Fascias, soffits and guttering in West Lulworth

What the wind does to the edge. Weather works on the perimeter of a building, not the middle of it, and the perimeter is exactly what this trade covers. Paint strips off a fascia and a bargeboard on the exposed side long before the sheltered one. Screws and bolts corrode from the surface inwards in salt air, so a length can look sound while its fixings have quietly let go. Soft boards are lifted off rather than clad, since a cover board keeps damp against the timber and gives new brackets nothing to bite. Everything metal goes back non ferrous.

Iron worth saving. Older houses here carry cast channels on brackets in the rafter ends, ogee or half round, bolted at each union. The metal outlasts the joints and the paintwork by decades, so the usual job is lowering it, cutting the rust back, re-bedding and bolting the unions, painting the rear face as well as the front, and re-hanging it falling to the outlet. Where a section is past saving, a matching cast piece or an aluminium one that reads the same from the lane. uPVC is the sensible answer on a modern house or an elevation nobody sees.

Under the boards. With a fascia away you can see the rafter ends, the plate they bear on, and the tilt fillet raising the first course of tiles. Wet ends are cut back and pieced solid. A felt support tray then carries the underlay across the front of the board so what runs off it lands in the channel. Tiles disturbed are refixed to the pattern in BS 5534. Brackets, unions, outlets, hopper heads, downpipes and shoes are renewed as a set and hung to a real fall, and deepflow is worth considering where a long roof sheds more than a standard section will move. We follow the pipe down as well, because one discharging onto open ground rather than into a gully or a soakaway keeps the wall behind it damp and green at the base.

Air, and the repairs that stay repairs. Where a soffit is renewed, eaves ventilation goes in with it, through the panel or over the fascia, so an air gap stays open above the loft insulation and winter condensation is not put down to the tiles. Smaller faults stay small: a weeping joint, a bracket working loose of the wall, a length that has dropped out of fall, a snapped downpipe, an outlet choked with moss and debris. Those are refixed, re-hung or replaced singly, and wasps or nesting birds behind a board are dealt with before anything is shut up.

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 cottage tight to the lane, a house set above the road behind a wall and a bungalow with open garden all round it are three different jobs. 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.

You are barely half a mile from the water, in a valley that opens straight at the weather. That changes what a gutter is actually being asked to do. In a proper south westerly the rain arrives at an angle, so driving rain hits the tiles hard and low, runs fast off the bottom course and jumps the front of the gutter, or is pushed back over the rear edge and down the wall behind it. A run that is clear and hung to a proper fall can still be losing water that way.

That is why we look at the back of the gutter and the tray behind it as carefully as the channel. It usually wants the felt support tray renewing so the underlay carries the water out over the board, sometimes a deeper section to hold what comes off the roof, and always fixings that will not rust out in salt air. The seaward gable is where the paint goes first, so if the bargeboard on that side looks tired and the others do not, that is the weather rather than bad luck.

We cover West Lulworth, East Lulworth, Wool, Winfrith and Wareham, broadly BH20, 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.