Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Winterborne Stickland

Along the eaves. The fascia runs across the ends of the rafters and takes the weight of the channel, with the soffit closing the underside of the overhang. On the older Winterborne Stickland houses these are deep timber sections and there may be no soffit at all.

Soft boards are lifted off, never hidden behind a cover board, because cladding seals damp against the wood and leaves fresh brackets with nothing to hold. Where a board is dry and firm we will cap over it and say so. New boards are uPVC, or painted timber where the house asks for it.

Up the gable. The bargeboard follows the roof slope to the verge, and out in Winterborne Stickland it works harder than anything else on the building. Its bottom end is where rot starts and where wind gets a grip once the fixings loosen. Rotten ends are cut away and renewed, and the board is fixed back properly, not nailed and hoped for. The gutter stop end and the last bracket before the corner get the same attention, since they are the first parts to be pushed out of line in a gale.

Behind and underneath. Once the fascia is down, the rafter ends, the wall plate and the tilt fillet raising the lowest course of tiles are all there to look at, and anything soft is cut back and pieced in solid. A felt support tray goes in so the underlay finishes over the front of the board and delivers into the channel, not behind it. Tiles moved to reach it are refixed to the pattern in BS 5534.

The run and the pipe. Brackets, unions, outlets, hopper heads, downpipes and shoes are renewed as one and hung to a real fall, because a length put up level sags and stands full of water. Half round suits most houses, ogee sits flat to a square edged fascia, and deepflow shifts far more where a long roof drains into a single channel. Sound cast iron on an older property is better lowered, re-bedded at the joints and painted front and back than thrown away, and aluminium is worth a figure on a long exposed elevation. Out in Winterborne Stickland a pipe ends in a gully and then a soakaway, and a silted soakaway returns the water to the base of your wall. Where a soffit is renewed, eaves ventilation goes in with it, through the panel or over the fascia, keeping an air gap above the loft insulation. Smaller faults, a weeping joint, a perished union, an outlet choked with moss and debris, are refixed or re-hung on their own, with wasps dealt with first and nesting birds given until they are done.

We do not price a roofline by the metre, because one metre is not like another. The timber behind. A fascia that is soft to the touch is a symptom. The question is whether the rafter feet and wall plate are sound. Nobody knows until the board comes off, and capping over rot with plastic only hides it.

The material. On a listed house, or one where the look matters, cast iron or cast aluminium gutters may be the right answer. They cost more than plastic and take longer to hang, but they suit an older house and they last.

The shape of the run. A straight run is quick. Bays, corners, porches, a dish or a cable on the board, and each outlet, hopper and downpipe add time. So does setting a proper fall so the gutter does not hold water.

Getting up there. A tower for a bungalow, a scaffold for two storeys, and a licence where the scaffold stands on a Winterborne Stickland lane. The work at height rules set how each platform is built, so access is priced on its own.

Ask other firms whether the old boards come off, what happens if the rafter feet are rotten, and what material the new gutter will be.

Standing where it does, the exposed side of a Winterborne Stickland house faces south west and takes the weather with nothing much in the way of it. Wind does not damage the middle of a roof or the middle of a gutter run.

It works at the edges, and the edge is exactly what this trade covers: the bargeboard up the verge, the gutter stop end, the last bracket before the corner and the bottom of a downpipe. A bargeboard that has worked loose at the foot lets air under the verge, and after that every gale has something to pull on.

So after a bad night in Winterborne Stickland, walk round and look at the ends of things rather than the middles. A bargeboard standing proud of the roof line, a gutter stop end sitting at an angle, a downpipe clipped to the wall at the top and swinging at the bottom. Any of those is a half hour job while it is only that, and a much bigger one once the wind has had a winter to work on it. If the board is soft where it has come loose, screwing it back on is not the answer and we will tell you so.

The drive from Boscombe, where our base is at 80a Wolverton Road, to Winterborne Stickland is about 19.1 miles. We cover the village, the other Winterborne villages, Blandford, Milton Abbas and Spetisbury, broadly DT11, all under Dorset Council.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales as company number 15471719, and it is Thomas Hannen's firm. He looks at every board and downpipe himself before he prices. On Checkatrade, one verified customer scored us 10 out of 10. The visit, and the written quote with each item listed, cost nothing. Before you book a visit in Winterborne Stickland, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Winterborne Stickland 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.