Soffit

ARMA's Residential Asphalt Roofing Manual keeps the entry short: “Soffit: The finished underside of the eaves.” Finished is the working word. The rafter or truss ends that reach out past the wall are framing, and the soffit covers them from below so the overhang reads as a ceiling.

Its neighbors are defined by where they sit. The eave is the horizontal lower edge of the roof above, and ARMA defines the overhang as the portion of the roof structure that extends beyond the exterior walls. The soffit spans that overhang from the wall out to its edge, where the fascia, the board over the rafter or truss ends, closes the outer face.

A ladder leaned against the roof edge rests just outside the soffit, against the gutter or the fascia board. An accessory that holds a ladder off those surfaces is called a ladder standoff, the word Ladder-Max, a ladder accessory maker, uses for a product it sells to keep a ladder away from gutters, roofing and walls.

ARMA's manual treats the soffit as one of three places a vent can go. Its glossary defines a vent, in part, as “Any device installed on the roof, gable or soffit for the purpose of ventilating the underside of the roof deck.” A vent in the soffit lets air reach the space under the deck from below the roof edge.

A vent only works while air can move through it, and ARMA's manual says so plainly for the attic side: “Eaves or soffit vents should not be blocked by insulation.”

How much ventilation an attic needs, and whether the vents in a particular soffit provide it, are building and roofing questions. They are not something to judge from the ground or from a glossary.

The soffit also appears by name in Florida Statutes 489.117(4)(a)3, in a sentence about which local licenses may stay in place: “A local government may continue to offer a license for veneer, including aluminum or vinyl gutters, siding, soffit, or fascia; rooftop painting, coating, and cleaning above three stories in height; or fence installation and erection if the local government imposed such a licensing requirement before January 1, 2021.”

Read with the paragraph before it, that sentence is an exception. Florida Statutes 489.117(4)(a)1 says a local government may not require a license for job scopes that do not substantially correspond to a state contractor category, and it lists painting, handyman services and pressure washing among them. Subparagraph 3 then lets a local government that already licensed soffit veneer, or the other scopes it names, before January 1, 2021, keep doing so.

So whether a local license for soffit veneer is still on offer depends on the local government and on whether it imposed that requirement before that date, and the office that issues its licenses has the answer. The same sentence's clause about rooftop cleaning above three stories is explained under why some rules mention roofs over three stories.