Fascias & Soffits · Croydon & the CR postcodes
Fascias & Soffits In Croydon
Has the timber along your roof edge started to go?
Repair and replacement of fascias, soffits, bargeboards and roofline ventilation across Croydon
The fascia is the board your gutter is screwed to. The soffit is the flat underside between it and the wall. They are unglamorous, they are the last thing anyone thinks about, and when they fail two things happen at once: the gutter loses what it is fixed to, and the ventilation path into your loft closes up. The second is the one that causes the expensive damage.
Free fascias & soffits quote
Four details and somebody will come and look at it. There is no charge for the visit, no obligation afterwards, and if the answer is that your roof is fine, that is what you will be told.
1,000+
Roofs put right
10 year
Written workmanship guarantee
£0
To have somebody come and look
Repair first
Replacement is the last resort
What you are seeing, and what it usually means
None of this replaces somebody actually looking at your roof, but it will tell you roughly what you are dealing with and how much of a hurry to be in.
Paint flaking and timber soft to a screwdriver
Wet rot, fed by water coming over the back of the gutter. The gutter needs sorting at the same time or the new board goes the same way.
Gutter sagging or pulling away from the wall
The fascia behind it has softened and the bracket screws no longer have anything to hold. Refixing the gutter alone will not last.
Condensation or black mould in the loft
Ventilation at the eaves has been blocked, very often by uPVC soffits fitted over the old timber without vents. Air has to get in at the eaves and out at the ridge.
Birds getting into the roof space
A gap has opened between the soffit and the wall, or a board has come loose. Straightforward to close, and much easier before nesting season than during it.
Why use us for fascias & soffits in Croydon
Ventilation is part of the job
Vented soffits or over-fascia vents go in as standard. Sealing the eaves up tight is how you get condensation in the loft, and it is a very common mistake.
We look at why it rotted
Timber does not fail on its own. Something has been wetting it, usually the gutter above. Replacing the board without fixing the cause buys a few years at best.
Repair where repair works
One rotten section on an otherwise sound run does not justify replacing the whole roofline. That is a common upsell and we will tell you when it is one.
Timber where timber is right
On period properties and in Croydon's conservation areas, painted timber is often the correct answer and sometimes the required one. It is offered, not just tolerated.
Capping over rot is not on offer
Cladding uPVC over soft timber hides the problem and traps the moisture against it. If the board has gone, it comes off.
Ten year guarantee
Written, on the installed work, with the manufacturer's own cover on the boards themselves.
Deep overhangs and what they do
The interwar semis that dominate Sanderstead, Shirley, Selsdon, Coulsdon and much of Purley were built with generous eaves overhangs and long, deep fascia and soffit runs. That was good building - it throws water clear of the wall - but it means there is a great deal of roofline timber per house, most of it now well past ninety years old, and much of it sitting behind a gutter that has been overflowing quietly for a decade. Further north the Victorian terraces are a different problem: many have no soffit at all, or a parapet instead, and there the question is usually about how the eaves are ventilated rather than what is rotting.
"Rotten fascia timber is hardly ever the original problem. Something above it has been wetting it for years, and that something is almost always the gutter."
Based on the fascias & soffits jobs handled by Roof Repairs Croydon
How a fascias & soffits job runs
You describe the symptom
Which room, which wall, and does it only happen when the rain comes from a particular direction? That last question narrows things down more than people expect, before anybody has been anywhere near the roof.
Somebody comes and looks - loft included
Free, with no expectation that it becomes a job. Half the evidence is on the underside of the roof, so the loft gets looked at as a matter of course rather than as a favour.
You are told the cause before the price
In plain terms, with photographs where they make the point better than words. If you want to take that diagnosis to somebody else for a second quote, that is entirely reasonable.
A written, itemised price
Access priced as its own line, so it is obvious what you are paying to reach the work as opposed to doing it. The figure on the quote is the figure on the invoice.
The work, back to something solid
Failed material comes out until there is sound timber and sound masonry underneath. Matched covering, code 4 lead at the junctions, mortar mixed to suit the brick it is going onto.
Checked, cleared and guaranteed
The details either side get checked while the access is still up, the site is cleared, finished photographs come to you, and the written guarantee is handed over the same day.
The 10 year guarantee, and why it is safe to offer
Promising a roof will stay dry is easy. What counts is what happens if it does not. Work booked through Roof Repairs Croydon carries a 10 year workmanship guarantee, on paper, handed to you on the day and written in language you can actually read. The slates, tiles, lead, mortar, membranes and rainwater goods carry their own manufacturer cover on top of that. It varies by product, so you get told which cover applies to your job rather than one headline number that would be wrong on most of them.
Here is the reason a guarantee like that is not a risk. Repairs come back for one reason above all others: the fault was never found in the first place. Somebody went up, saw a stain on the ceiling below, mended whatever looked worst directly above it, and left. Water does not cooperate with that approach. It lands on a slate, runs under it, drops onto a rafter and travels along the rafter before it finds anywhere to fall. On a wide hipped roof in Sanderstead or Shirley that can be five metres from where it came in.
Find the entry point and the repair holds for years. Miss it and no amount of guarantee wording helps anybody. That is why the survey happens before the price, and it is why, if the same water finds its way back into your house inside the guarantee period, putting it right costs you nothing.
10 year
Workmanship guarantee
1,000+
Roofs put right
Covered
Public liability insurance
Per product
Maker's own warranty
Three questions worth asking whoever you use
Including us. If the answers do not stand up, that tells you something useful.
Are they fitting vents?
Ask directly whether the new soffit is vented and what the airflow path into the loft will be. If the answer is vague, you are being sold boards rather than a roofline.
Is the gutter being dealt with too?
Rotten fascia and a failing gutter go together almost every time. Replacing one and leaving the other is doing half a job at full price.
Capping or replacing?
Some firms clad over existing timber because it is quick. That is acceptable only if the timber underneath is genuinely sound and dry. Ask which one is being proposed and why.
uPVC Or Painted Timber?
Both are legitimate. Which is right depends on the house and where it is.
| Comparison point | uPVC | Painted timber |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance | Wash it occasionally. That is the whole list. | Repainting every five years or so, and it needs doing before the paint film breaks. |
| Life expectancy | Commonly 20 years or more before it discolours or goes brittle. | Indefinite if it is kept painted. Neglected, it rots within a decade. |
| Cost | Lower installed cost, and no ongoing decoration. | Higher over time once repainting is counted in. |
| Period properties | Passable on interwar and later stock. Visibly wrong on Victorian detail. | Correct, and takes moulded profiles that plastic cannot reproduce. |
| Conservation areas | May be resisted on elevations visible from the street. | The safe choice, and what will normally be expected. |
| Ventilation | Vented profiles are readily available. They just have to actually be specified. | Vents can be cut in or over-fascia vents used. Same requirement either way. |
The loft is where you find out
If you want to know whether your roofline is doing its job, go into the loft on a cold morning and look at the underside of the felt and at the nails coming through. Beads of water, black spotting on the timber or damp insulation at the edges all point at eaves ventilation that has been closed up rather than at a leak. It is a very common condition in houses that had uPVC roofline fitted cheaply in the 1990s and 2000s, and it is straightforward to correct.
Read the roof problems guide
What fascias & soffits costs in Croydon
Replacing one rotten section is a few hundred pounds. A full uPVC roofline on a two storey semi, including fascias, soffits, bargeboards and new guttering, generally sits in the low thousands, with access the main variable. Timber costs more and needs decorating. Where scaffold is going up anyway for other roof work, adding the roofline to that visit removes a large part of the cost of doing it later.
See the full cost guideFascias & Soffits - your questions
Do fascias and soffits really need replacing, or is it a sales job?
It is genuinely necessary when the timber is soft, when the gutter has nothing solid to fix to, or when the eaves ventilation has been blocked. It is a sales job when a sound painted run is condemned wholesale because two feet of it have gone. Press a screwdriver into the board - if it goes in, it is rotten, and if it does not, ask why the whole run needs replacing.
Why does my loft get condensation since the new soffits went on?
Because the new soffits almost certainly are not vented, or the old ventilation gap was covered over when they were fitted. A loft needs air moving through it. Seal the eaves and the moisture that rises out of the house has nowhere to go, so it condenses on the cold underside of the roof. Adding vents corrects it without redoing the whole roofline.
Can you just clad over the old boards and leave them in place?
Only where the timber underneath is genuinely sound and dry, and we will tell you honestly whether it is. Capping over rot traps moisture against it and the decay carries on out of sight. If the boards have gone, they come off.
Am I allowed uPVC in a conservation area?
It varies by area and by how visible the elevation is. Croydon has 21 conservation areas, and the Chatsworth Road area in Addiscombe additionally has an Article 4 direction that has removed a range of permitted development rights since January 2016. Caterham and Warlingham come under Tandridge, Wallington under Sutton and West Wickham under Bromley. Check with the right authority before ordering anything.
Is it worth doing the gutters while somebody is up there anyway?
Nearly always, and it usually costs very little extra once someone is already up there. The gutter has to come off to replace a fascia anyway, and refitting a tired gutter onto a new board is a false economy of the most obvious kind.
What is a bargeboard and do I need one?
It is the sloping board on a gable end, running up the verge of the roof rather than along the eaves. It does the same job as a fascia - it closes off and protects the roof timbers at the edge - and it rots for the same reasons. If your house has a gable, it has bargeboards, and they are worth checking whenever the fascias are.
Also worth a look: Guttering ·Roof leak repairs ·Roof replacement
Where we work
Fascias & Soffits across the whole borough and over the boundary where it makes sense - from the Victorian terraces at the Thornton Heath end up onto the chalk at Kenley, Coulsdon and Sanderstead, and out to Wallington, Caterham, Warlingham and West Wickham.
What Croydon homeowners say
From roads across the borough, once the ladders had gone.
"Damp patch on our landing ceiling for about three years. Two roofers had been out and both mended the tiles directly above it, and neither made the slightest difference. This chap spent twenty minutes in the loft with a torch before he even went outside, then showed me a photo of a split in the lead in the valley about four metres away from the stain. Fixed it in a morning. Three winters on and nothing."
"Water was coming down the front bedroom wall every time it rained hard and I had convinced myself the roof was finished. It was the gutter. Half of it had dropped so the water was sitting in the middle and going over the front rather than down the pipe. He reset the brackets and cleared the gully, charged me a fraction of what I had budgeted for, and told me the roof itself had years left. Could easily have sold me a new one."
"Ours is in the Chatsworth Road conservation area and I had no idea the rules on roof work here are stricter than the rest of Croydon. He knew straight away, explained what I could and could not do without an application, and did the repair in matching slate. That saved me a very awkward conversation with the council later on."
"Lost most of the ridge tiles along the back in a February gale. Rang in the morning, sheeted the same afternoon so the weather could not get in, came back the following week when it was dry and rebedded the whole ridge properly. Sent me photos of everything for the insurance without me even asking. The bill was exactly what the quote said it would be."
"Gutters had been overflowing under the trees for years and the fascia behind them had gone soft. What I appreciated was that he explained why the timber had rotted rather than just quoting to replace it, and pointed out the new soffits needed vents or I would end up with condensation in the loft instead. Nobody had ever mentioned that to me before."
Had us out to your roof?
Two minutes writing a review does more for a small local firm than any amount of advertising, and it helps the next person in Croydon work out who to ring.
Get a free fascias & soffits quote
Ring and describe what you can see, or send a message and somebody will come out and put their head in your loft. It costs nothing to find out what is wrong. The price you are quoted is the price you pay. And if the answer turns out to be that it can wait another few years, that is what you will be told.