Fascias, soffits and guttering in Lyndhurst

What the older houses do. Timber rots from the end grain and the joints inwards, exactly where nobody looks, so a deep bargeboard on a gable verge usually goes at the mitre first and cups afterwards. Peeling and blown paint means water is behind the film, and no number of coats will dry the board out. The other complaints are mechanical rather than rotten: a run sagging between brackets, a gutter dropped at one corner, a length pulled away from the wall, a leaking joint at a union, or a clear gutter overflowing every time it rains hard. Then the screwdriver: sound timber stops it, rotten timber lets it in like cork, and once it does the fascia is finished and the brackets have nothing to hold.

Cast iron, and when to keep it. Rust starts on the inner face of a cast iron run, the one a paintbrush never reaches, and it then holds water hard against the board behind. Where the length is still whole, the right job is to drop it, clean the back to metal, paint it there and bed the joints again. On a listed building that is usually the answer anyway. If a length really is finished, new cast iron can still be bought, and aluminium and thick walled plastic are both pressed to matching mouldings that hold the same shadow line from the footway.

The rest of the run. Lengths and their unions, the brackets carrying them, the outlet, a hopper head, the downpipe, the shoe. Look there for the fault rather than at the gutter itself. We remove the old run whole, refix the brackets at the spacing the profile was designed around, put the downpipe back on new clips, and re-hang the lot to a fall pulled off a string line, since one hung dead level looks perfect and stands water in it every month of the year. Half round is what most houses have. Ogee holds more and beds flat against the fascia. Square is the contemporary shape, usually in thick walled uPVC. Where a big slope, or a valley emptying into the eaves, sends down more than the run can take, the answer is a deepflow section or an extra outlet.

What is behind the boards. Nothing is settled until the fascia is down. Then you see the rafter feet, the wall plate they bear on, the tilt fillet propping the bottom course of tiles, and the underlay, which ought to sit on a felt support tray and drip clear rather than end on the board and soak it. BS 5534 covers that eaves detail. On an unlisted house set back from the road, capping over hard, dry, painted timber saves stripping a roof edge with years left in it. Over soft timber it is simply a lid on wet wood.

Air, water and wildlife. Your roof breathes in through the soffit, so the eaves ventilation goes back exactly as it was: soffit vents cut into the new board, or an over fascia vent where a boxed eaves gives nothing to work with, and the air gap over the insulation left properly open. Close it and you get condensation on the felt by mid winter, then mould across rafters nobody had a problem with. The expectation for that ventilation is written into Approved Document F. Water needs an ending too, so every downpipe has to discharge into a gully, or into a soakaway put far enough from the walls to be worth having. Water working at the back of the gutter leaves staining down brick and render for years, and a damp wall in this climate never gets to dry out. Birds nest in any open joint in a board, wasps go higher up, and either can hold a job back a month. A green stripe under a run is the first sign, and moss and debris off the tiles have the outlet blocked before anything else fails.

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 village house with the run out over a narrow pavement, a cottage with low eaves at the back and a three storey frontage on the main road each need a different platform. 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 Lyndhurst, Emery Down, Bank, Minstead, Ashurst and Brockenhurst, broadly SO43, inside the New Forest National Park. 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.