The board behind your gutter takes more water than any other wood on the house. When it goes, the roof edge is usually next.
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Fascia is the flat board running along the bottom edge of your roof. Its job is to close off the rafter tails, serve as an essential piece of your exterior trim, and give the gutter something to hang from. That second part is the problem.
A gutter is a trough of water fastened to a wood board with screws driven straight through it. When the gutter is clean and pitched right, it works fine for decades. When it clogs, water backs up over the rear edge of the trough and runs down the face of the fascia and behind it. When a hanger works loose, the gutter tips slightly and does the same thing.
Nobody notices, because the gutter is covering the evidence.
By the time a homeowner sees a stain or a sagging gutter line, the fascia has often been wet through two or three winters. In Surrey, where we get rain most days from November through March, that’s enough to rot a board completely and start into the roof sheathing behind it. If left untreated, what started as a simple board replacement can quickly turn into complex wood rot repair.
You can’t replace fascia properly with gutters attached. Some crews try. They cut the old board out in sections around the hangers and slide a new one in behind, which leaves the worst part of the old detail untouched.
We take the gutters down, replace the full run of fascia, deal with whatever we find behind it, and put your gutters back on the new board.
To be clear about scope: we don’t sell or install gutters. If yours are at the end of their life, we’ll tell you, and you’ll want a gutter company to supply new ones. We’ll coordinate timing so you’re not left with an open roof edge waiting on someone else’s schedule.
What we do handle at the roof edge is the wood and the flashing. Rafter tail repair if the ends have rotted. Drip edge detailing, if it’s missing or was installed under the underlayment instead of over it. Sub-fascia where there is one. And the transition between fascia and soffit, which is where a lot of eave ventilation problems begin.
Most of the fascia work we do is on homes built between 1980 and 2000, which covers a lot of Cloverdale, Newton, Fleetwood and Guildford, plus older Langley and Maple Ridge neighbourhoods.
On those houses the fascia is usually painted cedar or spruce, and it’s often the original board. Forty years of Fraser Valley rain is a long service life for softwood with a gutter screwed to it. Common findings when we pull one:
Rotted rafter tail ends, where water has run behind the fascia and into the end grain of the roof framing. That’s a structural repair, not a cosmetic one, and it needs to be done before the new board goes up.
Missing drip edge. Older roofs frequently have none, so water running off the shingles wraps back onto the fascia by surface tension instead of dropping into the gutter.
Wet roof sheathing at the eave. If we find this, we’ll show you and talk about whether your roofer needs to be involved.
We won’t cover any of it up and hope. Gus built the company on the opposite approach, and it’s the reason we don’t ask for a deposit.
We install fascia in fibre cement, PVC and composite, or cedar. For a house with gutters on it, we usually lean toward fibre cement or PVC. That board stays damp longer than anything else on the building, and neither of those materials rots.
Cedar is the right call when you’re matching an existing look and you’re prepared to keep it painted.
Timing depends on the run. A single elevation with the gutters off and back on is typically a one to two day job. A full perimeter with rafter tail repair takes longer, and we’ll give you the range before we start rather than after.
Every fascia job we do carries our 25-year workmanship warranty, signed by the company and by the installer on your project. Our crews are in-house, we’re WorkSafeBC registered under clearance number C136733062, we carry $2,000,000 in general liability insurance, and we’re BBB Accredited.
No deposit. No final payment until you’ve seen the finished roofline and you’re satisfied with it.
There’s a practical reason to do this between late May and September in the Lower Mainland. The roof edge has to be open while we work, and the new board and any paint need dry conditions to cure.
We’ll take urgent calls year-round, and we’ll tarp and stage the work around a dry stretch if it can’t wait. But if you’re looking at a sagging gutter in July, that’s the right time to deal with it, not February.
We cover Surrey, White Rock, South Surrey, Langley, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows from our shop at 19340 65 Ave in Cloverdale.
That’s almost always the fascia, not the gutter. Call 604-603-0257 or email info@micasaexteriors.ca and we’ll come look for free, by appointment, and tell you exactly what’s going on up there.
No, we don’t sell or install gutters. We take your existing gutters down, replace the fascia behind them, and reinstall the same gutters on the new board. If your gutters need replacing, we’ll tell you and coordinate the timing with whoever you hire so the roof edge isn’t left open.
If the gutter is sagging or pulling away, it’s usually the fascia. Gutter hangers are screwed into that board, and screws lose their grip when the wood goes soft. A gutter that’s simply clogged or mis-pitched will overflow but stay firmly attached. We can tell you which one it is on a free inspection.
Sometimes, and we’ll do it when it makes sense. The catch is that a fascia run is usually one continuous board, so a partial replacement leaves a joint in the middle of the elevation. If the rot is at one corner and the rest is solid, a section repair is reasonable. If it’s spotted along the run, replacing the full length is the better spend.
Yes. When we pull fascia and find the rafter ends have rotted, we cut back to sound wood and sister or replace the tails before the new board goes on. That’s structural work and we won’t skip it to keep a quote low. We’ll show you the damage first.
Fibre cement and PVC both outlast wood on a fascia run, because that board stays damp longer than anything else on the house. Cedar is the right choice if you’re matching an existing look and will keep it painted. We’ll give you the honest comparison rather than pushing one product.
Yes. We cover Surrey, White Rock, South Surrey, Langley, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Call 604-603-0257 with your address and we’ll confirm scheduling.
No. We don’t take deposits on any work. You pay the final invoice after the job is done and you’re satisfied. We accept cash, cheque and e-transfer.
