Fascias, soffits and guttering in Verwood

Boards. Fascia, soffit, bargeboard and the capping behind it. Sound timber stops a screwdriver; rotten timber lets it in like cork, and then the board is finished and the brackets screwed to it have nothing left to hold. Blistered and peeling paint on a timber board is the same message read from the ground: water is behind the film and no number of coats will dry it out. Where it is a renewal, the four come off together rather than one at a time.

The run. Gutter lengths and the unions joining them, the brackets under them, the outlet, then the downpipe and the shoe, with a hopper head on the taller houses. The old run comes down whole rather than being patched in the middle. Brackets are set at the spacing that profile was made for, each union is left the gap it needs to move, and the fall is pulled off a string line. A gutter hung dead level looks right from the garden and holds water in every length all year, which perishes the seals and grows silt.

Profile is capacity. A bungalow hip sheds a lot of roof into very few outlets, so this matters more here than on a two storey house. Half round is the ordinary domestic gutter, ogee sits flat to the fascia and holds more, square is the modern version, and where a long hip is beyond what half round will carry, a deepflow profile or a second outlet is the fix rather than another clear out. Boards go back in uPVC on most of the town, and board thickness matters more than colour because a thin one flexes between rafters and works the screws loose. Painted timber, cast iron and seamless aluminium all still turn up, and cast iron rusts from the inside where no brush reaches.

Behind the boards. With the board down, four things get looked at and photographed: the rafter feet a new fascia will screw into, the wall plate carrying them, the tilt fillet holding the bottom course of tiles up so they throw water clear, and the underlay, which belongs on a felt support tray dripping into the run rather than finishing on top of the board. BS 5534 covers it. Capping belongs on timber that is dry and hard and nowhere else, because over a soft board it is a lid rather than a repair, and the new brackets go into wet wood.

Air, water and what nests up there. A bungalow roof space covers every room in the house, and all of its ventilation comes in through the soffit, so vent discs or a strip vent go back in and the air gap over the insulation stays open. Where the eaves is boxed with no soffit to take a vent, an over fascia vent does it from above. Shut the intake and you get condensation on the felt and mould on rafters that were perfectly sound. Approved Document F sets the expectation. Water then has to go somewhere: a gully or a soakaway placed far enough out to take it, rather than a shoe spitting at the base of a wall. Let it get behind the run and it puts staining down the render. Birds nest behind a soffit wherever a joint has opened, wasps go in higher, and moss and debris off the tiles pack an outlet solid.

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 bungalow you can walk a tower along, a chalet bungalow with a dormer in the front slope and a two storey house with a conservatory beneath the back run all set up differently. 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 Verwood, Three Legged Cross, Woodlands, Edmondsham, West Moors and Alderholt, broadly BH31, under Dorset Council. 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.