Insulation in Bournemouth
Loft, roof and wall insulation for houses, top floor flats and converted villas across Bournemouth, quoted in writing you can pass to a freeholder.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Half the homes in this part of Bournemouth are flats, so the first question is usually not what to put in the roof space but who is allowed to say yes to it. Get that sorted and the work itself is quick. In the houses it is the ordinary job: a layer laid over the joists, the eaves kept clear, done in a day.
Most of our calls here are one of three things. A top floor flat that bakes in summer and cannot be kept warm in winter, because there is next to nothing between the ceiling and the roof. A big old villa split into flats, where the top rooms are in the roof itself and every wall is an outside wall. And a house where somebody has finally looked into the loft and found a thin, grey, flattened layer put down decades ago.
We are minutes away, so getting up there to look costs you nothing. The site visit is free, the written itemised quote is free, and if you are a leaseholder we will happily put the quote in a form you can send to a freeholder or managing agent.
The work
In a converted villa, the top rooms are the roof
Top floor flats and the roof space above them. Half the homes in this part of the town are flats, which makes this the commonest job here and the one with the biggest effect on a heating bill: the flat below you has a warm flat above it and you have a cold roof. Where the void is reachable it is mineral wool, ordinary eco roll, laid between and over the joists in the ordinary way, 250 to 270mm all in for the 0.16 u-value a renovated roof is expected to reach. Where it is a shallow void with no room to crawl, the work is done from the hatch outwards, or at rafter level with rigid PIR board instead. On a block the roof space is usually common parts rather than yours, so we quote it in a form that a freeholder or a managing agent can act on.
In a converted villa, the top rooms are the roof. A lot of the older inter-war and Victorian houses here were split into flats, and the top flat sits under the slope with dormers cut into it. There is no loft floor to lay anything on, so insulation goes between and under the rafters as rigid board, with a vapour control layer behind the plasterboard and a clear ventilation gap kept above. Where a sloping ceiling has no thickness to give away, a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX gets a genuine improvement into very little depth. That work is priced by the room and we make good the plaster afterwards.
Around a third of the homes here are detached and their lofts are usually a straightforward job. The original layer sits between the joists only, so the timber acts as a cold bridge, and a second layer laid across it covers that. Where boarding has been screwed straight down onto the wool we lift it, bring the depth up underneath and raise the deck back on legs so you keep the storage. Insulating a ceiling makes the space above it colder and damp air condenses more easily, so the eaves stay clear, vent trays go in, downlighters get covers, and the hatch is insulated and draught sealed, with lagging on the tank and pipework once the loft has gone cold. In a converted house with several kitchens and bathrooms under one roof there is a lot of moisture looking for a way out, and that is worth an extra ten minutes at the survey. Inter-war houses here can have a narrow cavity wall or none at all, so a survey comes before anyone talks about filling one, and where there is nothing to fill it is internal wall insulation or external wall insulation, EWI, on the worst elevation for heat loss. Three kilometres from the sea, salt keeps surfaces damp between showers, so the seaward elevation gets a look before anything is sealed up against it.
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. Insulating inside a loft needs no planning permission, and there is no conservation area over this part of the town; the council's list of conservation areas is public if you want to check an address. One thing worth knowing on a flat: permitted development rights apply to houses and not to flats, so anything done to the outside of a block is a planning application rather than an assumption, and Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets out the rest. Building control applies either way, since 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.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
No rate per square metre: the area is the easy part. A top floor flat where the hatch is on a communal landing, a converted villa where the top rooms are already in the roof, and a detached house with a boarded loft are three different jobs 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, who is instructing the work if the roof space is common parts, and whether the eaves stay clear.
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. We are minutes away; on a flat, have the managing agent's details to hand. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
In a flat, the roof space is usually not yours
Half the homes in this part of Bournemouth are flats, and in almost all of them the loft or roof void above the top floor is common parts, owned by the freeholder and managed on their behalf rather than belonging to whoever lives under it. That catches people out, because the cold is entirely yours and the space causing it is not.
The order that actually works is: read what the lease says about the roof and the common parts, ask the freeholder or the managing agent in writing for permission to insulate, and get a quote you can attach to that request. We write ours so it can be forwarded, with the roof space, the access route and the making good as separate lines, because a managing agent will not approve a figure with no detail behind it.
If the block is having the work done rather than you, the process is different again. Where a landlord or a management company recovers the cost of major works from leaseholders through the service charge, section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 sets out a consultation procedure they have to follow, which means notice and a chance to comment rather than a bill landing out of nowhere.
We are happy to price a whole block that way, and to price each roof space separately so the leaseholders can see what they are being asked to pay for. If you are a leaseholder pushing for it, the argument that usually lands is that the top floor flats are the ones losing the heat and the roof void is the cheapest place in the building to fix it.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole and the BH postcodes across the conurbation, 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
Bournemouth questions we get asked
Half the homes here are flats. Is there even a loft?
In half of them there is not, which changes the answer completely. Flats are 50.1% of the dwellings in this part of Bournemouth, and only the top floor of a block sits under a roof space at all. On a middle floor the heat is leaving through walls and windows instead. On a top floor there is usually a void above the ceiling, reached from a communal landing, and in a lot of these blocks nothing has ever been laid in it.
The house is inter-war with a cut roof. Is that harder?
Slower rather than harder. Nearly a fifth of the housing around Winton East, 19.8%, dates from between the wars, and those roofs were cut on site: purlins, struts and a chimney breast standing in the middle of the space instead of a clear run of trusses. The material has to be worked around timber and pushed under the purlin rather than stopped at it, which is where most old jobs fall short. Longer morning, better result.
You are based two miles away. Does that make a difference?
It means the roof gets looked at before you have booked a day off for it. The yard is under two miles from here, so Thomas can usually see a Bournemouth loft the same week you ring, with the written quote following rather than waiting on a run out this way. It also means a single small item is worth doing on its own: a hatch, a cistern jacket, a bare run of eaves.
Does the loft do anything about the heat in summer?
It does, and in a top floor flat that is often the louder complaint. The same layer holding warmth in during January slows the roof cooking the ceiling in July, and a flat under a bare void takes the full force of it because there is no floor above to soak it up. What insulation cannot do by itself is get out the heat already inside, so it works with ventilation rather than instead of it.
How do you get materials up to a top floor flat?
Up the stairs in sealed bags, never as open rolls. A communal stairwell is the neighbours' hallway as much as yours, so it gets sheeted, the bags stay shut until they are through the hatch and the landing is cleared before we leave each day. Where the hatch sits over the stairwell rather than over a floor we work from a platform instead of a ladder. Thomas checks that route on the visit.
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Cold top floor, or a loft nobody has looked in?
We will get up there, measure what is down, check the ventilation, and put it in writing you can act on or forward. The visit and the quote are free.