In the table below, we’ve compared the project costs of maintaining a softwood roofline with the cost of replacing it in its entirety. We’ve assumed that you pay a contractor to maintain your roofline, rather than doing it yourself. We’ve also assumed that the cost of maintenance rises by around 15% every four years, taking into account factors such as:

• inflation, currently running at around 4% (December 2010)
• increased materials cost (bearing in mind that our own materials have increased in cost by around 16% every year for the last three years, mainly due to rising oil prices)

For an average-sized three-bedroom house, the cost to replace the whole roofline with uPVC is likely to be around £2500. The cost for repairing and repainting an existing softwood roofline on the same property would be around £500.