Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in New Milton

A run that has dropped at one end. You notice it in heavy rain: the gutter fills and spills at the low joint long before the water reaches the outlet. The gutter itself is usually fine.

What has gone is the fall, because corroded screws have let the brackets creep and the length has settled. The cure is to take it down, get new fixings into sound timber and re-hang it with a genuine slope. Clearing it out again achieves nothing at all.

A length pulled away from the wall. Here the answer is behind the gutter, not in it. Either the fascia has rotted and will no longer hold a screw, or on an older New Milton frontage the brackets were driven straight into the rafter feet and the tails have gone soft. So the board comes off, the rafter feet and the wall plate get inspected, and the new run is hung on something that will still be holding in twenty winters.

A soffit gone soft, split or dropped open. An open soffit is an invitation, and birds and wasps take it. Closing the gap is the easy half. The half people get wrong is ventilation: new panels want soffit vents, or an over fascia vent if the boxing is too shallow for them, so that the air gap through into the loft stays open. Board it up tight and you have traded a wasp nest for condensation under the felt, which is what Approved Document F exists to prevent.

A joint that only leaks in a downpour. Perished seals in the unions, generally, and worth replacing. But if several joints weep at once in the same storm, look at capacity instead. A broad slope under driving rain puts down more than half round can shift, and the run backs up under pressure at every fitting. Square, ogee or deepflow holds a good deal more, and choosing the profile to suit the roof above it, whatever was there before, is the fix.

Water going over the back edge instead of the front. This is the one to deal with quickly, because it runs down the wall behind the gutter where nobody sees it until there is damp inside and green staining outside. The cause is almost always at the eaves: no felt support tray, so the underlay stops short and drips behind the board, or a collapsed tilt fillet letting the bottom course tip backwards. Putting that right means the boards come off, a tray goes in, the fillet is reset and the eaves course and verge go back fixed as BS 5534 expects.

Paint blown and peeling on a timber board. Not a decorating job. Blistered paint means water has been sitting behind the timber for years, and a screwdriver will tell you in seconds whether there is anything left to paint. Where the timber beneath is still hard all the way through, cladding the face costs less and is an honest answer, so that is what you will be told. Where it is not, it comes off, and what goes back is uPVC, painted timber, repaired cast iron, or aluminium on a long unbroken run.

A downpipe emptying at the foot of the wall. Easy to ignore and expensive to leave. Every pipe should be clipped straight and finished with a shoe that discharges into a gully or a soakaway well clear of the brickwork, not sluicing rainwater at the footings. While we are there the outlets get left clear of moss and debris, because a blocked outlet keeps the whole run full and the board behind it wet.

How many runs, and how broken up. A straight gable on a New Milton eighties detached is quick. A terrace with bays, a block of flats with a return at every corner and a bungalow with a conservatory along the back take far longer per metre, because each corner, outlet, hopper and downpipe is its own piece of work.

What the old boards were hiding. Rotten fascia is a symptom. When the board comes off we find out whether the rafter feet and the wall plate are sound. Capping the old timber with plastic hides the question, so we take the boards off and look.

Salt on the fixings. On the seaward side of New Milton, steel brackets and nails corrode quicker, so we fix with stainless or coated fixings and allow for it. The fall on the gutter is reset too, because a level gutter holds water all year.

Height and what is underneath. A New Milton bungalow run comes off a tower. A three storey block wants a scaffold, and a conservatory or a bay means building the platform around it. The work at height rules put that on the quote as its own line.

Before you sign anything, ask whether the old boards are coming off or being clad over, what happens if the rafter feet are rotten, and whether the gutter and downpipes are being renewed or only the fascia and soffit.

New Milton is about eight miles east of Boscombe, where we are based. We cover the town and the BH25 roads round it, from Ashley and Bashley out to Barton on Sea, Hordle and Milford on Sea, all under New Forest District Council.

Behind the name is a limited company, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales as number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns the business and measures every run of fascia before he writes a figure down. Checkatrade shows a verified customer's 10 out of 10. We charge nothing to come and look, or for the written quote that follows. Before you book a visit in New Milton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in New Milton 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.