Guttering & roofline

Guttering fails quietly. A blocked gutter, or one running the wrong way, does not drip neatly into the garden — it runs down the wall, and the first you know about it is a damp patch inside or blown pointing outside. Moss shed off a slate roof is the usual cause. After that it is brackets that have pulled out of a soft fascia and dropped the fall, or a downpipe discharging onto brickwork instead of into the gully.

Plenty of older Lancaster and Morecambe stock still has its original cast iron, and where it is sound it is worth keeping. Cast iron rusts from the inside out, so the back of the gutter tells you more than the face does. Where it has gone past saving, aluminium stands up to salt air better than steel. Falls get set to a line rather than by eye, brackets go into sound timber, and the water ends up in the drain.

Fascias and soffits do more than tidy the edge of a roof. The fascia is the vertical board running along the ends of the rafters: it gives the roof a straight edge to finish against, and it carries the gutter, which in heavy rain is holding a good deal more weight than people expect. The soffit is the panel underneath, bridging back to the wall, and it is normally vented. That airflow is what lets the roof space breathe, and without it moisture sits in the timbers and brings on damp and rot in the rafter ends.

Where boards have gone — rotted timber, or plastic that has warped and dropped — they get replaced in uPVC, which wants no painting or sanding once it is up. It keeps water off the ends of the rafters, closes the gaps birds and pests use to get into the roof space, and leaves a straight line along the eaves. Ventilation goes back in as part of the job rather than getting boarded over.