Siding, Soffit and Fascia in Kansas City

An attic ventilates by pulling cool air in low at the soffits and exhausting warm air high at the ridge. Cut off the intake and the system stops working, no matter how good the ridge vent is. We find this constantly: houses with a perfectly good ridge vent and soffits that are solid panel, painted shut, or packed solid with blown insulation.

The result is an attic that runs punishingly hot in summer, cooking the shingles from below, and that holds moisture in winter, condensing on the decking. Both take years off a roof, and neither is visible from the outside.

When we replace soffit we install vented panel with adequate net free area and we make sure the insulation at the eaves is held back with baffles so the air path is actually open. That last step gets skipped more often than the first.

Fascia is the board along the eave that the gutter hangs on. When gutters have been overflowing, that board has been soaking, and by the time you notice it is soft the rot usually extends further than the visible damage.

There is no point hanging new gutter on compromised fascia. We inspect it as part of any gutter or roof work and replace what has gone. Where the rot has reached the rafter tails behind the fascia, that gets addressed too, because that is structure.

Hail damages siding, particularly vinyl, which cracks and chips at impact points, and aluminum, which dents visibly. Wind pulls siding loose at the seams and tears soffit panels out of their channels, which is one of the most common wind findings on any storm inspection.

All of it is covered under the same claim as the roof when it came from the same event, and all of it gets left off claims regularly because the inspection focused on the roof. We document the full exterior on a storm inspection: roof, gutters, fascia, soffit, siding, and any detached structures.