Soffits, Fascias and Gutter Repair in Corsham
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Some common faults and remedies with regard to
Soffits Fascia’s And Guttering
Fascia’s soffits and Guttering all go hand-in-hand.
Fascia, soffit and guttering are three sides to the same coin and typically when new gutters are being installed it is important to have the fascia (which they are attached to) and your homes soffit inspected to ensure the wood is not water damaged and vulnerable.
Defective gutters and downpipes cause dampness problems in many homes. Many others have had their appearance spoiled by inconsiderate or unsympathetic replacement of rainwater goods.
It is absolutely necessary to keep rain and snow melt-water out of buildings. However, inspections and surveys have consistently shown that many houses have defective or inadequate gutter and downpipe installations.
These defects can soon lead to dampness problems.
Figures from the English house condition survey 1991 confirm that nearly 1 in 12 of all houses have defects in their valley gutters or flashings, and 1 in 5 have defects in their rainwater disposal systems such as the incorrect fitting of UPVC Fascia boards or cladding.
The rainwater systems of most existing properties were designed using a traditional rule of thumb, this meant that very little thought was put into the actual design of the guttering and associated fittings.
More recently homes have installations designed, This assumes a maximum rate for disposal purposes of Approximately 75 mm/hour where ponding and overflow cannot be tolerated.
Storms of this intensity are quite infrequent in the UK, and probably occur about once every 80 years in the wetter parts of the country bear in mind that though local conditions may vary.
Most systems will overflow under extreme conditions, and it is a matter of judgement whether overflows occur on a sufficient scale to be a nuisance to the building’s occupants.
When eaves and verges do not have an external gutter (e.g. when they are at the heads or abutments of slopes) the combination most likely to cause problems is an un-guttered verge on a flat roof. There can also be difficulties with un-guttered verges in exposed pitched roofs in areas of high rainfall, where strong winds blow the run-off across the roof.
Common faults and their remedies
1. Undersized gutters and inadequately sized or spaced rainwater pipes are two faults which commonly go together. The remedy is to simply increase the size to something more adequate or more appropriate to the circumstances.
2. Rainwater blowing back under the eaves and wetting the wall head
This can be caused by disintegrating sarking felt, the sarking felt should overlap the gutter but will after time and under exposure to ultraviolet radiation disintegrate and become non-existent leaving the wall and rafter ends exposed to water damage.
This fault can be serious where it occurs in clipped eaves (i.e. an eaves without significant overhang) where the wall head is relatively unprotected.
The remedy is likely to be expensive, it will involve stripping off the lower courses of tile or slate, then inserting a strip of dpc material under the edge of the sarking felt over the tilting fillet then replace the tiles or slates.
It may also be worth checking that the projection of the tile or slate over the gutter is correct. The minimum projection into the eaves gutter should be about 50 mm.
Incorrect projection may be difficult to remedy, and sometimes the most that can be done is to make sure that the sarking felt is still present, and still laps into the gutter. Replacement strips are sometimes feasible (as described in the previous paragraph).
3. Another fault common to a number of materials and designs is impact damage, e.g. from ladders bearing on gutters instead of being supported off walls or roofs. Fixings may also become inoperative, allowing sagging to the centre of gutters to take place.
The causes of ipact damage may include: rotting timber fascia’s, this will allow screw fixings to brackets to pull out.
For PVC-U materials, back clips may not be fully engaged.
The remedy usually requires the replacement of any missing or damaged clips or associated parts,
PVC-U materials are also prone to noise from thermal movements, eg a ticking sound (stick/slip action) when intermittently exposed to sunlight. Not much can be done about this, but cleaning the joints of debris may help.
So far as deterioration of the products is concerned, this depends largely on the materials involved, and can include deterioration under the action of exposure to the elements (commonly showing first as loss of colour), corrosion of metals, and splitting of some materials due to restrained thermal movements.
Rainwater run-off from organic growths (eg mosses and lichens) and from timbers such as cedar shingles is acidic, and will attack unprotected metal gutters and flashings.
Renewal of sarking felt lap with the gutter Missing bracket allows the wall to become soaked
4. The condition of the gutter supports should be checked too. One of the most serious causes of damage to gutters and fixings is the build-up of ice: plastics rainwater goods are particularly vulnerable to this kind of damage.
Proprietary precast concrete gutters fitted at the head of the wall may sometimes be encountered. These gutters have also been used as permanent shuttering for lintels carrying the eaves and wall plates over first floor windows.
They were normally lined with bitumen felt and were a continual source of leakage.
The cause of the leaks was splitting of the linings which were fully bonded to the concrete, the joints of which had opened.
Precast concrete eaves gutters built into the head of the wall can be relined using a rubberised plastics sheet. A single sheet is site hot-air welded to form a lining which runs the whole length of the gutter, including the forming of
rainwater outlets.
The material is flexible and only spot-bonded to the gutter, so risk of splitting is reduced. Another method is to strip out the existing lining, thoroughly clean and dry, and reline with aluminium foil and hot applied rubberised bitumen.
Inspection
Fascia, soffit and guttering should be inspected at least once a year, especially if there are trees in the vicinity. More frequent inspections may be necessary in areas of high pollution.