Fascias, soffits and guttering 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. Common on houses of this vintage 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. A lot of that went on in the eighties and nineties, and 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 rather than 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 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 F is about. Open ends get closed against birds and wasps, and outlets are left clear of moss and debris.

No rate per square metre, because a metre of fascia over a bay is not the same metre as one on a straight gable.

Getting to it. A detached house with a deep eaves overhang, a bungalow with the run over a border, and a house with an attached garage and a porch tying into the same gutter are three different set ups. A bungalow run comes off a tower, a two or three storey gable wants a scaffold, and a run over a conservatory or a bay window means building the platform around it. The work at height rules are why the access is a priced line rather than something absorbed into a rate.

What is behind the boards. Rotten fascia is a symptom. The question is whether the rafter feet and the wall plate behind it are still sound, and nobody knows until the old board comes off. Capping over with plastic hides that instead of fixing it, which is why we take the old boards off rather than clad them.

The run, not the metre. A straight gable is quick. Bay windows, a conservatory in the way, a corner return, a run that has to be worked around a satellite dish or a service cable, and every outlet, hopper and downpipe are priced one at a time. So is putting the fall back: a gutter hung level looks fine and holds water all year.

Comparing quotes? Ask whether the old boards are coming off or being capped over, what happens if the rafter feet or the wall plate turn out to be rotten, whether the gutter, outlets and downpipes are all being renewed or only the fascia, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

We cover Hangersley, Ringwood, Ellingham, Poulner, Crow and Burley, broadly BH24, with the New Forest National Park Authority as the planning authority. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.