Fascia, soffit and guttering replacement in Woodlands

Profile comes before anything else. A familiar fault is a gutter that overflows in heavy rain with nothing at all in it, and the answer is almost never clearing. It is either fall or capacity.

A big steep roof throws water into the run faster than a small profile can move it along, so it backs up and goes over the back of the gutter, down the wall and into the brickwork. Half round is the standard and it is fine on a modest slope. Square, ogee and deepflow hold more water per metre, and on a wide or steep roof taking driving rain that is what the run should have been in from the start.

Fall, brackets and the joints. The run comes off, and goes back on new brackets at proper centres, falling towards the outlet. A gutter hung dead level looks correct from the drive and stands full of water twelve months a year, which perishes union seals and keeps the board behind it damp. Every union gets a new seal, the outlet sits at the low end, downpipes are clipped straight, hopper heads are checked, and the shoe is set so the rainwater discharges into a gully rather than at the footings. Staining down a wall usually tells us which pipe has been missing its target for years.

The boards, and what is behind them. Fascia, soffit and bargeboard come off rather than being capped over, because until they are down nobody can see the rafter feet, the wall plate or the bottom course of tiles. Rot starts at the top edge of the fascia where the felt has torn or shrunk back over the eaves, so a felt support tray goes in as standard, with a tilt fillet lifting the bottom course to the right angle. Soft rafter ends are spliced. Tiles disturbed at the eaves or the verge are refixed as BS 5534 expects. Where a board is honestly sound, dry and well fixed, capping the face and lining the soffit is a fair job at a lower price and we will say so.

Materials, air and the nuisances. uPVC in black or a woodgrain finish sits far better against trees than brilliant white and never needs painting. Timber suits an older or moulded profile, primed on all four faces. Cast iron is worth rubbing down, re-bedding and repainting where it survives, and aluminium is the one to price on a long unbroken run because it comes in a single length with no unions at all. While the boards are down the eaves get put right: soffit vents in the new panels, or an over fascia vent where the soffit is too narrow, with the air gap over the loft insulation left clear, because closing that gap turns a dry roof space into a condensation problem. Approved Document C and BS 5250 cover roof space ventilation. Open corners are sealed against birds and wasps nesting behind a soffit, and any outlet blocked with moss and debris off the tiles is pointed out while we are up there.

A roofline is priced run by run, not by the metre, because a straight run along a bungalow and a gable with a bay under it are different days’ work.

Reaching the eaves. The bungalows in Woodlands come off a tower on firm ground. A two storey detached house with a conservatory along the back needs a scaffold built around it, and a cottage with a tree hard against the gable may need a branch cut back first. Under the work at height rules the platform is a priced item.

What is behind the board. The fifties and sixties houses often still have their first timber fascias, and after years of gutter overflow under trees the rafter feet can be soft. Nobody knows until the board is off, so we price the known work and photograph anything else.

Leaves and the gutter size. Where oaks and conifers overhang, a bigger gutter section and more outlets can be worth it. Every outlet, hopper and downpipe is priced one at a time, as is every bracket spacing change.

Corners and obstacles. A hip, a corner return, a bay, a satellite dish or a phone line all add time.

Ask anyone else pricing it: are the old boards coming off or being capped, what happens if the rafter feet are rotten, and are the gutter, downpipes and scaffold all included?

A roofline under trees lives a different life from one on an open plot, and it is the single biggest thing that decides how often a house around Woodlands needs this work. A run in shade never fully dries.

Leaves, needles and small twigs land in it all year rather than for a fortnight in November, moss coming down off the tiles settles at the back of the gutter and holds water there, and a timber fascia under a dripping canopy goes soft years before the same board on a bare gable would. Paint fails early for the same reason. It is not neglect, it is the position.

So the sensible plan on a wooded plot is different. Choose the deeper gutter profile rather than the cheapest, because the run is carrying solids as well as water. Choose uPVC or repaired iron over new painted softwood on the shaded elevations, since anything that needs a paint film will want doing again far too soon. Get the eaves ventilation right while the soffits are off, because a damp roof space and a shaded roof go together. And check the tree side of the building first every time, not the side you see from the drive, since that is where the rot will be and where a quote based on the front elevation will have missed it.

Our base is 80a Wolverton Road in Boscombe, 17.8 miles from Woodlands, and we cover the village with Netley Marsh, Ashurst, Bartley and Cadnam, broadly SO40. For planning you would deal with the National Park Authority, and for building control with New Forest District Council.

The company behind the work is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Thomas Hannen runs it and prices every roofline himself after walking round the house. On Checkatrade a verified customer rated us 10 out of 10. There is no charge for coming out, and none for the written quote that lists each run. Before you book a visit in Woodlands, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Woodlands 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.