Insulation in Ashmore
Loft depth put back, breathable materials on old fabric, floors and draughts dealt with, and straight advice on what a solid wall will take, across Ashmore and SP5.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In an old Ashmore cottage the loft and the draughts are where the money goes, and the walls are where people get into trouble. A solid wall built to breathe will hold damp behind the wrong lining, so we insulate what can safely be insulated first and tell you honestly where to stop.
Up here on the chalk the wind finds everything. The calls we get from the village are usually one of three: a room over an unheated space that never gets comfortable, oil going through faster every winter, or somebody who has read about wall insulation and wants to know whether it is a good idea in a house of this age. The third one is a fair question and the answer depends entirely on how the wall was built.
So we come and look before anybody talks about materials. Up into the roof space, a proper measure of what depth is there, a look at how the ceilings are built, a check on the floors and the draughts, and photographs of all of it.
Then a written itemised quote with each part on its own line, so you can do the loft this year and think about the rest. The survey and the quote are free, and if the sensible answer is to spend the money on draughtproofing rather than anything grand, that is what we will put in writing.
The work
Breathable build-ups, on walls that have to dry
Old roofs, and holding the depth at the eaves. Roofs cut on site have joists that are rarely regular and often shallow, and plenty of them have no membrane under the tiles at all. That makes for a well ventilated roof space and a draughty one, and loose laid wool at the edges gets scoured by wind coming in over the wall plate. We work mineral wool, ordinary eco roll, between the joists and cross lay over the top to reach around 270mm, the depth that takes a ceiling to the 0.16 U-value Approved Document L asks for when a thermal element is renovated. Just as important, we hold the wool out at the eaves so the depth is real all the way to the wall, and keep a clear air path above it so the timbers stay dry. Where a ceiling is lath and plaster we lay from boards, because those ceilings will take insulation but they will not take a boot.
Breathable build-ups, on walls that have to dry. A solid stone, brick or flint wall sheds moisture by letting it move through and evaporate. Wrap the inside in foil faced PIR and you push that damp back into the wall and into the timber ends buried in it. On buildings like these we favour breathable build-ups: sheep wool or wood fibre quilt in a floor or a roof slope, wood fibre board and a lime finish where an internal lining is wanted, and no vapour tight layer on anything that has to dry inwards. The newer houses at the edge of the village do have a cavity wall, and that gets a borescope check first. A room in the roof here rarely has the rafter depth for a modern build-up, so the honest options are rigid board as thick as the rafters allow, a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX where even that will not fit, or a partial improvement with the rest of the budget in the flat ceilings. What we will not do is pack a slope solid with no ventilation gap and leave the rafter feet to rot quietly for ten years.
Suspended timber ground floors can be insulated between the joists from below where there is crawl space, with the air bricks left completely clear. Sealing the gaps around floorboards, doors, hatches and an open flue often does more for how a room feels than any amount of extra depth in the loft, and with around a quarter of homes out here heated by oil rather than the gas main, a draught costs more than it does in town. Then an insulated and sealed hatch, lagging on any pipe run through a cold roof space, covers over downlighters, and vent trays where the eaves need holding open.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The quote is itemised: survey, clearing, material and depth, ventilation and disposal on separate lines. Laying insulation in a loft needs no planning application and no building control notice and does not touch your permitted development rights, which is what Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets out. Ashmore is the exception worth taking seriously: the village has its own conservation area and twenty six listed entries, so anything that alters the outside of a building, external wall insulation, or EWI, above all, is a planning conversation before it is a building one. Dorset Council is the authority, and we say plainly when a job needs an application rather than quoting it and leaving you to find out. Insulation in a home is currently zero rated for VAT.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
No rate per square metre: the area is the easy part. A cottage with the hatch on a narrow landing, a farmhouse with two roof voids that do not connect, and a modern house at the edge of the village with a drop down ladder are three different jobs before any material is opened. Old material that has to come out and be bagged is a cost of its own. Approved Document L sets what the work must reach. Ask what depth is going down, what the material is on a wall that has to dry, and whether the eaves are being held open.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. A dripping loft, black mould that comes back faster than you can wash it off, or a room that will not hold heat gets looked at quickly, and the first visit works out whether it is insulation, ventilation or both. Ashmore is nearly twenty miles out, so we are straight about the day. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
The conservation area decides what you can do to the outside
Ashmore has its own conservation area and a lot of listed buildings in a small village, which is unusual even on this part of the chalk. For insulation that matters in one direction more than any other: work you cannot see is generally straightforward, and work that changes the face of a building generally is not. Loft insulation, floor insulation and draughtproofing sit in the first group.
External wall insulation sits firmly in the second, and on a listed cottage internal linings can also affect historic fabric, so consent can be needed for work that is entirely indoors. Dorset Council explains what needs listed building consent and it is worth a look before you order anything.
The practical route in a village like this is the one that respects how the buildings were made. Get the roof space to full depth, insulate the ground floor if there is a void under it, seal the draughts, lag everything in a cold space, and make the windows and doors work properly.
That takes most of the sting out of a cold cottage without touching the outside of it or trapping moisture in a wall that was never designed to be sealed. If a wall lining still looks worth doing after that, it should be a breathable one, detailed around the joist ends and window reveals, and checked against the listing first. We would rather have that conversation on the doorstep than halfway through the job.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Ashmore, Sixpenny Handley, Tollard Royal, Iwerne Minster and the Cranborne Chase villages, and we come out to SP5 as readily as anywhere else on the patch. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Ashmore questions we get asked
Would the conservation area allow insulation rendered onto the outside?
Not as a free choice. Ashmore Conservation Area controls how the village looks, so like for like maintenance passes and a change of material does not. A rendered jacket over a wall alters the depth of every reveal and the line of every eave, which is exactly what the designation exists to catch. Inside is a different question: a loft, a floor or an internal lining changes nothing anyone can see from the lane. Dorset Council decides, before anything is ordered.
We heat from an oil tank. Does the loft matter more?
It matters more than it would on a gas main. About 24.5% of households in Ashmore run on oil and 4.3% on electricity, so the heat is bought in one go and watched going down in a tank. The fabric decides how much heat you need; the fuel only decides how you pay for it. A ceiling that leaks is a tank that empties sooner. The loft is the simplest part of the fabric to put right.
Our cottage is listed. What can actually be done to it?
The loft floor, in nearly every case. Ashmore carries 26 listed entries in a very small village, so most of what we price here is consented work. A listing reaches the inside of a building as well as the outside, which is why lining a sloping ceiling or an internal wall is a design question before it is a building one. Quilt laid over the joists of a cold roof space alters nothing that is protected.
What do you look at first inside an Ashmore loft?
Which side of the heritage line the house sits on, because with a conservation area over the village and 26 listed entries in it, that changes what we can propose. After that: the wall plate, whether the ceiling below is lath and plaster and will not carry a boot, where the chimney passes through, and daylight. Burying a hole under new material only delays the winter you find it. Then Thomas measures and writes it up.
Is midwinter the wrong time to have this done?
Midwinter is when people notice it and a perfectly workable time to do it. The work is dry and it is indoors, so nothing about it waits on the weather. The one thing we watch on ground as exposed as Ashmore is wind: with the most exposed wall facing south west, an open hatch on a gusty day moves loose fibre round the roof space. We work with it closed between loads and clear the space at the end.
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Get a price for insulating your Ashmore cottage
Tell us the address and what the house does in a cold week. We will look at the roof space, the floors and the draughts, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge and no obligation.