Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Hangersley

Painted softwood, the original. A moulded fascia with a boxed soffit running back to the wall, decorated every few years until it stopped being worth it. Blistered, peeling paint is the warning and a soft board is the verdict.

Rot begins where water lingers, so the foot of a bargeboard and the top edge of the fascia go first, and once a fixing has nothing solid to bite on the whole length starts sagging between brackets. Sound timber can be cut back to and spliced. Timber that has gone comes off, and the rafter feet and wall plate behind it get looked at properly.

Asbestos cement soffit sheet. Possible on older houses and the one thing on this list that changes how the day runs. If a soffit looks like grey cement board rather than timber or plastic, we stop, tell you, and it comes down whole and goes as a separate item. It is never cut, drilled or broken up on site. Nobody should be quoting you for a roofline here without having established which sort of soffit you have.

Early plastic capped over the old boards. Where that was done decades ago, it is now reaching the end twice over. The capping itself has gone brittle and chalky, and the timber sealed up behind it has been quietly wet the whole time. That is why we take old boards off rather than cap over soft ones. Where the fascia underneath is genuinely dry and hard, capping is a reasonable and cheaper answer and we will tell you so and not talk you into the bigger job.

Cast iron rainwater goods. Heavy, long lived and repairable. A cracked section swaps out, a leaking joint gets stripped and re-bedded, sound iron is rubbed back and repainted, and a rise and fall bracket can be reset to correct a lost fall. Iron is worth keeping where it survives, particularly on anything visible from the road, and where it has rusted through at the sockets, aluminium takes its place better than plastic does because it comes in long lengths and holds a painted finish.

Modern uPVC, hung the way it should be. Half round, ogee, square or deepflow is a capacity choice, and on a long Hangersley run off a wide slope in driving rain the small profiles simply cannot shift it. Brackets go at proper centres, screwed into timber that will hold them, with a real fall to the outlet, since a length hung level stands full of rainwater and perishes its own seals. Downpipes are clipped straight and discharge through a shoe into a gully or a soakaway, not at the footings where it leaves staining outside and damp within.

Whatever it is made of, the eaves detail is the same. The tilt fillet is reset so the bottom course drips forward, a felt support tray carries the underlay over the edge, and the verge and eaves course go back fixed the way BS 5534 sets out. Ventilation carries on through the new panels, by way of soffit vents or an over fascia vent if the boxing is too shallow to take them, leaving the air gap into the loft clear and you do not swap a rotten fascia for condensation, which is what Approved Document C and BS 5250 are about. Open ends get closed against birds and wasps, and outlets are left clear of moss and debris.

We will not give you a rate per metre, because a run of fascia around a bay takes far longer than the same length on a plain gable.

The shape of the house. Hangersley's detached houses often have deep eaves overhangs and bargeboards on the gables, and many have a garage or porch tying into the same gutter. Bungalows have long, low runs, often over a flower border. Where a conservatory or a bay sits under the run, the tower or scaffold has to be built around it, and the work at height rules set how.

Behind the boards. A rotten fascia usually means water has been getting behind it, and the rafter feet or the wall plate may have gone too. Nobody can tell until the board is off, and plastic cladding over the top only hides the problem, so we take the old boards down.

Trees. Where oak or conifer overhangs, a deeper gutter profile or guards may be worth adding, and a run worked around branches, a satellite dish or a service cable takes longer.

The fall. Outlets, hoppers and downpipes are each a line. A gutter hung dead level looks tidy and holds water all year, so the fall is set before the brackets go on.

Ask any rival quote whether the old boards come off or are capped, who pays if the rafter ends turn out soft, and whether the scaffold is included.

We cover Hangersley, Ringwood, Ellingham, Poulner, Crow and Burley, broadly BH24, a trip of about nine and a half miles from Boscombe. Hangersley is inside the New Forest National Park, so its Authority, not the district, decides planning.

Your contract is with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which Thomas Hannen owns. He comes round to look at the fascias, soffits and gutters and prices them himself. A verified customer has left us a 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit and the itemised written quote are free. Before you book a visit in Hangersley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Hangersley 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.