Wood rot repair in Heerenveen: high up and hard to see

With wood rot you think of a front door or threshold. But in Heerenveen, with its many gables and overhangs, we find it just as often high up: at the barge board where it meets the roof, in the fascia board behind the gutter, under an owl board or on the corners of the dormer. You can't see that from the ground, until pieces of paint or wood come down.

We approach that the same way as our wood rot repair in Friesland: probing, removing back to sound wood, repairing or replacing. What else we do in Heerenveen is under your painter in Heerenveen.

A few signs you can pick up without a ladder:

• paint coming off in strips on a barge board
• black or green on the underside of a fascia board
• a gutter that overflows at one fixed spot
• wood that bulges or seams that are bigger than last year
• mould or a wet spot indoors, in the attic by the roof edge

If you see anything like that, take a photo, with your phone out of the roof window too. In the attic you can sometimes see on the inside of the roof edge how wet it is. More signs are under recognising wood rot.

A small spot in a sturdy barge board can be repaired with Repair Care or a small piece of new wood. But a fascia board that is soft along its whole length has to come out. Sometimes that is also the moment to switch to another material, such as plastic, if you prefer that. We paint and replace both, so we aren't talking you into anything.

Under fascia boards and barge boards you can read how we approach that. Carpentry can sometimes be done outside the painting season too. That includes the junction with your roof, which we watch closely without doing roofing work ourselves.

You can't repair a roof edge properly from a ladder. That is why we put up our own scaffolding here, with a fixed price for putting it up and taking it down. As a national market indication, hired scaffolding or a lift runs from €50 per day, so that gives peace of mind if the repair turns out worse.

At that height we also look straight away at what surrounds the repair: the sealant, the paint layer on the rest of the facade, the dormer. That way you know whether to stick to the rot, or whether it is smart to include the whole facade now that the scaffolding is up anyway. Heerenveen is built on peat, so we check distorted joints at the same time.

Send photos from the ground, from across the street and, if it is safe, from a window. If you can't get up high, we will look ourselves. Tell us the year of construction, when the wood was last painted, and whether there has been a leak.

If your house is in a row, it is handy to know whether the neighbours have the same problems. They often share the same barge board, and that makes coordinating useful. A clear route for the scaffolding helps us too: tell us what stands beside and behind your house.

These are not MJA prices. We have our own scaffolding at a fixed price, and you get a fixed quote after the site visit. Length, height and the amount of replaced wood make the biggest difference. A more extensive overview is under replacing fascia boards: the costs.

Many homes in and around Heerenveen later got a dormer, and it is often full of wood: the cheeks, the lower threshold, the fascia board at the front. At that height nobody looks along, and the lower threshold takes everything that runs off the roof. On top of that, an open seam between the cheek and the frame leads water straight inside.

At a site visit we therefore include the dormer as standard if a scaffold or ladder can reach it. If the wood is good, it can go into the next paint job. If the cheek is soft, we fit new panel material or wood and finish all the seams again, before moisture gets into your attic.

Mohamed looks along at the site visit and shows with photos what is going on. We do both the carpentry and the painting, so you don't have to arrange anyone else. A member of OnderhoudNL, a recognised training company, and 4.8 from 25 reviews on Google.

See something odd on your roof edge in Heerenveen? Send us a photo and we will look along. The sooner, the less has to be replaced.