Guttering, fascias and soffits

Guttering is the cheapest part of a roof and it causes a surprising share of the damage. A joint that drips onto a wall for one winter is a stain. The same joint over five winters is a damp patch inside, because a solid wall that gets wetted every few days never has the run of dry weather it needs to give that moisture back, and once the wall is carrying water all year the plaster inside starts to go with it. That is why a gutter repair is sometimes a damp repair that nobody recognised as one. The failure itself is usually one of three things and only one of them is a blockage. The fall can be wrong, so water stands in the run instead of moving to the outlet, and standing water finds every joint there is. The brackets can be too few or spaced too far apart, which lets a full gutter sag between them and creates the fall problem by itself. Or the outlet and the downpipe can be undersized for the roof above, which is common where an extension went on and nobody upgraded what drains it. Johnny will tell you which of the three you have, and two of them are a morning rather than a new system.

Fascias and soffits are the same story from the other direction. Once the board behind the gutter has gone soft the brackets have nothing to hold, so the fall goes out and the gutter sits full all year instead of emptying.