Fascias, soffits and guttering in Thorney Hill

The house. The long back run and the weather elevation are the two that decide the job. Soft fascia, blown paint, a gutter sagging between brackets or a length pulled clean away from the wall all mean the same thing, and the only way to know how far it goes is to take the boards off. Underneath sit the rafter feet, the wall plate and the eaves course. While it is open the tilt fillet is reset so the bottom tiles drip forward, a felt support tray takes the underlay over the edge, and the verge and eaves course are refixed as BS 5534 requires. The new soffit keeps its soffit vents, or an over fascia vent, so the air gap into the loft that Approved Document F is concerned with stays open and the felt above it stays dry.

The garage. Almost always the worst run on the plot, because nobody looks at it. A detached garage often has one short gutter with no fall left in it and a downpipe finishing somewhere vague. An attached one usually tips into the house run through a hopper, and if the hopper is undersized or blocked with moss and debris it backs up and the water goes down the join between the two buildings. Both are quick work off a tower and both are cheap to get right at the same time as the house.

The porch and the bay. Short lengths, tight corners and more fittings per metre than anywhere else, which is why they cannot sensibly be priced by length. A bay wants stop ends, angles and often a curved or stepped run, and a porch usually discharges straight onto the path where a badly aimed shoe soaks the doorway and leaves green staining on the brickwork. These get their own lines on the quote and they take longer than their size suggests.

The conservatory or lean-to. Two problems at once. Whatever is above it has to discharge into a run big enough to take it, and a small profile overflowing onto glass is both noisy and a nuisance, so square, ogee or deepflow usually earns its place there. And the access platform has to be built round the structure rather than over it, which is a real cost and belongs on the quote as one rather than being buried somewhere.

Stables, workshops and the old outbuildings. These are where the original materials survive. Cast iron on rise and fall brackets that can be stripped, re-bedded and repainted. Moulded timber that can be cut back to sound wood and spliced. Where iron has rusted through at the sockets, aluminium suits a long unbroken run better than plastic. There is rarely any reason to renew an outbuilding roofline at the same moment as the house, and we will say so.

Where they all join up. Last of all we follow the water. Every outlet, union and bracket is checked, each length is re-hung to a fall so nothing stands full, and each downpipe is clipped straight and finished with a shoe discharging into a gully or a soakaway clear of the footings. Open ends are closed so birds and wasps cannot nest behind a board. A plot where four buildings drain into one blocked outlet has one fault, not four, and it is worth finding before anybody replaces anything.

No rate per square metre, because a metre of fascia over a bay is not the same metre as one on a straight gable.

Getting to it. A Victorian pair with the eaves over a hedge, a detached house set back among trees, and a low outbuilding range are three different platforms before a board is touched. A bungalow run comes off a tower, a two or three storey gable wants a scaffold, and a run over a conservatory or a bay window means building the platform around it. The work at height rules are why the access is a priced line rather than something absorbed into a rate.

What is behind the boards. Rotten fascia is a symptom. The question is whether the rafter feet and the wall plate behind it are still sound, and nobody knows until the old board comes off. Capping over with plastic hides that instead of fixing it, which is why we take the old boards off rather than clad them.

The run, not the metre. A straight gable is quick. Bay windows, a conservatory in the way, a corner return, a run that has to be worked around a satellite dish or a service cable, and every outlet, hopper and downpipe are priced one at a time. So is putting the fall back: a gutter hung level looks fine and holds water all year.

Comparing quotes? Ask whether the old boards are coming off or being capped over, what happens if the rafter feet or the wall plate turn out to be rotten, whether the gutter, outlets and downpipes are all being renewed or only the fascia, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

We cover Thorney Hill, Bransgore, Burley, Crow, Sopley and Hinton, broadly BH23, with the New Forest National Park Authority as the planning authority. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.