Gutters, Fascias and Soffits in South London

Water that overflows a gutter does not fall clear of the house. It runs off the back edge, down the wall, and it does it again every time it rains. On a Victorian solid-wall terrace there is no cavity to stop it, so the brickwork stays wet, the damp works inwards, and you get a dark patch on an upstairs wall that nobody can trace back to the roof.

The second thing it does is quieter. Water standing behind the gutter soaks the top edge of the fascia board, which is the one edge nobody ever paints properly. The timber stays wet, wet rot gets into it, and the rafter feet behind go soft. By the time a gutter is visibly sagging, the thing that was holding it up has usually already gone.

Then there is winter. Saturated London stock brick freezes and the face spalls off in flakes, and brick repairs cost far more than clearing the gutter would have.

Not every gutter is at the eaves, either. Many South London terraces have butterfly roofs — two slopes falling inwards to a valley gutter hidden behind the front parapet. It is lined in lead or felt and usually has one outlet, so when that outlet blocks the whole valley fills and comes through a ceiling. No gutter clean from a ladder will reach it. If that is your roof, start on our roof repairs page.

This is small, unglamorous work, worth doing before something expensive happens. It divides into six jobs.

The honest order is cheapest first. A gutter that overflows in heavy rain and is dry the rest of the time is almost always blocked, and clearing it costs a small fraction of replacing it. A gutter that weeps at the joints in light rain has either lost its seals or lost its fall, and re-hanging it deals with both.

Replacement earns its money when the plastic itself has gone. uPVC turns chalky and brittle after about twenty to twenty-five years of sun, then cracks along the top edge, and no new seal will hold it. The same is true when the profile is obsolete and no current union fits, or when the fascia behind has rotted and there is nothing solid to screw a bracket into. On cast iron, replace when the back of the run has rusted through rather than merely pitted.

Where we cannot tell you the answer from the ground, we say so. Whether the rafter feet are sound is not knowable until a fascia comes off. We photograph what is behind it and ring you before going further, rather than adding it to the invoice at the end.

The fascia is the board fixed across the ends of the rafters, and it carries every gutter bracket on that elevation. The soffit closes off the underside of the eaves; the bargeboard is the same idea running up a gable. Their job is to keep weather off the ends of your roof timbers, and when they fail the timbers are next.

There are two ways to do them in uPVC. Capping means screwing a thin board over the existing timber and leaving that timber in place. It is quick, it is cheaper, and on sound dry boards it is perfectly reasonable. On wet boards it seals the damp in, and the new gutter brackets end up screwed into rot. Full replacement means stripping the timber out, cutting the rafter feet back to sound wood and fitting new 18 mm board. It costs more, and it is the only version we will quote where the existing boards are soft.

One thing gets missed on nearly every fascia job we are asked to look at afterwards. A cold loft has to breathe at the eaves — the equivalent of a continuous 10 mm opening along both sides on a normal pitched roof, more on a shallow one. Fit solid soffits over the old vents and the loft stops ventilating. The condensation turns up on the underside of the felt that winter, drips onto the insulation, and gets blamed on the roof covering. Vented soffit board or over-fascia vents cost very little and go in while the boards are off.

uPVC does most of this work in South London and there is nothing wrong with it. A 112 mm half-round gutter with a 68 mm round downpipe handles a normal terrace slope. A larger or steeper roof, or a long run on a single outlet, wants a 115 to 117 mm deep-flow section instead — the commonest reason a brand-new gutter still overflows is that it was sized for a smaller roof than the one above it. Twenty to twenty-five years is a fair working life.

Aluminium sits in the middle. Extruded or roll-formed sections in a powder-coated finish, dearer than plastic, with no chalking and nothing to repaint. It suits a house where the ogee profile matters but a full cast iron replacement is out of reach.

Cast iron is what most Victorian and Edwardian houses had first, and it deserves more thought than it gets. It rusts from the inside, where wet leaf litter sits along the bottom of the run, so a gutter that looks finished from the pavement is often only pitted. De-rusted, patched, re-bedded and repainted, it goes another twenty years for a fraction of the cost of replacing it. In a conservation area or on a listed building the original profile may be the only thing you are permitted to put back, and your council is the only body that can confirm it.

Someone comes and looks. We photograph the whole run — the gutter, the back of it, the fascia, the downpipe and the gully — and you keep those photographs whether or not you book. Then a written price, itemised per elevation, with access as its own line rather than buried in a rate per metre.

On the day, anything longer than a metre or two is worked from a tower or a scaffold, because nobody hangs a gutter to an accurate fall from a ladder that gets moved every two metres. Debris is bagged and taken away, not dropped into the garden. If we take a fascia off and find soft rafter feet, we stop, photograph it and call you before doing anything that changes the price.

Clearing and repairs are a morning or a day. Gutters, fascias and soffits right around a semi is two to four days, plus however long access takes to go up and come down.