Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Stourpaine

A Stourpaine roofline has to be read correctly. The usual faults are these. 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 Stourpaine 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 in Stourpaine, and both are dealt with before the new boards go up.

Thomas walks round the house with you and prices it himself. He checks the fascia, soffit and bargeboards, the gutter and every downpipe, and pushes a screwdriver into any board that looks tired. On the written quote you get a line for the platform, the length of each run, and separate lines for the fascia, the soffit, the bargeboards, the guttering, every outlet and downpipe, and taking the old material away.

Where Stourpaine eaves overhang the lane, the tower or scaffold is placed so people can still get past, and nothing is stacked in the road. Old boards and gutter go in the van each evening. Rot in the rafter ends or the wall plate is shown to you in a photo with a figure beside it before any saw touches it.

Putting back a roofline like for like needs no application and nothing from building control. Swapping cast iron for plastic, or timber for uPVC, alters how the house looks. On a listed building that needs listed building consent, and inside a conservation area it can need permission, so check your address with Dorset Council before you choose the material.

Ring us instead of using the form. Once a gutter has come off its brackets, a downpipe has split at the bend or a fascia board has gone soft enough to crumble, every shower runs down the wall and soaks in.

If part of it hangs over the lane, a path or your doorway, keep people out from underneath and mention it when you ring. On the first visit we either prop it or take it down safely and get the water running away from the house, then measure up for the new run once the rot has been traced. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Nobody answering? We return missed calls at the first chance.

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.

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

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