Fascias, soffits and guttering in Stourpaine

Reading it correctly. Five faults account for nearly everything. A rotten fascia, which is why brackets pull out and a run drops. A gutter sagging between fixings. A leaking joint at a union. A gutter that has tipped back towards the wall so it overflows at the back rather than the front. And blocked outlets, usually packed with moss washed down off the tiles. Only the first of those needs a new roofline, and telling them apart before anyone quotes is most of the value of a proper look.

What comes off, and what is underneath. Gutter first, then fascia and soffit, and now the rafter feet and the wall plate are in the open. Rot in a rafter almost always stops within a few inches of the end, and those get cut back and new timber spliced on. A felt support tray goes in so the bottom edge of the underlay drips into the gutter rather than down behind the new board, and a tilt fillet lifts the bottom course of tiles to the angle they should be sitting at. This is why capping plastic over an existing rotten fascia is the wrong answer: it hides the rafter feet, seals damp against them and leaves the gutter hanging on the same tired timber. Over dry, solid timber, capping is a genuine and cheaper option.

The new run. uPVC boards, with a gutter in half round, ogee, square or deepflow. The profile is chosen for how much roof drains into that length, not for what is on the van. A long slope feeding one short run will overflow through a standard half round in heavy rain however clean it is, and a deepflow section takes it properly. On older buildings timber can be renewed in timber and painted, and cast iron is often worth keeping with the joints re-bedded and the run repainted. Aluminium suits long exposed runs.

Getting the fall right. Brackets back at proper spacing and the run set so it falls to the outlet. Hung dead level it looks perfect from the road and stands with water in it every day of the year, which is what makes it green, heavy and eventually loose. Outlets, unions, hoppers, downpipes, clips and shoes are renewed or refixed, and we follow the rainwater to see where it discharges. A downpipe over a gully full of silt, or one running to a soakaway that has stopped working, will keep staining the wall no matter what is above it.

Air, birds and wasps. New soffits get vents, or an over fascia vent strip where the board is too narrow, so the eaves keep an air gap into the loft. That air gap is what keeps condensation off the underside of the felt in winter. Birds nesting behind a lifted soffit and wasps in a gable end are both common here, and both are dealt with before the new boards go up.

Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access, the length of each run, stripping the old boards and gutter, the fascia, soffit and any bargeboard, the gutter, outlets and downpipes, and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Renewing a roofline like for like is repair, so there is nothing to apply for and nothing for building control. Stourpaine has its own conservation area over the older part of the village, where the appearance of a building is controlled and a change of material is a planning matter rather than maintenance. There are listed entries in and around the village too, and on a listed building the roofline needs listed building consent first. Dorset Council holds the boundaries for both.

Ring rather than use the form. A length of gutter pulled off its brackets, a downpipe snapped at the bend or a fascia soft enough to put your hand through goes to the front of the queue, because the next heavy rain runs straight down the wall and into the brickwork. The first visit is about getting it supported and discharging somewhere sensible, and we price the run properly once we can see how far the rot goes. We are a fair way out, so tell us on the phone whether anything is hanging over a lane or a doorway and that moves it up the list. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Call now: 07435 839745

People assume a conservation area means asking permission for everything. It does not. What it protects is the character and appearance of the area, which in practice means what can be seen from the street, the lane or a public footpath. Repair is not controlled at all. Taking a rotten timber fascia off and putting new timber back in the same profile and the same colour is maintenance, and so is repairing and repainting an existing cast iron gutter. Nobody needs to be asked about either.

Where it bites is a change of appearance on a visible elevation. Swapping painted timber or cast iron for white plastic across a frontage is a change, and it is the kind that gets noticed in a village street. The sensible route is to keep the front reading as it does now, in the same material or in a woodgrain or dark board in the same profile, and use standard uPVC on the back and the flanks where nothing public sees it. Not every address in Stourpaine is inside the boundary, so the first job is finding out whether yours is, and that takes a minute.

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