Fascias, soffits and guttering in Winterborne Kingston
Soft fascias, dropped gutters and downpipes emptying against the wall, put right around Winterborne Kingston. Free site visit and a free written price.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
A roofline job here is worth doing from the eaves all the way down to the ground. The boards and the gutter are only two thirds of it. The last metre, where the downpipe meets a shoe and a gully, is what decides whether the wall stays dry through a wet winter.
The calls out of the village follow a pattern. A gutter dropped at one end and pouring over the joint. A fascia gone soft where water has been sitting behind blistered paint. A bargeboard rotted at the foot of a gable. Or a downpipe that has come apart at a bend and is emptying straight down the wall. We come out, get a tower to the eaves, take a length down and check the timber and the rafter feet behind it, then follow the pipe to the bottom and see where the water actually goes. What you get back is a written itemised price with each run, outlet and downpipe listed on its own.
The work
From the eaves down to the shoe
What is up there. Fascia, soffit, bargeboard and capping on the timber side. Gutter, outlets, unions, brackets, stop ends, downpipes, hoppers and shoes on the water side. On the older cottages the brackets may go straight into the rafter feet with no fascia at all, so working out which arrangement you have is the first job rather than an afterthought.
Reading the faults. A screwdriver into the fascia behind the gutter tells you whether the board has rotted. Blown and peeling paint means water has been getting behind it for years. A run sagging between brackets has lost its fixings or its fall, a length leaning out has pulled away from the wall, and a joint that drips only in heavy rain is a perished union seal. Overflow at the back edge instead of over the front is the one that soaks the wall.
Stripping rather than capping. The old boards come off, so the rafter feet and the wall plate can be seen, the tilt fillet reset and a felt support tray fitted to carry the underlay over the edge and drip into the gutter. Then the bottom course of tiles and the verge go back. Capping plastic over a soft fascia seals the rot in and the brackets tear out a few winters later. Where the timber is dry and firm and it is only the paint that has failed, capping is a fair cheaper answer and we say so.
What goes back up. uPVC, painted timber, cast iron repaired where it is original, or aluminium on a long unbroken run. Half round, ogee, square or deepflow, chosen by what the slope above actually sheds, since a wide roof draining into one short half round run overflows in every downpour however clean it is. The new gutter is re-hung to a proper fall with brackets at sensible centres, because a run hung dead level holds water all year.
Air, and the last metre. New soffits keep the eaves ventilation and the air gap into the loft, which is what Approved Document F is written around, and sealing it up gives you condensation under the felt within a winter. At the other end, every downpipe has to reach a gully or a soakaway that can take it, which is what Approved Document H sets out. A shoe aimed at brickwork with driving rain behind it means damp inside and green staining outside. Closed properly, the soffit keeps out birds and wasps, and the outlets stop packing with moss and debris.
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.
Renewing a fascia, soffit or gutter like for like is repair and maintenance, so no planning application and nothing for building control. There is no conservation area over Winterborne Kingston and there are seven listed entries near here, so on an ordinary village house the material and colour are your choice. If your own building is one of the listed ones you need listed building consent from Dorset Council before the appearance changes.
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 cottage with the eaves low over a border, a farm building with one long run, and a later house with a garage tying into the same gutter are three different set ups before a board is touched. 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. In a wet week a downpipe discharging against the wall does more damage here than the gutter above it ever will, so mention it when you ring and we will make that safe first. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Surface water, and what your downpipe adds to it
The village sits alongside a winterbourne, a stream that runs hard in the wet months and is dry for much of the summer, and the ground here is mapped as carrying a high risk of surface water flooding. You can check your own address on the government flood risk service. For a roofline that matters at one particular point: the bottom of the downpipe. A roof sheds a surprising volume in a downpour, and if the shoe is putting all of it onto a path that is already running with water, it goes straight to the foot of the wall.
So the practical advice here is to look at the last metre before you spend anything on the first ten. Is the gully clear and does it still take water, or has it silted up so the pipe backs up? Is the soakaway far enough from the building and does it work in February as well as in August? Is the shoe pointing away from the wall or at it? We check all of that on the visit and price the gully and the discharge as their own lines, because there is no sense in hanging a perfect new gutter above a pipe that empties nowhere.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Winterborne Kingston, Winterborne Whitechurch, Bere Regis, Milborne St Andrew, Tolpuddle and Blandford, broadly DT11, 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
Winterborne Kingston questions we get asked
Water is running down the wall even though the gutter is new. Why?
Usually the downpipe rather than the gutter. A joint that has come apart at a bend, a shoe aimed at the wall, or a gully that has stopped taking water will all do it, and none of them are fixed by anything happening at the eaves.
Do you clear the gully as part of the job?
We check it on the visit and price it as its own line if it needs doing. A new run discharging into a blocked gully is a job half done, so we would rather deal with both at once than leave you chasing the second half.
Can a bargeboard be repaired instead of replaced?
Sometimes. Rot starts at the foot where water sits, so if the upper part is dry we can cut back to sound timber and splice in. Once the rot has reached the fixings the whole board comes off.
How far out are you booking?
It depends on the week, and we will give you a straight answer on the phone rather than a guess. Anything hanging loose or putting water into a wall goes to the front of the queue, and a planned renewal gets a date rather than a maybe.
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Tell us what has failed and we will follow the water from the eaves to the gully. Thomas prices it himself and puts it in writing, itemised, with nothing to pay for the visit or the quote.