Insulation in Bearwood
Loft top-ups, roof rooms and converted garages across the Bearwood estates, ventilated properly and priced in writing before anything starts.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Almost every house in Bearwood was built with loft insulation already in it, to the standard of the day, and almost none of it has been touched since. The job here is nearly always adding a layer over what is there, not clearing a loft out and starting again.
People ring us about three things on this estate. An upstairs room that will not hold heat overnight, usually the one over the garage or at the end of a terrace. A loft they have just been into for the first time in years, where the wool has flattened, slumped between the trusses and left bare plasterboard showing in the corners. And a converted garage or roof room that was finished quickly and is now the coldest part of the house.
None of it is complicated work and none of it takes long. We are ten minutes away, the site visit is free, and the written itemised quote is free with it. If all your loft needs is a cross layer and a sealed hatch, we will tell you that rather than sell you a system.
The work
An extra full elevation, on every end of terrace
The top-up, which is most of it. Bearwood is largely eighties housing, and an eighties loft was built with one layer of mineral wool laid between the joists and nothing over them. It is thinner than anything specified now, it has settled under its own weight, and the joists themselves are a cold bridge running across the whole ceiling. We straighten and repair what is down, close the gaps at the ends of the runs, then lay a fresh layer across the joists at right angles, between and over, to a finished depth of roughly 270mm. Nothing needs to come out unless it is wet, mouldy or full of rodent damage, and you get a photograph either way.
An extra full elevation, on every end of terrace. Nearly three in ten homes here are terraced, and the ones that feel the cold are the end of terrace and the linked houses with a room over the garage. The end house has an extra full elevation exposed, and the room over a garage has a cold, unheated space beneath its floor as well as a roof above it. Both are worth doing properly rather than just topping up the loft: the floor void over the garage takes rigid board or wool between the joists from below, and the garage ceiling gets a vapour control layer before it is boarded back.
Where a garage has become a room the walls are often a single skin of block with a thin cavity, so the fix is an internal lining, insulated board or PIR between battens, taped and skimmed. Where the roof space has become a room it is rigid board between and under the rafters with the ventilation gap kept clear above, or a multi-layer foil quilt where a sloping ceiling is already finished, and that is priced by the room rather than by the loft. Most of these lofts have chipboard down for storage, screwed straight onto the joists and squashing the wool flat: we lift it, lay the depth underneath, and raise the deck back up on legs. The hatch gets a board and a draught seal, because a bare hatch is a hole in everything you have just laid. The tank and pipework get lagging, since the loft is colder after the job, and downlighters get covers instead of a heap of wool. Houses of this age were usually built with some cavity insulation already in place, partial fill batts against the inner leaf, so a survey comes before anyone talks about injecting more.
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. Nothing inside a loft needs planning permission, and with no conservation area over Bearwood, insulation on the outside of a wall is normally permitted development as well; the council's list of conservation areas is public if you want to check the address, and Planning Portal guidance on insulation covers the rest. There are three listed entries in the area, so we check an address before quoting it. Building control is the part that matters: regulation 23 of the Building Regulations means renovating more than half of a thermal element brings the whole element up to standard. BCP Council for both here.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
No rate per square metre: the area is the easy part. A mid terrace with a small drop down hatch over the stairs, a linked house with a room and a loft over the garage, and a detached house with the loft boarded out for storage are three different mornings before any material is ordered. 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, whether the floor over a garage is in the price, and whether the hatch is being sealed.
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. Bearwood is ten minutes away; say if the cold room is over a garage. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Your loft was insulated once, in the eighties, and that is the problem
Bearwood is unusual in how tightly the housing is grouped in age. The bulk of it went up in the eighties, which was late enough that the builders put insulation in as standard and early enough that the standard was a fraction of today's. So very few lofts here are bare, and very few are anywhere near where they should be.
Forty years of settling has taken depth out of the layer, anyone who has been up for a cable or an aerial has left a trench through it, and the builders routinely pushed the wool hard into the eaves, which is the one place it does more harm than good, because it blocks the airflow the roof space needs.
What follows is a decision rather than a job. If the existing layer is dry and in one piece, leave it and lay over it, because removing sound material is money spent to end up where you started. If it is damp, black underneath or has been used as a nest, it comes out, gets bagged and goes with us, and that is a cost you should see on the quote as its own line rather than buried.
Either way the eaves get opened back up with vent trays before the new depth goes down, and the hatch gets sealed the same day. If a neighbour on your row has recently had theirs done, your house is the same age and the same build, and what they were told will very likely apply to you too.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Bearwood, Merley, Longham, West Parley and the BH11 addresses out towards Kinson and Wallisdown, with BCP Council for planning and building control. Send the postcode if you want to be sure. 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
Bearwood questions we get asked
There are no old houses in Bearwood. Does that help?
It makes the job predictable. Not one dwelling in Bearwood was built before 1919 and 34.6% of the place went up in the 1980s, so we are nearly always in a trussed roof with felt beneath the tiles and joists at a regular spacing. No lath and plaster ceiling to put a foot through, no rubble filled wall plate, no chimney in the middle. What is dated is the depth, which was set by the standards of the day.
Our loft hatch is small and there is no ladder. Problem?
This is the commonest hold up on a Bearwood estate and it is solvable. Hatches from the 1980s are small, unlined and often tucked into a landing corner with no room to swing a ladder. We bring our own, and the material goes up compressed in bags rather than as open rolls, which will not turn through a tight opening. If it is too narrow even for that, enlarging it between the joists gets its own line.
Why can I see the joists as lines on the ceiling?
That pattern is the frame of the roof printing through. Plaster over a joist is colder in insulation terms than plaster between joists, so airborne dust settles on those lines first, and after a few winters you can read the timber from the landing. It tells you the material up there sits between the joists and nothing crosses them. A layer laid at right angles over the top is what makes the lines go away.
Which is worth doing first, the ceiling or the walls?
The ceiling, every time. Heat leaves upward, and the loft is the one part of the fabric you can reach without touching the finish of a room or the face of the building. In Bearwood, where 37.0% of the housing dates from 1983 to 2008, the walls of that period were built as cavities, so the wall question is about what is already in them rather than whether to add. The ceiling answer never changes.
Is there VAT on this, and how firm is the quote?
VAT is charged; we are Bournemouth Roofing and Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. What we will not do is give a figure over the phone and add to it later. Thomas measures the loft, writes it up itemised so the material, the depth, the hatch and any extras sit as separate lines, and the total on that sheet is the total. The visit and the sheet cost you nothing.
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Not sure what is already in your loft?
We will get up there, measure what is down, look at the eaves and the hatch, and put the options in writing. The visit and the quote are free.