When you admire the exterior of your home, the last thing you are likely to take notice of are the soffits. Essex an Herts homes all have them but few of us think much about them. You are far more likely to notice the great siding, the well fitted windows and even the wonderfully tiled roof.

And who can blame you, soffits are just one of those hidden details on the exterior of your home that are useful but simply aren’t worth paying attention to unless they are damaged and not doing the job they are meant to be doing.

What Exactly is A Soffit?

Soffits are so unremarkable that many home owners do not even know what they are even when they do take notice of them. If you stand against the exterior wall of your home and look up under the overhang of your roof, you will see that the open roof timbers are covered by a material with small ventilation holes in it – this is your soffit.

• In older homes soffits may be made from wood or even certain kinds of metal.
• New soffits are made from such things as PVC, fibreglass and even vinyl.
• Regardless of the material used soffits provide benefits to your Essex home.

What Soffits do

There are several important functions of soffits. Essex homeowners should know that the first thing they do is to protect your roof timbers from the weather. They keep water from rotting the timbers and getting under your roof or damaging your side walls. A properly installed soffit quite literally helps to keep a roof over your head.

Another important function of a soffit is that it helps keep birds, bees and wasps from making nests under your roof overhang and eventually finding a way into your home. Soffits also help to disperse heat in your attic making it cheaper and easier to cool or heat your home.

Soffits Essex Maintenance

Like the rest of your home’s exterior, soffits need proper maintenance in order to keep performing the functions for which they are designed. The amount and type of maintenance they need depends a great deal on the type of material used for soffits. Essex homeowners should take note that while vinyl and PVC soffits require little maintenance, a metal or wooden soffit is another story. Both of these materials need to be inspected once or twice a year to make sure that they have not rusted or cracked. In addition, to keep your home looking good, metal or wooden soffits will need periodic scraping and repainting and will also need replacing as they get older. This can be a hassle and very time consuming but is necessary to keep your soffits looking good and functioning as they should.

When replacing your soffits you can choose to replace them with the same material or change to a newer and more maintenance free type of soffit material. Many homeowners choose the newer materials because they are actually quite cost effective to purchase and will over the course of their lifetime save hours of labour and worry for the homeowner. When faced with having to replace old soffits, Essex homeowners would be wise to take this into account.

Find out more about Markwell’s soffits Essex replacement service.