Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Owermoigne

The first call is repaint or replace. The test is a blade into the top edge of the fascia behind the gutter, because that is the line where water sits. Timber that is still hard has only lost its paint: rub it back, prime all four faces and redecorate, and it will go a good while yet.

Timber you can push into has rotted and no coating brings it back. Peeling, blown paint is a symptom of water behind the board rather than a decorating failure, which is why painting a soft fascia is money spent twice.

Splice, or take the whole length? Rot travels inwards from the ends and upwards from the feet. An Owermoigne bargeboard gone at the bottom of a gable but dry above can be cut back to sound wood and a new piece scarfed in to match the moulding. Once the rot has reached the fixings, or once more than a short stretch of it is soft, the whole board comes off, because new timber screwed to old rot holds nothing at all.

Cap over, or strip back? This is the decision that separates two quotes for the same house. Capping means plastic fitted over the board that is already there. Where the timber underneath is dry and firmly fixed it is a fair, cheaper job and you will be told so. Over soft timber it is the wrong answer, because it seals the rot in, hides the rafter feet and the wall plate, and the brackets tear themselves out a few winters later. Stripping back is also the only moment when the tilt fillet can be reset and a felt support tray fitted so the underlay drips into the gutter, with the eaves course and verge going back as BS 5534 requires.

Repair the iron, or change the material? Cast iron is repairable in a way plastic never is. A cracked section swaps out, a leaking joint is stripped and re-bedded, sound metal is rubbed down and repainted, and a rise and fall bracket resets a fall that has been lost. Where it has rusted through at the sockets the choice is uPVC, aluminium on a long unbroken run, or a like for like replacement in the original profile. On a listed Owermoigne cottage that last one is generally the only option on the table.

Keep the gutter, or renew the whole run? Now and then the length is sound and only the clips, unions and seals have perished. More often the labour in taking a run down and refitting it costs enough that new gutter on new boards is the better buy. Capacity comes into it too. A broad or steep slope empties more in a downpour than a narrow profile can hold, so a run that overflows in every storm is frequently undersized rather than blocked, and square, ogee or deepflow solves what clearing it never will.

One elevation, or the lot? Rarely the lot. Boards fail at different rates on different sides of an Owermoigne house, driving rain sees to that, so every run is measured and priced on its own line and you can take the worst one first. The eaves ventilation and the discharge do not get deferred whatever else you decide. Soffit vents or an over fascia vent keep the air gap into the loft clear, so a rotten fascia is not traded for condensation, which is the concern behind Approved Document F. For the discharge, every downpipe is clipped straight and finishes with a shoe into a gully or a soakaway well clear of the footings instead of staining brickwork and putting damp inside. Open ends are closed against birds and wasps nesting, and outlets left free of the moss and debris that keep a length full and a board wet.

A roofline has no fair price per metre. A plain gable goes quickly, and corners, bays and porches do not.

Reaching it. Low Owermoigne cottage eaves beside the lane, one long farmhouse gable, and a newer house with a bay and a porch are three different set ups before a board comes down. Bungalows are done from a tower, a two storey gable from scaffold, and over a conservatory the platform is built around it. Access is priced separately because of the work at height rules.

Hidden timber. When a fascia has rotted, the rafter feet or the wall plate often have too, and that only shows once the board is off. Plastic capping over the top covers it up, which is why we remove the old boards.

Materials. uPVC is the common choice. On a listed building, or a front elevation inside the conservation area, timber boards with cast iron or aluminium gutters may be needed to match, and they cost more.

Fittings and fall. Every outlet, hopper and downpipe is counted separately, as is each corner return and any length worked around a satellite dish or a service cable. The gutter is hung to a fall so it drains.

Ask anyone else quoting whether the old boards come off or are capped over, what they do if the rafter feet are rotten, and whether new gutters and downpipes are part of the price.

Owermoigne has a fair number of listed entries in and around the village, mostly older cottages, the church and farm buildings rather than the newer housing. If yours is one of them the roofline stops being a free choice.

Listing covers the whole building, outside as much as in, and the fascias, bargeboards, gutters and downpipes are part of what is covered. Taking cast iron and moulded timber down and putting plastic up in its place is an alteration, and doing that without listed building consent is an offence rather than a paperwork slip.

Repair, by contrast, is usually fine. Renewing a rotten length of timber in the same timber and the same profile, re-bedding an iron joint, replacing a broken bracket, repainting: that is maintenance and normally needs nothing at all. The line falls where the fabric or the appearance changes. On a listed cottage our approach is to keep everything that will do another few decades, replace only what has genuinely gone, and match the section when we do. If you are not sure whether your house is on the list, we check it during the free site visit, because it is a far better thing to know before a quote is written than after a board has come off.

We are 22 miles away in Boscombe, and we renew rooflines in Owermoigne, Crossways, Warmwell, Winfrith Newburgh and Moreton, all under Dorset Council. The business is Thomas Hannen's. He comes out, measures every run and prices it himself, so the person quoting is the person answerable for the work.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, and company number 15471719 is on the public register if you want to check. We hold a verified 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. You pay nothing for the visit or for a written quote that itemises every run. Before you book a visit in Owermoigne, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Owermoigne 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.