Fascias, soffits and guttering in Milborne St Andrew

Getting the diagnosis right. Almost everything traces back to the fascia. It is the board across the rafter ends, and every gutter bracket is screwed into it, so a soft fascia means a run that sags, drops and eventually pulls away from the wall. Blown paint is the warning, a screwdriver is the test. Everything else is smaller: a leaking joint at a union, a hopper that has cracked with frost, a downpipe off its clips, a missing shoe at the bottom, an outlet blocked with moss off the tiles. Those are repairs and they should be quoted as repairs.

What we find when the boards come off. With the gutter down and the fascia and soffit away, the rafter feet, the wall plate and the bottom edge of the underlay are all in view. Rot in a rafter end nearly always stops within a few inches and gets cut back and spliced. A felt support tray carries the underlay drip out over the gutter rather than letting it run behind the new board. A tilt fillet lifts the bottom course of tiles so they sit at the right angle over the run. Capping plastic over rotten timber does none of that and hides all of it, which is why the old boards come off. Where the timber is sound, capping over is fair and cheaper and we will say so plainly.

Choosing what goes back. uPVC with vented soffits is the straightforward answer on most houses, in white or in a woodgrain or dark finish where white would look wrong on an older building. Gutter comes in half round, ogee, square and deepflow, and the profile is a real decision: where a big slope drains into one short length, a standard section will spill in heavy rain no matter how clean it is. Timber can be renewed in timber, cast iron on an older building is frequently worth re-bedding and repainting rather than replacing, and aluminium suits a long exposed run.

The fall and the fixings. Brackets at correct spacing, and the run set to fall towards the outlet. Hung level it looks right from the lane and stands with water in it all year, which is what makes it green, heavy and loose. Every outlet, union, hopper, downpipe clip and shoe is renewed or refixed. Older buildings around here often have long low runs on outbuildings that nobody has looked at in years, and those are usually the ones putting water into a wall.

Ventilation, birds and moss. A new soffit gets vents, or an over fascia vent strip where the board is too narrow to take them, so there is a continuous air gap through the eaves into the loft. That is what keeps condensation off the underside of the felt in winter. Birds nest behind a soffit that has lifted, wasps get into a gable end, and moss washed down off the tiles packs the outlets. All three get dealt with while the platform is up.

Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access, the length of each run, stripping the old boards and gutter, the fascia, soffit and any bargeboard, the gutter, outlets and downpipes, and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Renewing a roofline like for like is repair, so there is no planning application and nothing for building control. There is no conservation area over Milborne St Andrew, but there are a good number of listed entries in and around the village, and on a listed building the roofline is part of what is protected, so consent comes before the boards move. Dorset Council will tell you whether your address is one of them.

Ring rather than use the form. A length of gutter pulled off its brackets, a downpipe snapped at the bend or a fascia soft enough to put your hand through goes to the front of the queue, because the next heavy rain runs straight down the wall and into the brickwork. The first visit is about getting it supported and discharging somewhere sensible, and we price the run properly once we can see how far the rot goes. We are a good drive away, so ring rather than message if something is hanging, and tell us if it is over a door or a track people use. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Call now: 07435 839745

In a town a downpipe drops into a gully and the water is somebody else's problem after that. Out here it usually is not. Roof water on a village property tends to go to a soakaway in the garden, to a ditch on the boundary, or onto the ground through a shoe and nowhere in particular. That last one is more common than people realise, and it is why a wall can stay damp at the base while the gutter above it is perfectly sound.

So when we renew a run we follow it to the bottom rather than stopping at the shoe. A soakaway that has silted up backs water against the footing every time it rains, and no amount of new gutter fixes that. A ditch that has not been cleared holds water at the same level as the outfall. Approved Document H is the reference for how roof water is meant to be taken away, and the practical version is simple: the water has to get far enough from the building and then have somewhere to go. If yours has not, we will say so and price the fix separately rather than hang a new gutter over the same problem.

Everything we do in Blandford Forum Fascias, soffits and guttering, all areas Every area we cover