the bottom course of tiles, and it is where a job stops being about boards and starts being about carpentry. Soft rafter ends get spliced. A felt support tray goes in where the underfelt has torn back over the eaves, because that is the route water takes to get behind a fascia. A tilt fillet sets the bottom course so it drips into the gutter rather than over the back of it. Tiles lifted at the eaves or verge are refixed as BS 5534 expects. If the timber turns out sound and dry, capping the face and lining the soffit is a fair, cheaper job and we will tell you so.

What goes back, and in what. uPVC is the usual choice and it takes a bracket screw far better than tired softwood. Timber suits an older or moulded profile and gets primed on all four faces. Cast iron, where it survives, is worth rubbing down and repainting rather than removing. Aluminium is the one to price where a run is long and unbroken, because it can be formed in one length with no unions to fail. Gutter profile is a real decision, not a colour choice: half round is fine on a modest roof, and square, ogee or deepflow hold more water per metre where a big or steep slope sheds faster than half round can take it in driving rain.

Fall, downpipes and air. The run is re-hung on new brackets at proper centres, falling to the outlet. Hung level it stands full all year, which perishes the union seals and keeps a board wet from behind. Downpipes are clipped straight and finished with a shoe so the water discharges into a gully instead of at the wall, hopper heads are checked, and staining down brickwork or render usually tells us where a pipe has been missing its target for years. Then the eaves ventilation: new soffits go up with soffit vents, or an over fascia vent where the soffit is too narrow, with the air gap over the loft insulation kept clear, because closing it is how you turn a dry roof into a condensation problem. Approved Document C and BS 5250 deal with it. Open corners get closed so birds and wasps cannot nest behind a soffit, and we flag any outlet blocked with moss and debris off the tiles.

Pricing a roofline by the metre makes no sense on a Ferndown bungalow. Round the hips. A hipped bungalow has fascia and gutter on all four sides, turning a corner at every angle. That is more length and more joints than a two storey house on the same footprint.

Height. Open lawn round a bungalow means a tower. A dormer cheek interrupting the eaves on a chalet, or a block whose gutter hangs over a parking court, calls for scaffold, and the work at height rules settle which.

Hidden rot. Softwood boards from when these Ferndown estates went up tend to rot where lengths meet and where brackets are screwed through. You only see whether the rafter feet and wall plate are sound once the board is off. Plastic capping just hides it, which is why we strip rather than clad.

Fiddly bits. Bays, porches, a satellite dish or a cable in the way, and each outlet, hopper and downpipe are priced separately. Gutters are set with a fall so they empty.

Blocks. Leaseholders usually pay through the service charge, and the agent may have to consult them first.

Ask rival firms whether old boards are removed or overclad, what they do if the rafter feet turn out rotten, and whether gutters and downpipes are part of the price.

Ferndown is bungalow country, and a bungalow changes the arithmetic of this job in two directions at once. A bungalow has roughly twice the roof of a two storey house with the same floor area, which means far more eaves, more gutter, more brackets and usually more downpipes. So there is more of it to renew than the size of the house would suggest.

The other direction is in your favour. Everything is low. A single storey Ferndown run over open lawn is tower work rather than scaffold work, so the access line on the quote is a fraction of what the same length would cost on a two or three storey gable. That is worth knowing when you are deciding whether to do the front now and the back next year, because doing the whole building in one visit while the tower is already up is almost always cheaper than two trips. The other bungalow point is ventilation. A bungalow loft is broad and shallow at the edges, insulation gets pushed right into the eaves, and the gap closes up. With the soffits off, putting that right is quick and cheap, and it is the difference between a dry roof space and damp insulation every winter.

From Boscombe, where our base is, Ferndown is a 5.9 mile trip. We renew fascias, soffits and gutters across the town and in West Parley, Longham, Stapehill and over to Wimborne, all within Dorset Council's area.

The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales as number 15471719. Thomas Hannen runs his own firm and measures every length himself before pricing it. Checkatrade lists a verified customer's score of 10 out of 10. Both the visit and his itemised written quote are free. Before you book a visit in Ferndown, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Ferndown 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.