Soffits and Fascia – An Underappreciated Home Improvement

by Brad Flannigan

Soffits and fascia are two important elements in your home’s exterior.  Fascia provides protection to the edge of your roof between the shingles and the soffit, while soffits are critical to your attic ventilation, controlling moisture in the attic spaces and moderating temperature extremes.  The cost of doing soffit and fascia depends on linear footage but, once you receive an estimate, you will find it reasonable.  And for peace of mind, along with product warranties, Callen provides a lifetime workmanship warranty on all its exterior home product installations.

Many soffits and fascia on older homes are wood and need to be replaced as moisture and the elements may have damaged them.  When replacing the soffits and fascia on your home, there are different materials to choose from.  Some homeowners who have Hardie fiber cement siding prefer to use the Hardie brand of fascia to keep the home’s exterior uniform, we offer that as an option.  But for most homes, I recommend aluminum for its many advantages.

These include:

• Aluminum’s durability and maintenance-free property.
• Aluminum eliminates the need for any additional painting.  Anyone who has taken the time to scrape, prime, and paint soffits and fascia knows it’s a time consuming and expensive job – and it doesn’t last as long as you’d like.
• Aluminum’s inclusion of panels to eliminate expansion and contraction.  It doesn’t jostle in the wind and it’s more secure.
• Aluminum offers color variety to match or accent your home’s exterior.  We use Mastic products, which have a hard-coat finish, baked on enamel coating.
• Aluminum lasts the life of your home.

Installation

At Callen, we do more than just install a product or sell you on a cosmetic change.  We look at the entire exterior and advise you on what will work best for your circumstances and if we see a repair that should take priority.

For example:

• When we install fascia and soffits, we look at the existing board to make sure there is no damaged or rotting wood.  If so, we recommend that it be repaired at this time before your maintenance-free products are installed.
• On the fascia, we do a pressure bend so it doesn’t ripple and you get a much stronger profile and rigid performance.
• For soffits, we check the existing venting to make sure the attic is getting the ventilation it needs.  We install vented soffits to enable air to go up through the attic to keep the attic cooler in the summer, prevent moisture damage, and prevent ice damming in the winter.
• Corners are butted, as everything is mitered to the gutters.
• Color coated nails the same as the fascia so they are not visible.
• If there is a brick mold under the soffit, which is a board band, we trim that as well to alleviate all maintenance.

Soffits and fascia can be installed at any time and is always done when a home is re-sided.

To summarize, when replacing soffit and fascia, you are taking care of bad wood, ensuring you have proper attic ventilation, eliminating maintenance, and giving yourself peace of mind!