Guttering repairs and replacement in Poole

Small gutter repairs. A leaking union, a length sagging between brackets, a snapped outlet or a downpipe knocked off its clips is usually an afternoon on a sound run. The joint is taken apart, cleaned and remade with a new seal or union, missing brackets go back at proper spacing, and the run is lifted back to a fall towards the outlet.

When a repair will not hold. A gutter that has pulled away from the wall has usually let go because the fascia behind it has gone soft. If a screwdriver sinks into the board, new brackets will not stay put. Water going over the back of the gutter points the same way: the felt at the eaves stops short and the board rots from the top. Either way the board gets dealt with first.

Round, square, ogee or deepflow. Round against square is mostly about looks and matching the rest of the street. Size matters more. A long roof slope draining into one outlet needs a deepflow section or a second outlet, or it overflows at the far end in heavy rain. Ogee is the moulded profile on older frontages, in cast iron or in aluminium and uPVC made to match. Whichever you choose, the run wants a slight fall to the outlet and brackets close enough that it cannot sag. Hung dead level, it holds water and goes green.

Cast iron. A run that is sound in the sections and leaking at the joints can be taken down, the joints re-bedded, re-hung to a fall and repainted. A cracked section, or one rusted through at the back, gets replaced. On a frontage in the Town Centre Heritage Conservation Area round the Old Town and the quay, swapping cast iron for plastic can be a planning question, so check the council's list first. Renewing in cast iron, or in aluminium made to the same ogee, keeps the street looking as it did.

New fascias and soffits. Where the boards are rotten, the gutter comes off first, then the fascia and soffit, so the rafter feet and the wall plate are in daylight. Rot usually stops in the last few inches of each rafter, and those get cut back and spliced. The new fascia goes on to a straight line, a felt support tray carries the underlay drip out into the gutter, and a tilt fillet sets the bottom course of tiles. Capping plastic over a rotten board hides all of that. Where the timber is genuinely sound and it is only the painting you are tired of, capping over is a fair job and we will say so.

Vents, nests and wasps. New soffits get vents, or an over fascia vent strip where the soffit is too narrow, so the eaves keep an air gap into the loft and condensation stops forming under the felt. Birds get in behind a lifted soffit board, and a nest in use is protected under section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. If birds are nesting in the eaves, that stretch waits until the nest is empty, so mention it when you book because it can move the date. Wasps in a gable end are dealt with before new boards go on.

Downpipes and where the water goes. Every outlet, hopper, downpipe clip and shoe is renewed or refixed, and we follow the rainwater down to where it discharges. A downpipe into a silted gully, or one stopping short of a soakaway nobody has looked at in years, keeps staining the brickwork and the render however good the new gutter is. Moss washed off the tiles is what blocks an outlet, so the run is cleared before we leave. Near the harbour, fixings on the exposed elevations are stainless.

Thomas walks round the house, looks at every run from the ground and from the ladder, and prices the job himself. The quote puts access, each run, any new fascia, soffit or bargeboard, each downpipe and disposal on separate lines.

Access decides a lot in Poole. On a bungalow or a semi with a side path, a tower moves along the run. On a terrace near the Old Town where the gutter hangs over the pavement, a scaffold over the footway needs a BCP Council hoarding and scaffolding licence before it goes up (the requirement comes from section 169 of the Highways Act 1980), so the licence is a line on the quote and the job has some lead time. A block of flats needs the freeholder's agreement before a board comes off. Old gutters and boards go in the van each day, the site is swept, and nothing is left half fixed overnight. If the rafter feet behind a board are rotten, you see a photograph and a price before we go further.

A length of gutter off its brackets, a snapped downpipe or a fascia soft enough to break needs sorting before the next heavy rain, because the water then runs straight down the wall and soaks the brickwork.

If the gutter hangs over a Poole pavement, keep people from walking under it. On the first visit we take down or prop the loose length, get the water running to a downpipe, and see how far the rot goes before we price the repair. Scheduled work Mon to Fri, 8am to 6pm. Something urgent? Ring, and if we miss you we call back.

Call now: 07435 839745

Concrete gutters, known as Finlock gutters, were built into the eaves of many houses put up after the war, and about a third of the homes around Poole town date from the post-war decades. A concrete gutter is part of the wall head, so the choices differ from a plastic run.

The signs are cracked or open joints between the concrete sections, damp staining on the wall below them, and water showing inside at the head of a window. There are three ways to deal with it. Relining seals the trough from inside and suits sound concrete with leaking joints. Capping covers the concrete with a new fascia and hangs a uPVC gutter on its own brackets, so the concrete stops carrying water. Removal takes the concrete out altogether, which is structural work at the wall head and needs the roof edge rebuilt behind it. We tell you which one the concrete in front of us will support.

Houses of the same age can have asbestos cement soffit boards, and sometimes asbestos cement gutters and downpipes. HSE advises that any building put up or refurbished before 2000 may contain asbestos. Do not drill, sand, break or pressure wash an old soffit board. We identify the board before anything is stripped, and if it is asbestos cement the quote says so and prices its handling and disposal as a separate line.

Nearby places we also cover for fascias, soffits and guttering, with straight-line distances from Poole, and the other trades we offer in Poole itself.

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