Roofing
Fascia & Soffit Repair in Oshkosh, WI
Fascia and soffit do two unglamorous jobs: they close off the edge of your roof, and they let your attic breathe. When they fail you get rot, and often an ice dam problem you did not connect to them.
01What each one does
The fascia is the vertical board along the roof edge that your gutters hang on. It carries the weight of a full gutter, and in winter the weight of a full gutter plus ice.
The soffit is the horizontal underside of the overhang. It should be vented, because that is where your attic pulls its intake air. Air comes in low at the soffit, rises across the underside of the deck, and leaves at the ridge. Without intake at the soffit, a ridge vent is close to decorative.
02Why it rots
Overflowing or back-pitched gutters are the usual cause. Water spills behind the gutter instead of through it, and soaks the fascia from the back where nobody sees it until the paint bubbles from the front.
Ice dams do the same thing on a faster schedule. Missing or short drip edge lets water wick back onto the fascia. And on a lot of older homes around here the fascia was never primed on its back face, which means it has been absorbing water since it went up.
By the time a fascia board is visibly soft, the rot has often reached the rafter tail behind it. Replacing the board without cutting back and sistering that tail just gives the new board something rotten to hang from.
03Blocked soffits and the ice dam connection
The most common thing we find in an attic is insulation pushed right out to the eave, sealing the soffit vents from the inside. Someone added insulation, which was sensible, and blocked the intake, which was not.
The result is an attic that runs warm, melts the snow on your roof, and builds an ice dam at the cold overhang. Baffles at each rafter bay fix it and cost very little. If we are on your roof for anything else and see the signs, we will tell you.
04We fix it, then we finish it
Because we paint as well as roof, fascia and soffit repair does not end with bare wood and a promise. New boards get primed on all six sides before they go up, including the back and the cut ends. That is where the last one started rotting. Then we paint them to match your trim.
It is the same reason the garage in our gallery came out looking finished rather than patched: the carpentry and the paint were the same job.
Our work
Fascia & Soffit Repair we've done
Detached garage, siding and trim
Failing boards and a sagging fascia line sorted out first, then painted gray with white trim so the garage matches the house.
Questions
Straight answers.
Anything not covered here, call Erik on (920) 500-8214. That’s the roofing line.
- Can you replace fascia without taking the gutters down?
- No, and anyone who says they can is not replacing the fascia. Gutters come off, we replace the board, and they go back up. That is a good moment to check the pitch, since bad pitch rotted the board in the first place.
- Wood or aluminum?
- Aluminum-wrapped fascia looks tidy and never needs painting, but it hides everything behind it, including rot, which keeps going in the dark. On older homes we lean toward sound painted wood you can inspect. We will do either.
- Do I need this done before a new roof?
- It gets done as part of the roof. The drip edge and the first course land on the fascia, so replacing rotten boards afterwards means disturbing new work.
Fascia & Soffit Repair near you
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