Soffit is your attic’s air intake. Fascia is what your eavestrough hangs on. Get either wrong and you get ice dams, rot and a roof that ages early. Installed by the same in-house Red Seal crews that build the roof above it.
Most people read soffit and fascia as decoration, the finishing strip under the roof edge. They are actually two working parts of your roof. The soffit is where cool air enters the attic, and the fascia is the structural board that carries your eavestrough and closes the roof edge against weather. When they fail, the damage does not stay at the roofline. It moves into the attic, the sheathing and eventually the ceiling below.
Ridge vents can only exhaust what the soffit lets in. Blocked or unvented soffit turns your attic into a sealed box that cooks in summer and sweats in winter.
Warm attic air melts snow mid-roof, the water runs down and refreezes at the cold eave. That ridge of ice backs water up under the shingles.
A sagging eavestrough or failed drip edge soaks the fascia. Once that board goes soft, the rafter tails behind it are usually next.
The roofline tells on itself, but you have to look up to see it. Walk the perimeter of your home once a season, especially after a hard winter or a hail storm, and look along the underside of the overhang and the board behind the gutter.
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Soffit and fascia sit exactly where the roof, the attic and the exterior wall meet, which is why they so often get handled badly. A roofer stops at the drip edge, a siding crew stops at the wall, and the junction between them belongs to nobody. Because our in-house Red Seal crews do both the roof and the exterior, that junction has one accountable owner. Backed by COR safety certification and $10M liability coverage.
From a full perimeter replacement to a stained cedar entry ceiling, every metre is installed in-house by our certified team.
The workhorse of the Calgary roofline. Pre-finished aluminum panels that never need painting, installed with the vented area your attic actually needs rather than whatever the old house came with.
The board your eavestrough hangs on. We replace rotted fascia, correct the drip edge, and give the gutter solid, straight backing so it drains instead of sagging.
Stained wood and tongue-and-groove soffit for entries, porches and feature overhangs, where the underside of the roof is something people actually look at.
Covered porches, column wraps and overhang detailing finished to match the rest of the envelope, so the roofline reads as one deliberate job rather than three separate repairs.
The rule of thumb used across the trade is one square foot of net free vent area for every 300 square feet of attic floor, split roughly half and half between intake at the soffit and exhaust at the ridge. The half most people miss is the intake. A roof can be covered in ridge vent and still be effectively unventilated if the soffit is solid panel, painted shut, or buried under blown-in insulation. Balance is what matters: exhaust without intake just pulls conditioned air up out of your house.
Vented panels are rated by the actual open area they provide. We size to that rating, not to how many vented strips happen to fit.
Where insulation reaches the roof edge we install baffles, so the new intake stays open instead of being packed shut from inside.
We check what the roof already exhausts before adding intake, so the system is balanced rather than fighting itself.
Ventilation requirements vary with roof design, insulation and local code, so treat the 1:300 figure as the starting point we verify on your home, not a promise about your specific roof. If your roof also needs work, see our residential roofing page.
For most of the perimeter, aluminum wins on maintenance and on solving ventilation at the same time. Wood earns its place where the underside of the roof is visible and worth looking at. Most of the homes we finish use both, deliberately.
Calgary workhorse
Pre-finished, will not rot, and comes in vented panels that solve attic intake at the same time as the finish. It shrugs off moisture and chinook swings, and it never needs repainting. For most Calgary homes this is the honest first pick.
Warm & visible
Real warmth where people see it, which is why we use it on entries, porches and feature overhangs. It needs sealing and periodic refinishing, and ventilation has to be detailed into it deliberately rather than assumed.
Feature detail
The high end of the visible roofline: stained cedar, exposed brackets and beam detail. Best used as a deliberate accent over an aluminum base elsewhere, so you get the character without maintaining the whole perimeter.
Lifespans assume the fascia behind the finish is sound and the eavestrough is draining properly, which is the part you cannot see from the ground and we never skip. Replacing soffit over rotted rafter tails just hides the problem for a few years. Relative material cost compares these materials to each other, not a quote for your project. Your price depends on size, access and what we find underneath.
Soffit and fascia work is fast when it is planned properly. Here is exactly what to expect.
We inspect soffit, fascia, eavestrough backing and attic intake together, and photograph what we find.
We work out the vented area your attic actually needs and where the intake has to go, before choosing panels.
Aluminum, wood or a mix, matched to your roof, trim and the look you want at the entry.
We strip the old soffit and fascia, expose the rafter tails, and repair rot or damaged framing before anything new goes up.
Panels, fascia and eavestrough backing installed by in-house crews, then a walk of every elevation with you.
The soffit is the horizontal surface on the underside of your roof overhang, the part you see when you stand under the eave and look up. The fascia is the vertical board that runs along the roof edge, closing off the rafter ends and carrying your eavestrough. Soffit mostly handles air, fascia mostly handles water, and both have to work for the roof above them to last.
Soffit vents are the intake side of your attic ventilation. Cool air enters at the soffit, travels up under the roof deck and exits through ridge or roof vents, carrying heat and moisture out with it. Without that intake the exhaust vents have nothing to draw from, so the attic overheats in summer and collects moisture in winter, which shortens shingle life and can cause frost on the sheathing.
The common rule of thumb is one square foot of net free vent area for every 300 square feet of attic floor, split roughly half intake at the soffit and half exhaust at the ridge. Actual requirements vary with roof design, insulation and local code, so we verify the numbers on your specific roof rather than assuming. The half most often missed is intake, because solid or painted-shut soffit looks finished but vents nothing.
Look along the board behind your eavestrough for peeling paint, dark staining, soft spots or a gutter that has started to sag or pull away. Rot usually starts where water sits, so the low points and the corners go first. If a screwdriver presses into the board easily, the wood is gone and the rafter tails behind it should be checked at the same time.
Usually yes, and it is almost always cheaper. The fascia and drip edge sit directly under the first course of shingles, so replacing them later means disturbing new roofing. Doing both together also means one crew owns the junction where the roof, the attic intake and the exterior wall meet, which is exactly where poor coordination causes leaks.
For most of the perimeter, aluminum is the practical choice: it is pre-finished, it never rots, it does not need repainting, and vented panels solve attic intake at the same time. Wood is worth it where the underside of the roof is visible, like entries, porches and feature overhangs, but it needs sealing and periodic refinishing. Many homes we finish use aluminum everywhere except the feature areas.
Often it is. Most Alberta home policies cover sudden hail and wind damage to the exterior, and a storm that dents soffit panels or tears fascia has usually hit the roof as well. What decides the claim is documentation, so we inspect and photograph the roofline damage in detail and can repair the roof and roofline together as one project.
Tell us what you are seeing along the roofline. You’ll get a clear written quote.
Serving: Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, Chestermere. Flexible financing available.