Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Stone

The job starts at the rafter feet. Everybody points at the fascia, because that is the bit you can see going. It is almost never where the job actually is.

The fascia is only a board nailed to the ends of the rafters, and if the ends of those rafters have taken water then a new board bolted onto them will be loose within a couple of years. So the boards, the soffit, the bargeboards and the old gutter come off first, and we look at the rafter feet, the wall plate and the bottom course of tiles before quoting anything final. Soft rafter ends get a sound new end spliced on, photographed and priced before we carry on.

Why the water got behind there. On an older Stone roof the underfelt has often torn or shrunk back over the eaves, so instead of dripping into the gutter the water runs down the back of the fascia. A felt support tray corrects it, and a tilt fillet lifts the bottom course of tiles to the angle they should have had. Tiles disturbed at the eaves or at the verge are refixed the way BS 5534 expects. Capping plastic over a wet board leaves every bit of that untouched, and it is the reason we take soft boards off rather than clad them. Where the timber is honestly sound, dry and well fixed, capping the face and lining the soffit is a fair job at a lower price, and we will say so.

The rainwater side. Gutter, brackets, unions, outlets, hoppers, downpipes and shoes, and each of them fails in its own way: a leaking joint at a union, a run sagging or dropped between brackets, a length pulled away from the wall, a downpipe off its clips, an outlet blocked with moss and debris off the tiles. The new run goes back on new brackets at proper centres and is re-hung to fall towards the outlet. Level looks straight from the drive and holds water twelve months a year, which perishes seals and softens boards from behind. Profile is chosen for the slope above: half round on an ordinary roof, and square, ogee or deepflow where a wide or steep roof in driving rain sheds faster than half round will take it and puts water over the back of the gutter.

Materials, air and the finish. uPVC in white, black or woodgrain on most houses, timber where a moulded profile is part of how the building looks and primed on all four faces, cast iron repaired and repainted where it survives, aluminium where a long run is better with no unions in it. Downpipes are clipped straight and finished with a shoe so the rainwater discharges into a gully rather than at the footings, and staining down a wall usually tells us which pipe has been missing for years. Then the eaves: soffit vents in the new panels, or an over fascia vent where the soffit is too narrow, and the air gap over the loft insulation kept clear, because a blocked eaves gap gives you condensation, not a dry roof space. Approved Document C and BS 5250 set out what the eaves need, and open corners get closed against birds and wasps nesting behind a soffit.

Height and length come first. Bungalow eaves can be reached from a tower. On a house, the scaffold has to be built round the bays and porches. Work at height rules mean the scaffold is priced as its own item.

Behind the boards. Rotten fascia is a symptom. We take soft boards off rather than capping them in plastic, and then you can see whether the rafter feet and the wall plate are sound. On an older Stone cottage with deep moulded eaves, that may mean timber repairs before anything new goes on.

Every corner and outlet. A straight run is quick. Bays, porches, returns and every hopper and downpipe are priced one at a time, and so is putting the fall back into a gutter that has sagged level.

Where the rainwater ends up. A downpipe that discharges beside a wall instead of into a drain keeps soaking the ground at the footings and splashing the brickwork, so we look at where each one goes.

Who instructs it. On a let or estate owned house the roofline is usually the landlord's to maintain, so the quote goes to whoever looks after the building.

Ask other quotes whether the boards come off or are capped, what happens if the rafter feet are rotten, and whether the scaffold is included.

The listed entries near here are concentrated around Pamphill and the estate buildings rather than in the ordinary housing, and that split is worth knowing before you order anything. On an estate cottage the roofline is usually moulded timber with cast iron rainwater goods, and both are part of how the building reads.

Matching the profile of an existing bargeboard or an ogee gutter is not sentiment, it is the difference between a repair that disappears and one you notice from a Stone lane for the next thirty years. We will copy a moulded profile in timber where that is what the building wants.

The other half of it is who gives the instruction. If the property is estate owned, tenanted or leasehold, the fascias, gutters and downpipes almost always belong to the landlord and are maintained by them rather than by whoever lives there. That is not a brush off: it just means the quote needs to go to the right person. We are happy to survey and price for an agent, an estate office or a residents' company, and we will tell you plainly at the visit if you are not the one who can commission the work.

We cover Stone, Pamphill, Cowgrove, Shapwick and Wimborne, broadly BH21, and Stone is roughly nine miles from our Boscombe base. It comes under Dorset Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and anyone can look it up on Companies House. Before you book a visit in Stone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

The business is Thomas Hannen's, and he measures the runs and writes the price in person. A verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Both the visit and the written quote, broken into lines, are free.

Most repairs in Stone 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.