SOFFIT & FASCIA
SERVICES in pa, oh & wv
the American Dream

The fascia is the vertical board running along the edge of your roof, where the gutters are fastened. The soffit is the horizontal underside tucked beneath the roof overhang, between the fascia and the wall of the house. Together they close off the roof edge, and they do two jobs at once: they keep water, birds and squirrels out of the roof cavity, and — through vented soffit panels — they let cool air into the attic. That intake air is what makes ridge ventilation work. Most homeowners never think about either until the gutters start pulling away or something is nesting overhead.

Both, and the order matters. Sealing the opening before the animals are out traps them in the roof cavity, and a dead animal in an inaccessible space is a far worse problem than the hole was. The right sequence is: confirm the cavity is empty, then repair, then block re-entry. Squirrels in particular will chew straight back through a fresh board — which is why we back new soffit and fascia with hardware cloth over the opening rather than just replacing the damaged piece. If there is active nesting, a wildlife removal service goes first and we follow. Overhanging limbs are usually how they got up there, so trimming them back is part of the fix.

Almost always, water is not going where it should. Overflowing or clogged gutters, a missing or poorly lapped drip edge, and ice backing up at the eave are the three causes we find most often — the wood is the symptom, not the disease. The fourth cause is ventilation. If the soffit vents are painted shut, blocked by insulation, or were never vented at all, moist air sits in the roof cavity and the sheathing and fascia stay damp from the inside. Replacing rotted board without fixing the water or the airflow means doing it again in a few years, so we look at gutters, drip edge and intake before quoting the carpentry.

The working standard is roughly one square foot of net free vent area for every 150 square feet of attic floor, split about evenly between intake at the soffit and exhaust at the ridge. Balance matters more than total count. The failure we see most is exhaust without intake — a ridge vent running the length of the roof and soffit vents that are blocked, painted over, or buried under blown insulation. When that happens the ridge vent pulls air from inside the house instead of from outside, which is how you end up with moisture in the attic in winter. Baffles at the eave keep insulation off the intake and are usually the cheap half of the fix.

Not always, but the fascia has to be sound, because that is what the gutters hang from. Fastening new gutters to soft or rotted fascia means the gutters will pull away, usually within a winter or two. The practical point is that the fascia is only visible once the old gutters come off, so this gets decided on the day rather than at the estimate. We open it up, show you what is there, and price the carpentry before continuing rather than after. Where the wood is sound, we leave it alone and say so.