I am based in Leeds and 3 quotes in i am already baffled as to how you choose the right/reliable company. The quotes have ranged from £700 to just over £2000. We want to sell the house so dont want to splash loads of cash at this but the expensive quote the guy talked a lot of sense and wasnt pushy and told me from the outset he would cost much more. The cheap quote was much less convincing and instantly said (cheaper for cash wink wink) but still offered lots of addresses to look at previous work. Which would you go for or would you get a few more quotes? Anybody know of a low cost reliable/recommended roofing company?

I would NOT use Safestyle or any of those double glazing sharks; the plastic they will use costs around £3-5 a meter from the supplier but they had the temerity to try to charge us £3000 to do ours. I would look around for a small local family company but not one who was trying to do it on the cheap because they have a habit of becoming elusive when you want them back.

I went through similar last year. The expensive quote said they would scaffold the whole house. To be fair we have a sloping garage roof, narrow alleyway and conservatory to negotiate. The cheap quote said he would do it with ladders and a mate. I went with the cheaper one and it was fine. The expensive one said that the reason for scaffolding was he wasn’t prepared to take the risk with his safety given the consequences of an accident. A good point. The other bloke was. Assuming that you are going with the plastic ones, they are about 4 metre lengths and really unwieldy. I was surprised the bloke did it without scaffolding but he was a part time fireman with no fear of heights and did the whole house in about 2 days. I sourced all the stuff online. For a small detached house the parts were about £300 and I paid home about £300 on top so your £700 quote is probably right. Assuming the £2000 is for complete scaffolding.

Blader1611, I would be interested to hear who you choose and how you get on. I’m also in Leeds and would like to get ours done this year.

Snownrock – i will let you know, hoping to get it done within the next month. Remind me if you dont hear from me by end of March, email in profile.

The expensive quote also included the dry verge which isnt on the cheap quote. He really knew his stuff and could back it up and if i had the money they would have been the one i would have gone to without any doubt.
I am going to get a couple more quotes and take it from there.
I would do the job myself but i am rubbish with ladders and heights. I am going to do the low section of the house (chalet style house) as its only a small run and i barely need a step ladder to reach.

Do you need or get a FENSA or similar certificate/guarantee with fascia’s and soffit boards. Just a thought if your planning on selling up. Have had issues with these with double glazing & conservatories when previously buying and selling.

I can’t see why you would need a FENSA certificate for fascias etc as they are basically just cosmetic.

You may get a guarantee from the installers and my expensive quote said a 20yr guarantee that can be passed to new owners.

Wanting to update my fascias also. Being in a bungalow, im tempted to give it a go myself.
How hard can that be?

Whats the chances of using the same fixing points once youve stipped the material off? I can’t say i’ve ever looked beneath to see how it all goes together.

Just had ours done. Big house and it took them nearly 2 weeks in total, so cost a lot more than the quotes above. Needed a fair bit of remedial work when the existing stuff was stripped off – some water ingress and some shortcuts taken when the house was built (in the 80s, so not ages ago).

I wouldn’t have wanted to do it myself tbh.

Easy enough to do on a bungalow. Basically push up second row of tiles and remove first row.
Remove old wood fit eaves guards up to first batten to cover rotten felt. Fit soffits, normally rest on top of bricks and fit some drop down supports to nail onto. Fit fascias, use spacers to get a straight line. Refit tiles then guttering.
Piece of P off steps. It gets harder depending on height and the corners of Gable ends need thinking about as its deeper board but I think you can now get corner kits.

Can’t offer any useful advice but when I saw the subject i thought it read ‘Fascists and Soffit replacement’……..

Was one of the quotes from a company in Yeadon/Rawdon ?

They did ours about 4 weeks ago. Did a crap job and we lost loads of roof tiles which damaged our car (at least not a child’s face).

They have since paid for the work to be done properly.

We got 3 quotes and they were all within £2-300 of each other.

My wife went for the company offering the big guarantee and nice website.

The repair was done by a local bloke who has done local roof replacements and guttering/facias on a friends house (but he has no flash website and doesn’t offer 15 yr guarantees, just good workmanship)

@Funkydunc – Pudsey here so would be grateful if you could give me the company name (the good guy)

Funkydunc – could you also let me know the name of the good guy and also the bad one so i can avoid, one of my quotes is from a company in Rawdon!

Just an update in case you need a recommendation. Just had my roofs done now and the guys who did it were really good and very helpful. I wont mention who they were on here as i am not sure if that is allowed but happy for you guys to email me (in my profile) and i will let you know there details if you are still interested.

Minor thread resurrection… for those of you who have had your fascias and soffits replaced, did they also replace the bargeboards too? Also, did they just cap over the existing boards, or remove the old ones and replace?

Cheers

In my case they capped over existing boards which were sound timber but i had a few rotten ones which were replaced then capped.

Just had a quote for 3k to do ours inc guttering, full replacement not overcladding and include new felt support trays or whatever they are called.

Where are you based cheers_drive?

Ely (Company is in Peterborough)

Ok thanks, I’m in West Midlands so your company isn’t much use to me!

@bamboo we chose to replace with full boards where it was really shot and could, and overcapped the rest. If you can get away with it (it depends on the lie of the wall plate / woodwork mainly) a full board is cheaper than a cap on new ply, and of course won’t rot.

@ben, yes that’s what we are hoping to do, fully replace with upvc. We have had a couple of quotes that are ball park ok, but via people I wouldn’t trust, and a couple of quotes that are obscenely expensive from companies that you might expect to be reputable. It seems like a minefield.