Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement 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, not rot: 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 a Lyndhurst 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, not 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 Lyndhurst 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, not 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 metre from us, because a metre of fascia round a bay is a slower metre than one along a straight gable.

Height and what sits below. A cottage with low eaves at the back can often be done from a tower. A three storey Lyndhurst frontage on the main road needs scaffold, and perhaps a licence for the narrow pavement. A conservatory or bay means building the platform round it. The work at height rules make access a line of its own.

The timber behind. A soft fascia usually means the rafter feet and wall plate have been wet for years, and nobody knows how far that goes until the board is off. Capping it in plastic just hides the problem.

What goes back up. Plastic is the quickest. Timber boards cut to a period profile, and cast iron gutters and downpipes, cost more and take longer, but on an older Lyndhurst house they are often right, and on a listed one they may be required.

Trees. Houses under the Forest's oaks and beeches may need leaf guards or larger outlets. Every outlet, hopper and downpipe is priced separately, and so is resetting the fall so water actually reaches them.

Ask the others whether the old boards come down, who pays for rotten rafter feet, and whether scaffold is in the price.

We are based in Boscombe, 14.9 miles from Lyndhurst, and fit rooflines across the village, Emery Down, Bank, Minstead, Ashurst and Brockenhurst, all inside the New Forest National Park, whose Authority handles planning. Behind the name is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Lyndhurst, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

The business is Thomas Hannen's, and he measures the roofline himself and prices every run. On Checkatrade, a verified customer marked us 10 out of 10. There is no charge for the visit, and none for the written itemised quote.

Most repairs in Lyndhurst 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.