Soffit and fascia installation
When it comes to home ownership, there are a few recurring traps that continue to catch the inexperienced. Maintaining outdoor wood is one of them. Unless you’ve tried to keep outdoor wood looking more refined than barn board over the long haul, you probably have no idea how much ongoing work finishing and refinishing can be. This is true for soffit (the underside of roof overhang) and especially true for fascia (the vertical edge of a roof). The combination of sun, moisture and ladder-only access means that maintaining wooden soffit and fascia is exceptionally challenging. This is why, even for a purist like me, I still love aluminum soffit and fascia on a house. Did you know that it’s also surprisingly easy to install yourself?
Every building supply outlet offers pre-shaped, factoryfinished aluminum soffit and fascia material. This material is inexpensive, easy to cut and bend, and the factory finish lasts for many decades without deterioration. It’s also easier to install than you might think. Sure, there’s the challenge of working safely at height on a ladder, but the actual task of installing your own soffit and fascia is simpler than other DIY tasks that are more common. Let me try to convince you with three installation facts.
FACT#1: IT’S EASY TO CUT
Tin snips are the generic term for scissor-like tools made to cut sheet metal, and tin snips do a very good job cutting aluminum soffit and fascia to length. The thing is, aluminum is so soft that you can also cut this stuff with a pair of heavy scissors. Got a big square cut to make right across some soffit and fascia? Any woodworking chopsaw can cut this stuff very quickly and easily using an ordinary carbide tooth blade of the sort that’s used with wood all the time. Be sure to wear safety glasses (bits of aluminum fly around) and hearing protection (it’s noisier than cutting wood).
FACT#2: FASCIA EXPANDS A LOT
Everything in the universe expands and contracts with changes in temperature, and aluminum soffit and fascia is certainly one of them. If you take a 10-foot long piece of dark brown aluminum fascia from the cool shade and put it into full sun on a summer day, that piece will grow in length by almost a quarterinch. Why does this matter? Buckling and waviness.
If you install fascia on a cold, cloudy day, and you secure that fascia firmly, I guarantee that when it warms up and the sun comes out, your fascia will develop unsightly waves and buckles. This is especially true with dark colours. It looks terrible because the undulations are magnified by the shadows that form on the vertical surfaces. The solution? There are two. The first is to install fascia on a hot, sunny day whenever possible. There’s no problem with fascia shrinking after installation. The other solution is coming up.
FACT#3: FASTENING LOOSELY IS KEY
Installing lengths of fascia when it’s warmest and longest is a great approach, but you need to do more. You also need to secure the fascia so it’s free to expand and contract freely while also being held to your house. How? Oversized nail holes. All fascia must only be held in two places. First, the top edge tucks underneath the metal drip edge where the shingles stop at the edge of the roof. The bottom edge of the fascia is held with nails driven up through the bottom edge of the fascia and into the roof frame. Drill over-size holes through the fascia to allow side-to-side movement while still being help by the head of the nail. Never drive a nail into the face of fascia because it will prevent expansion and trigger buckling and waviness.
Visit baileylineroad.com/8691 for a detailed free tutorial on DIY soffit and fascia installation.