Fascias, soffits and guttering 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 rather than in it. Either the fascia has rotted and will no longer hold a screw, or on an older 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 by the roof above it rather than by what 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.

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 town terrace with the run carrying on over next door, a block of flats with a communal path under the eaves, and a bungalow with a conservatory at the back are three different platforms. 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 New Milton, Barton on Sea, Ashley, Bashley, Milford on Sea and Hordle, broadly BH25, under New Forest District Council. 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.