Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Wimborne Minster

What has usually failed. Paint blown and flaking off a timber fascia, which means water is behind the film, not 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, not 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 in Wimborne Minster 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, not 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 and leave no patches in the middle, 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, not 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 C and BS 5250 are what that is measured against. Every pipe still has to discharge into something that takes it, and on a Wimborne Minster street that nearly always means the existing gully, not 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.

You will not get a price per metre from us. A metre of fascia round a bay is slower than a metre on a plain gable.

The platform. A shop front or terrace in the centre, with the gutter over people walking past, needs a licensed scaffold and protection below. A bungalow in Merley comes off a tower. A run over a conservatory means building round it. The work at height rules set which one, and it is its own line.

Timber behind the board. On the older houses in the centre of Wimborne Minster, the rafter feet and wall plate have often had years of water from a leaking gutter joint. Nobody knows how bad until the old fascia is off, so the quote says what happens if they need splicing.

Cast iron or plastic. Plenty of the older houses in Wimborne Minster still have cast iron gutters. Replacing them in cast iron or cast aluminium costs more than plastic, but on a listed front it may be the only option. On a later semi, uPVC fascia, vented soffit and plastic gutter is the normal job.

Every outlet and corner. Downpipes, hoppers, stop ends and returns are priced one at a time, and the fall is reset so water reaches the outlet.

Ask any other quote whether the old boards are coming off or being capped, what happens if the rafter feet are rotten, and whether the scaffold licence is included.

We are 8.1 miles away, on Wolverton Road in Boscombe, and we cover Wimborne Minster, Colehill, Pamphill, Furzehill, Merley and Corfe Mullen. Dorset Council is the council for all of it.

The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and you can look it up yourself. The owner, Thomas Hannen, is the person who visits, measures your fascias and gutters and writes the price. Checkatrade shows a verified customer's 10 out of 10. There is no charge for the site visit, and none for the written quote with each item listed. Before you book a visit in Wimborne Minster, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Wimborne Minster 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.