Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Lover

Four materials, four different answers. On an older cottage the fascia is softwood and the gutter is cast iron. On a post-war house it is softwood and half round plastic. On a new build it is uPVC throughout.

Cast iron that is still sound is worth rubbing down, re-bedding the joints and repainting instead of removing, because it outlives anything that would replace it. Timber boards get primed on all four faces before they go up and last well if the water is kept off them. uPVC never needs painting and takes a bracket screw far better than tired softwood. Aluminium is worth a price on a long straight eaves because it can be formed in one length with no unions at all.

Why the boards come off. Fascia, soffit, bargeboard and gutter are stripped, never clad, because until they are down nobody can see the rafter feet, the wall plate or the bottom course of tiles. On older roofs those are the parts that decide the job. Rot starts at the top edge of the fascia where the felt has torn back over the eaves, so a felt support tray goes in as standard, with a tilt fillet lifting the bottom course so it drips into the gutter, not behind it. A rafter foot that has gone soft gets a sound end spliced on. It is not packed and hoped for. Anything lifted at the eaves or verge is refixed the way BS 5534 expects. Where the timber is genuinely sound, dry and firm, capping the face and lining the soffit is a fair job at a lower price, and we will tell you when that is what you have.

Reading the run. A board soft enough to take a screwdriver, paint peeling and blown in patches, a length that has dropped between brackets, a gutter pulled away from the wall, a leaking joint at a union, or an overflow in a downpour when the run is clear. That last one is fall or profile, not blockage. Half round copes with an ordinary roof, but a long steep slope in driving rain sheds more than it will carry, and ogee, square or deepflow hold more before the water goes over the back of the gutter and down the wall.

Putting it back. New brackets at proper centres, the run falling to the outlet, unions resealed and downpipes clipped straight with a shoe so the water discharges into a gully instead of at the footings. Level looks tidy and stands full all year, which is what perishes seals and keeps timber wet from behind. Hopper heads are checked, staining down a wall is traced to whichever pipe caused it, and the eaves are put right while everything is open: soffit vents in the new boards, or an over fascia vent where the soffit is too narrow, and the air gap over the loft insulation left clear so you get a dry roof space and no condensation. Approved Document F sets the ventilation figures. Open corners are closed so birds and wasps cannot nest behind a soffit, and any outlet blocked with moss and debris off the tiles gets pointed out.

A metre of fascia along a plain gable goes up faster than one wrapped round a bay or tucked behind a hedge.

What is behind the boards. Rotten fascia is a symptom. What counts is whether the rafter ends and wall plate behind are sound, and that only shows once the board comes off. We remove old boards instead of sleeving them in plastic, because sleeving hides the rot.

Cast iron or plastic. Cast iron gutters and downpipes are heavy to take down and to put back. Replacing them in cast iron, or in cast aluminium that looks the same, costs more than plastic, and in Lover, inside the National Park, a visible change of material may need asking about first.

The run. A straight gable is quick. A bay, a porch, a corner return and each outlet, hopper and downpipe are priced separately, and so is hanging the gutter to a proper fall.

Access. Low eaves over a hedge, a run above a conservatory, or a gable on a narrow lane where the platform has to be built round obstacles all change the kit, and the work at height rules are why access is priced in the open.

Ask the other quotes: are the old boards coming off or being covered? What if the rafter ends are rotten? Are the gutters and downpipes new as well as the fascia?

Where a house around Lover or Redlynch predates the First World War, the old roof behaves differently at the eaves. The rafters are often not machine cut and not all the same depth, so a new fascia has to be packed and lined to a straight edge rather than simply screwed on.

The wall plate sits on a solid wall that has to breathe, and where a cottage has damp at eaves level the cause is as often a leaking gutter joint above it as anything in the wall itself.

The temptation on a Lover house like that is to strip everything and put white plastic up, because it is quick and it is cheap and it never wants painting. On a period cottage it is usually the wrong call, and not only on looks. Cast iron that has been kept painted has decades left in it, and the moulded timber profiles under it are part of what the building looks like. Our advice is to repair what is sound, replace only what has actually gone, keep the profile when you do, and put the money you save into fixing whatever let the water in behind the boards in the first place. If plastic is the right answer for a rear elevation, we will say that too.

Roofline work in Lover, Redlynch, Morgan's Vale, Nomansland and Landford is done from our base in Boscombe, which is 18.1 miles away. If anything needs permission, the New Forest National Park Authority decides planning and Wiltshire Council deals with building regulations.

Behind the name is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns it and walks round your eaves himself before writing a price. One customer's verified Checkatrade score for us is 10 out of 10. It costs you nothing to have him visit, and nothing for a quote that lists each run. Before you book a visit in Lover, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Lover 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.