Fascias, soffits and guttering in Wimborne Minster

What has usually failed. Paint blown and flaking off a timber fascia, which means water is behind the film rather than that it is due a coat. A soffit gone soft under a dripping union. A gutter pulled away from the wall, or a run sagging between brackets, both of which are fixings lost into soft wood. A leaking joint. Or a clear run overflowing in heavy rain, which is a fall or a profile problem rather than a blockage. The screwdriver settles the rest: sound timber stops it, rotten timber takes it like cork.

Bays and corners are where the time goes. A lot of the housing here is terraced or converted, and a town frontage with a bay window, a porch and a gable verge is a short length of roofline with a great many corners in it. Each one needs a stop end, an angle or an offset, and the run has to keep its fall all the way round to the outlet. That is why a bay costs more per metre than a straight gable, and it should say so on the quote rather than disappear into a rate.

The run and the profile. Gutter lengths and their unions, brackets, the outlet, a hopper head, then the downpipe and the shoe. We remove the old run whole rather than patch the middle of it, refix brackets at the spacing the profile was made for, put the pipe back on new clips and re-hang to a fall pulled off a string line. Half round is the ordinary domestic gutter, ogee sits flat to the fascia, carries more and looks right on an older frontage, and square is the modern version. A long steep slope or a valley discharging into an eaves run wants deepflow or a second outlet. Cast iron rusts from the inside where no brush reaches, uPVC does not rot but a thin board flexes between rafters, and seamless aluminium is rolled on site and hung in one piece.

Behind the boards. The fascia comes down and then the eaves can be read. Rafter feet first, since the new board screws to them. The wall plate under them. The tilt fillet propping the bottom course of tiles so they throw water into the run. And the underlay, which should be brought over a felt support tray to drip clear rather than finish short on the timber. BS 5534 covers it. Capping over hard, dry, painted timber is a fair job. Over a soft board it is a lid, and the new brackets have nothing to bite.

Air, water and wildlife. The soffit is where your roof draws its air, so soffit vents go back into the new board, or an over fascia vent where the eaves is boxed, and the air gap over the insulation is left clear. Shut that eaves ventilation and you get condensation on the felt by January and mould across rafters that were sound. Approved Document F is what that is measured against. Every pipe still has to discharge into something that takes it, and on a town street that nearly always means the existing gully rather than a new soakaway, so the pipe run and the shoe get looked at with the boards. Water at the back of the gutter puts staining down brick and render, driving rain keeps the wall damp, and a green stripe below a union is the giveaway. Birds nest behind a soffit wherever a joint has opened, wasps go in higher up, and moss and debris off the tiles have an outlet blocked before anything else.

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 town terrace with the run out over a pavement, a house carrying a two storey bay on the front and a modern semi on the edge of town each need a different platform. 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 Wimborne Minster, Colehill, Pamphill, Furzehill, Merley and Corfe Mullen, broadly BH21, 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.