Stanley Roofers best quality Roofing and Roof Repairs. Fascia and Soffits Repairs & Installs Limerick
You might not know much about roofs. If water is leaking into the house, and the some or the whole thing needs replacement. The soffits, fascia, and gutters are parts of a roof. They play a vital part in preventing water from entering your house or even affecting your foundation. They’ll be replaced along with the slates and other parts of the roof. Here’s why.
Locating your Soffit?
A roof will sometimes overhang a house. This overhang is often called the eaves or rafters of the house. When a cover is attached to these rafters, it’s called a soffit. Today’s soffits are made with tiny holes for ventilation.
Heat builds up on a roof from the sun beating down upon it as well as from the heat coming from the loft. This causes a vastly hot roof. It’s responsible for weakened slates in summer and ice dams in winter.
Without a way to disperse, the heat causes humidity in the loft. That means mould, mildew, and rotted wood. Put together, all this means higher power bills.
Perhaps one of the most important functions of a soffit is the protection of the roof deck. Sometimes rain gets blown by heavy winds up under the eaves of a house. Without a soffit in place, the roof and the roof deck would get wet. Water would then leak into the loft, and thus into the ceilings and walls of the house.
What Is Fascia?
When a house is being built, it’s all a welter of unfinished lumber. Beams stick out over the walls of the house before the roof is put on. Fascia is one of the finishing touches put on a house. This is the board placed across the roof beams to cover them as a finishing touch. Some people call it trim.
Its purpose is to prevent rain from getting blown up into the roof beams and roof deck. The fascia can be damaged by an improperly hanging roof, choked gutters, and ice dams in winter. Homeowners will know the fascia is damaged by its discoloured appearance and cracks. This will be replaced along with the roof.
What Are Gutters?
Gutters are usually aluminum, pvc or metal that hang at the edge of the roof to direct the flow of water. This is why they’re called eaves. At one end of the trough will be a downspout through which the rainwater will get into the soil to drain away from the structure.
A structure without a gutter system sustains damages from the level of a little water to “it’s time to call in the professionals.” The damages could be:
- The water around the foundation. Erosion happens, along with a flooded basement and damaged foundation on the house.
- Water on the windows. Condensation damages the window sills and can get into the walls
- Water damage to the roof. The soffit, fascia, and wood can rot, break down, and mould.
Leaves, twigs from trees, and other materials blown there by Mother Nature clog up gutters. When clogs happen, rainwater backs up. It overflows the gutters, causing some or all of the damages described above. Gutters should be cleaned out in spring and in fall to prevent these damages.
Gutters are only one part of the solution, however. Downspouts carry the rainwater away from the house. If they don’t carry the water far enough away, then the foundation will suffer the consequences. The answer is downspout extenders extending at least four to eight feet from the house.
How the gutters are attached to the soffit is important. If the gutter is coming away from the soffit, or ill attached by the brackets, then a professional should be contacted to either reattach the gutters or get you a new gutter system.
Other metals other than aluminum crack or rust, so they’re not used so much. Today’s gutters come with screens or guards to prevent debris from clogging the system. Rainwater passes through without a hitch, saving the owner the trouble of cleaning them.