UPVC Fascias, Soffits & Guttering Macclesfield

New Roofline in Macclesfield

Macclesfield runs uphill. The streets on the eastern side of the town climb towards the moor edge, and the villages above them — Bollington, Rainow, Sutton — sit higher still. That altitude shows at eaves level. Rain arrives across a roof rather than down it, gusts lift under the overhang instead of pressing on it, and a fascia that would sit quietly for years on a sheltered Cheshire street takes a good deal more punishment up here.

Roofline Solutions fits new UPVC fascias, soffits, bargeboards, guttering and downpipes across Macclesfield and the hill villages around it. We are based at Elton, just north of Chester, we are fully insured, and we come out and look at the timber rather than pricing a roofline off a photograph. On an exposed house that matters more than usual, because the damage is rarely directly behind the staining.

Height also decides how the work is reached. A three-storey town house on a steep street, a bungalow on an open plot with nothing upwind of it, and a stone cottage on a lane with no hardstanding are three different access problems before anyone has costed a single board. Which of those yours is, and whether it needs scaffold, a tower or ladders, goes in the quotation rather than coming up later.

Wind Under the Soffit on the Macclesfield Hillsides

A soffit is not simply a cover. On an exposed elevation it forms part of the boundary between the weather and your roof space, and wind that gets under it has to go somewhere. Air forced up at the eaves lifts the underlay, drives rain back up the slope of the tiles and pushes it past laps that would be perfectly adequate on a sheltered house lower down. The same specification genuinely does behave differently at different heights.

Under the tiles at the eaves there should be a lip of roofing underlay lapping over the fascia and dropping into the gutter. On a house of any age it often is not there any more. Felt sags between the rafters, collects grit, and splits along the sag; on a windy elevation it flaps and tears back off the fascia altogether. Once that has happened, water running down the inside of the tiles lands behind the gutter and onto the wall head, and nothing visible from the pavement explains it.

None of that can be seen until the boards are off, so it gets found on the day rather than priced in advance. What we can do is tell you what it looks like the moment we get up there, fit eaves protection trays to carry the underlay back over the fascia, and set fixing and bracket centres to suit an exposed run rather than a sheltered one. They are small decisions, and on this side of Cheshire they are the ones worth taking care over.

Reading a Roofline from a Macclesfield Pavement

Look along the line of the gutter from a distance rather than standing underneath it. A run that dips in the middle, or steps down where two lengths meet, has brackets letting go of something soft. Then look at the wall directly beneath. A dark vertical stripe under one joint is an overflowing or leaking gutter; a broad damp band spread evenly along the whole course under the eaves usually means water is getting behind the gutter rather than over the front of it.

On the weather side of the house, look up under the overhang. Soffit boards that have dropped at one end, a gap opening between the soffit and the wall, or a vent strip pushed out of its groove all point the same way. Birds getting into the roof space at the eaves is the other giveaway, and on a high elevation it is often the first thing anybody notices, because you hear it long before you see anything.

Capping Over or Stripping Back in Macclesfield?

Capping is a thin UPVC board fixed over the existing timber fascia. On a sheltered house with sound boards it is a fair option and we are happy to do it. On an exposed Macclesfield elevation it is a harder case to make, because the cap is held on by fixings that pass through it into the old timber, and the old timber is precisely what the weather has spent thirty years working on. Wind load at the eaves pulls on those fixings every time it blows.

There is a second problem, which is that capping leaves the eaves felt exactly where it is. If the underlay has torn back — and on an exposed roof it very often has — the new board hides the fact and the water carries on arriving at the wall head. So the answer depends on what is behind the board, which is why we want to look before saying yes or no rather than after.

Guttering and Rainwater Goods in Macclesfield

A steep roof on a high plot delivers water to the gutter fast and in bursts, and a narrow half round run that copes on a shallow suburban roof can simply be overrun. Deep flow and ogee profiles hold more and shift it quicker, and on a long single fall it is sometimes better to split the run and add a second downpipe than to ask one outlet to take the lot.

Moss is the other constant here. Roofs on the damp, shaded side of a hill shed it into the gutter all year, and a gutter half full of moss is a gutter with no fall left in it. Worth being clear that this is a maintenance question rather than a product one: no profile stops the moss arriving, but a run set to a proper fall and reachable for clearing is far easier to live with than one that is neither.