Fascias, soffits and guttering 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 houses these are deep timber sections and there may be no soffit at all. Boards are lifted off rather than 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 here 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 rather than 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 rather than 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 here 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.

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 tight to the street, a house standing on its own in open ground and a bungalow with a hedge along the boundary are three different jobs. 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.

Standing where it does, the exposed side of a house here 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, 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.

We cover Winterborne Stickland, the Winterborne villages, Blandford, Milton Abbas and Spetisbury, 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.