Fascias, soffits and guttering in West Parley
Bungalow rooflines are long, low and reachable from a tower. Old boards off, rafter feet checked, and the run hung to a fall.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Roofline work means renewing or repairing the parts at the edge of the roof: fascia, soffit, bargeboard, capping, and the gutter run with its brackets, unions, outlets, hoppers, downpipes and shoes.
People ring here for three reasons. A gutter that has come off the wall, usually at one end, with the rest of the run still looking fine. Boards that have gone soft or chalky and a soffit that now flexes when you push it. Or a loft that has started dripping on the underside of the felt in winter, which is a ventilation problem at the eaves rather than anything wrong with the tiles.
We are only a few miles away, so getting out to look is easy. The gutter comes off its brackets, a screwdriver goes into the fascia, the rafter feet get a proper look and everything is photographed. Then a written itemised quote with each run, each outlet and each downpipe on its own line, and a straight answer about how much of it genuinely needs doing.
The work
Long low runs and everything hanging off them
Working out what has gone. The fascia is the board every gutter bracket screws into, so it decides the size of the job. Blown paint, a dark stripe under the gutter line and a board that takes a screwdriver mean the run is coming down. If the fascia is sound, the fault is something smaller and much cheaper: a length sagging between brackets, a leaking joint at a union, a downpipe off its clips, a broken shoe, an outlet blocked with moss off the tiles, or a run that has tipped back towards the wall so it overflows behind rather than over the front.
Boards off. With the gutter down and the fascia and soffit away, the rafter feet, the wall plate and the bottom edge of the underlay are all in view, and that is when the job is priced honestly. Rot in a rafter end normally stops within a few inches and gets cut back and spliced. A felt support tray carries the underlay drip out over the gutter rather than behind the board, and a tilt fillet lifts the bottom course of tiles to the angle they should sit at. Capping plastic over rotten timber hides every one of those checks. Over dry, sound timber it is a genuine option and a cheaper one, and we will say which you have.
The new run. uPVC fascia and vented soffit, bargeboards and capping to any gable, and a gutter picked for the roof rather than the catalogue. Half round suits most runs, ogee gives a squarer face, and deepflow is the one that matters where a wide slope drains into one length, because a standard section will spill in heavy rain even spotlessly clean. Timber can go back in timber, cast iron on an older building is often worth re-bedding and repainting, and aluminium suits a long run. Brackets go back at proper spacing and the run is set to a fall, because level looks right from the drive and holds standing water for the rest of its life.
Where the water goes. Every outlet, union, hopper, downpipe clip and shoe is renewed or refixed, and we follow the rainwater to the bottom. On a low eaves the downpipe often discharges close to the wall, into a gully or a soakaway, and a gully full of silt or a soakaway that has stopped taking water keeps the brickwork damp however good the new gutter is.
Air, birds and moss. New soffits get vents, or an over fascia vent strip where the board is too narrow, so there is a continuous air gap through the eaves into the loft. Without it, warm damp air from the house sits against a cold roof and condenses on the felt. Birds behind a lifted soffit and wasps in a gable end are both common on low roofs, and both get dealt with before new boards go on.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access, the length of each run, stripping the old boards and gutter, the fascia, soffit and any bargeboard, the gutter, outlets and downpipes, and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.
Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Like-for-like renewal of a fascia, soffit or gutter is repair, so no planning application and nothing for building control. West Parley has no conservation area over it and only a small number of listed entries, so the board, the finish and the gutter profile are entirely yours to pick. Dorset Council is the planning authority, and would want consent on a listed building before the roofline came off.
Cost
What decides the price of a roofline
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 with clear ground on all four sides, a detached house with a conservatory across the back, and a bungalow with a hipped roof and a garage joined onto it are three different platforms before a board comes off. 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.
If a section has come away
A gutter hanging off, or a fascia gone through
Ring rather than use the form. A length of gutter pulled off its brackets, a downpipe snapped at the bend or a fascia soft enough to put your hand through goes to the front of the queue, because the next heavy rain runs straight down the wall and into the brickwork. The first visit is about getting it supported and discharging somewhere sensible, and we price the run properly once we can see how far the rot goes. At a few miles out we can usually be here the same day, which matters more than people think once a length is hanging over a drive. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
A bungalow has far more roofline than the house next to it
More than a third of the homes in West Parley are bungalows, and that changes the shape of a roofline job in ways the square footage of the house never suggests. Put the same floor area on one storey and you roughly double the roof, which means far more perimeter: more metres of fascia and soffit, more gutter, and on a hipped bungalow a run that goes all the way round with no gable to stop at. So the quote is longer than for a two storey house of the same size, and that is not a mistake.
It cuts the other way on access. Most of a bungalow can be reached from a tower rather than a full scaffold, which takes a real cost out of the job and is why the platform is a separate line rather than folded into a rate. Two other things are worth knowing on a low roof. Overhanging trees and shrubs reach the gutter easily here, so moss and leaf debris pack the outlets faster than they do at two storeys. And the loft comes down to a shallow point at the eaves, so there is very little room for air to get past the insulation. That makes the ventilation detail in a new soffit worth more on a bungalow than almost anywhere else.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover West Parley, Longham, Ferndown, Hampreston and Bearwood, broadly BH22, 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.
Questions
West Parley questions we get asked
Why is a bungalow more expensive than I expected?
Because you are paying by the metre of run, not by the size of the house. A single storey home has roughly twice the roof perimeter of a two storey one with the same floor area, so there is simply more fascia, soffit and gutter. The access is usually cheaper, which takes some of it back.
Can you get to it without a scaffold?
On most bungalows here, yes. A tower or a mobile platform reaches a low eaves safely and comes down at the end of each day. Where a conservatory, a garage roof or a steep bank is in the way we build the platform around it, and that shows on the quote as access.
My gutter fills with leaves every autumn. Will new ones help?
New gutters do not stop leaves, but the right profile, a proper fall and clear outlets mean debris moves to the outlet instead of sitting in the middle. If trees genuinely overhang the run, we will say so rather than pretend a new gutter solves it.
Do vented soffits make the house colder?
No. The ventilation is above the insulation, in the roof space, not in the rooms. Its job is to carry moisture out of the loft so it does not condense on the underside of the felt and soak the insulation, which is what actually makes a house harder to heat.
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Tell us which run has given up. We are a few miles away, so Thomas can usually come and look this week, and the visit and the written quote are free.