Garage & Porch Felt Roofline
Problems & Solutions
1.
When quoting for roofline on the average home, the question often comes up on how we tackle a flat roofed area such as a front porch or external garage, if of course you’re unlucky enough to have one. I say unlucky only speaking in roofline terms, because in these days of housing shortages, of course you should be described as extremely lucky having one and congratulations on owning your own home!
2.
With a modern garage, which usually comes complete with pitched roof, the pattern of fascia, soffit and guttering is copied pretty much the same from the house and so shouldn’t cause many or any problems whatsoever whereas the older 60’s, and 70’s flat roofed style is what we’re talking about here. These normally have a felt roof with a lip all the way round, lower on one side where the gutter drains the roof.
3.
And it’s this lip on the three sides without guttering with the fascia board tight up inside the felt, that always poses a problem. An issue could occur if you are using a business that states, ‘we always carry out a full replacement’, then that business will run in to problems because IF THE FELT IS OLD, trying to prise the existing board out from underneath the ancient felt will result in tearing the felt at the top which is a total failure. IF THE FELT IS NEW OR NEWER, then the whole felt area will be virtually bulletproof and the level of force needed to exert and extract the fascia board will likely result in exactly the same tearing. So what am I saying here? – well it’s this – whatever the condition of your flat roof and felt, fascia boards and the like are NOT designed to be removed from these areas.
4.
So what’s the answer to tackling this problem. The answer is the Cap-it board or Cover board in other words ’Over Cladding’. This maybe a dirty word in this industry but as an experienced installer I can honestly say that every product has its purpose and while I wouldn’t recommend Over Cladding upper roofline most of the lower woodwork including garage fascia is just normally tatty and therefore ok to use. Study the pictures and you can see that because the board is only 9 – 10mm in thickness, it fit’s rather well. After levering up the bottom of the felt, you can push the top of the board up under and these boards normally sport a longer leg at the bottom giving the opportunity to trim the width to suit.
5.
And that’s it really. Got the inspiration for this article from working at a property, where the garage roof was being replaced and this provided the sample I’ve used in the pictures. I’ve just added a piccy of the garage to the last bit of writing here because it looked like it was going so well until they seemingly hammered in about 2000 fixings all around the new Fascia and although hard to see in my pictures, dishing the material everywhere. I know I’m fussy but WHY? when one row would have sufficed.