Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Wareham
Rusted cast iron, soft fascias and downpipes discharging into nothing, put right across Wareham and Stoborough. Free visit and a free written price.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Wareham is only half the question. The other half is where the water goes once it leaves the gutter and the downpipe, and get that wrong on this ground and a new roofline still puts water into the bottom of your wall.
In Wareham, roofline work usually announces itself at a cast iron joint, a hidden fascia or a blocked gully. A cast iron run weeping at a joint and staining a town frontage. A fascia gone soft behind the gutter, usually on a back extension where nobody looks. And a downpipe emptying into a gully that has stopped taking water, so it backs up and runs across the path. Each of them is roofline work, and each wants looking at from the eaves and from the ground. We come out, take a length of gutter down, prod the board and the rafter feet behind it, check every outlet and shoe, and put an itemised written price together with the boards, the gutter and the rainwater pipes on separate lines. If a cast iron length has come loose over the pavement, or a blocked gully has water pouring down the wall, ring 07435 839745.
The work
Frontages, back extensions and the runs between them
The parts. Fascia, soffit, bargeboard and capping. Gutter, outlets, unions, brackets, stop ends, downpipes, hoppers and shoes. In the older Wareham streets a higher roof often discharges into a hopper head at high level and then into a pipe on the wall, and on the newer estates it is a straight run into a back inlet gully. Both get checked, because the failures are different.
Diagnosis. A screwdriver into the fascia behind the gutter settles whether the board has rotted. Blown, peeling paint means water has been sitting behind it. A run sagging between brackets, a length pulled away from the wall, a leaking joint at a union, and overflow at the back edge instead of over the front are separate faults with separate answers. On cast iron the failure is usually rust at the back of the socket, not the barrel itself.
Off, not over. We take the old boards off and do not cap them, because that is the only way to see the rafter feet and the wall plate. The tilt fillet is reset, a felt support tray fitted so the underlay drips into the gutter and not behind it, and the bottom course of tiles and the verge go back. Cladding over a soft fascia seals the rot in and the brackets tear out later. Over dry, firm timber capping is a fair cheaper job and we will say so.
What goes back, and how. uPVC on most houses, cast iron repaired and repainted where it is original on a Wareham frontage, aluminium on a long unbroken run, painted timber where the building suits it. Half round, ogee, square or deepflow, chosen by what the slope above sheds, not by what was there. Then the fall: proper bracket centres and a real slope to the outlet, because a gutter hung dead level looks smart and stands full of water all year.
Ventilation, and where the water ends up. New soffits keep the eaves ventilation and the air gap into the loft, which is what Approved Document C and BS 5250 cover, and sealing it gives you condensation under the felt. Then the discharge. Every downpipe has to reach a gully or a soakaway that can actually take it, and Approved Document H covers how that should work. A shoe emptying at the wall plus driving rain means damp inside and green staining outside. Closed properly, the soffit keeps out birds and wasps and the outlets stop blocking with moss and debris.
How it runs
Replacing fascias and gutters on Wareham houses
Thomas comes out and walks the roofline with you, looking at the boards from below and from a ladder where he needs to. He prices it himself and it comes back in writing, line by line: access, the length of each run, stripping the old boards and gutter, the fascia, the soffit and any bargeboard, the gutter, outlets and downpipes, and disposal.
How we reach it depends on the house. A terrace in Wareham's old streets has its front gutter straight over the pavement, so the platform either stands on the footway under a licence or we work from a tower with the path kept open. A bungalow on one of the later estates comes off a tower on the drive. The old boards go in the skip as they come down, the ground is swept each day, and the house is never left with a gutter missing overnight. If the rafter feet behind a board are soft, we stop, photograph it and give you a price for the extra.
Renewing a roofline like for like is repair, with no planning application and nothing for building control. In the Wareham Conservation Area, swapping painted timber and cast iron for plastic on a front elevation is worth a word with the council first. On a listed building, listed building consent from Dorset Council comes before any change to the material or look.
Cost
What sets the price of a roofline, eaves to downpipe
A fascia is not priced by the metre. The same length can be an hour or a day, depending on what it is fixed to and how you get to it.
The platform. A front run on a terrace over a public footway, a back run above a single storey outshut, and a bungalow you can reach all the way round from a tower are three separate set ups. Bay windows and conservatories mean building around them. Access sits on its own line because the work at height rules set what is needed.
The timber behind. Once a board is off, the rafter feet and the wall plate are exposed. Sound, they take the new fascia straight on. Soft, they need splicing or packing first. Nobody knows which until the old board is down, and that is why we take boards off and never cap them in plastic.
Gutters, outlets and where the water goes. Every outlet, hopper and downpipe is counted separately. The gutter has to be hung to a fall, not level, and the downpipe has to reach a gully. Water dumped at the foot of a wall soaks the brickwork and the ground beside it, so where each pipe discharges is part of the job.
Ask each quote whether the old boards are coming off, what happens if the wall plate is rotten, and whether the downpipes and gullies are included or only the front run.
If a section has come away
A gutter hanging loose or a fascia gone soft
If a length of gutter has pulled off its brackets or a downpipe has snapped at the bend, phone us; the form is for planned work. The next heavy shower will run down the wall and into the brickwork.
Keep people away from anything hanging over a path or the pavement. The first visit is about supporting what is left and making it discharge into a gully again, and the proper price comes once we can see how far the rot runs. Planned jobs run Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. When you ring about something like this and nobody answers, we get back to you as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
On this ground, where the downpipe goes matters as much as the gutter
Parts of Wareham sit in flood zones 2 and 3, and you can check any address on the government flood risk service. For a roofline job that is not about the river coming up. It is about the water table.
On ground that is already wet through the winter, a soakaway can only take what the soil will let go of, and when the ground is saturated it takes nothing at all. The water then backs up to the foot of the downpipe and finds the easiest way out, which is across the surface and against the bottom of your wall.
So when we quote a new gutter in Wareham, we follow the water to the end rather than stopping at the shoe. If the gully has silted up it gets cleared and checked. If a soakaway is failing every winter, the honest answer is often a positive outfall to a surface water drain instead, and that is a separate conversation with the council rather than something to hide in a roofline price. What we will not do is hang a beautiful new run and leave it discharging into something that has already given up.
Who you are dealing with
Rooflines from Stoborough to Holton Heath
We look after rooflines in Wareham town, Stoborough, Sandford, Ridge, Holton Heath and Wool, broadly BH20, all under Dorset Council and 12.5 miles from our Boscombe base. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales as number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Wareham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Thomas Hannen runs it, and he is the one who comes round, looks at your fascias and prices the job. A verified customer has given us a 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Both the site visit and the itemised written quote are free.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Wareham?
Most repairs in Wareham 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.
| Question | In Wareham |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Wareham. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Wareham Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Wareham. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Wareham. |
Questions
Questions about fascias and guttering in Wareham
Our downpipe backs up in winter. Is that the gutter?
Usually the gutter is not to blame. It is normally the gully or the soakaway at the bottom, which cannot take the water when the ground is already wet. We check the discharge end as part of the visit, because a new gutter feeding a blocked outfall solves nothing.
Can our cast iron be repaired rather than replaced?
Often yes, if the barrel is sound. It comes down, gets cleaned back, joints re-bedded, primed and painted. On a frontage in this town that is usually both the cheaper and the more appropriate answer.
How do we know if our house is listed?
Ask the council, and do it before you order anything. There are a great many listed entries in Wareham, so it is not a remote possibility here, and on a listed building the roofline material is a consent question rather than a choice.
Do you need to get onto the roof?
Only to the eaves. We work off a tower or a scaffold at gutter level, ease the bottom course of tiles up to reach the felt, and put it back as the new fascia goes on. Nothing else on the covering is disturbed.
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Tell us what has failed and we will follow the water from the eaves to the gully. Thomas prices the job himself and itemises it in writing, with nothing to pay for the visit or the quote.