UPVC Fascias, Soffits & Guttering Installations in Chester

New UPVC Roofline, Fitted to the House It Goes On

The roofline is the strip of board and pipe that runs along the bottom edge of your roof. It is the part of a house nobody looks at until it stains the wall, and by then it has usually been failing for a while. Timber fascias hold paint for about five years and then start to let water into the end grain; once the board behind the gutter has gone soft, the gutter brackets have nothing solid to screw into and the fall starts to wander.

Roofline Solutions replaces roofline in UPVC across Chester, Cheshire and the Wirral. That means new fascias and soffits, new bargeboards on the gables, new guttering and downpipes, and eaves ventilation where the roof needs it — in white, black, anthracite grey, rosewood or a woodgrain foil, to match what is already on the windows.

We look at the timber before we quote. On some houses the existing fascia is sound and the job is genuinely a recover; on plenty of others it is not, and capping over it just hides the problem behind a clean white board. Which of those you are looking at is the single thing worth establishing before anyone gives you a price, and it is the first thing we check.

What the Roofline Actually Does

Four parts, each with a separate job, and they fail in a predictable order.

The fascia is the board fixed to the ends of the rafters. It closes off the roof structure and it carries the guttering, which is the part that matters: every bracket on the run is screwed into it. A fascia that has gone soft behind the gutter will still look acceptable from the ground while the brackets are slowly pulling out of it.

The soffit is the horizontal board underneath, closing the gap between the fascia and the wall. On most houses it is also where the roof space breathes. Solid timber soffits were often fitted with no ventilation at all, and on a house that has since been insulated to modern depths that is how you end up with damp in the loft and nothing wrong with the roof covering.

The bargeboard is the same idea on a sloping gable edge, and it takes more weather than anything else on the house because there is no gutter below it to catch the run-off.

The guttering and downpipes collect what comes off the roof and put it somewhere sensible. They only work if the fall is right and the brackets are solid, which takes you straight back to the fascia.

What We Install

Everything below is fitted to the house it is going on rather than to a standard specification. Colour, profile and gutter size are chosen on site.

• Fascia boards — full replacement onto sound rafter ends, or new timber first where the ends have gone.
• Soffit boards — vented or solid, with the ventilation sized to the roof rather than assumed.
• Bargeboards and gable trim — including the awkward apex joints that let water in when they are mitred badly.
• Guttering — half round, square line, deep flow and ogee, in white, black, anthracite grey, brown and cast-iron effect.
• Downpipes and shoes — rerouted where the existing run discharges somewhere it should not.
• Dry verge — mechanically fixed verge caps in place of mortar that has cracked, usually worth doing while the scaffold is up.
• Eaves protection — felt support trays where the old felt has torn back and is dropping water behind the gutter.

How the Job Runs

A roofline replacement on an average semi is a two to three day job, and most of it happens at eaves height rather than on the roof.

The old boards and guttering come off first. That is the point at which we can see the rafter ends, the felt and the top course of brickwork, and it is the point at which a job occasionally changes — rotten rafter ends and torn eaves felt are both common and neither is visible before the boards are off. We tell you before we carry on rather than after.

New fascia goes on next, fixed into sound timber, then the soffit, then the guttering set to a fall that actually runs. Bargeboards and gable trim last, because the gable is where the scaffold or tower has to move to.

Everything that comes off goes with us. Old cast-iron guttering is heavy and full of a century of grit, and it is not something to leave stacked beside a bin.