Insulation in Bransgore
Loft insulation, rafter level work in rooms in the roof, cavity and solid wall insulation around Bransgore. We measure what is already up there before we price a thing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Whether you need insulation is almost never the question in Bransgore, because nearly every loft here already has something in it. What matters is whether what is up there is deep enough, laid into the corners and not just across the middle, and whether the eaves are still clear.
When a Bransgore house needs its insulation looked at, it usually shows upstairs or in the loft first. A bedroom that never warms up, usually the one over the garage or under a sloping ceiling. A loft that drips or smells damp in a cold snap, or black mould coming back in a bedroom corner faster than it can be washed off.
Or they are about to board the loft out for storage and want the insulation sorted first, which is the right order to do it in. We come out, get properly into the loft instead of peering through the hatch, and measure what is actually there before anyone talks about topping it up.
The work
Slumped fill leaves the top metre of wall bare
Loft insulation, topped up or relaid. Most of the village went up between the mid 1960s and the early 1980s, on trussed rafters finished with a single thin layer of mineral wool laid between the ceiling joists.
Four decades on it has settled, been trodden on, pulled aside for cables and pushed back badly. The standard now is 270mm in two layers: one between the joists, a second across them at right angles so the timber is not a cold bridge and a straight line of heat loss through the middle of your insulation, which is what takes a ceiling to the 0.16 u-value expected when a pitched roof is insulated at ceiling level. An even 250mm carried right out to the wall plate is worth more than a deeper heap in the middle. Where the old material is dry and still lofted we lay ordinary eco roll over it; where it is compressed, sooty or wet it comes out and goes with us.
Slumped fill leaves the top metre of wall bare. Anything built here from the 1930s on has a cavity wall, and on the 1970s and early 1980s stock it is often either unfilled or filled with material that has slumped down the wall and left the top metre bare. That is checked with a borescope, not guessed at. Close to one house in five in the parish predates 1919, and those older cottages have solid walls with no cavity at all, so the choice is internal wall insulation, which costs you a little room size, or external wall insulation, EWI on a quote, which changes how the building looks from the lane.
The W of timber in a trussed roof is why so many of these lofts hold nothing but a suitcase, and you should not squash the insulation flat under chipboard to make a floor, because compressed wool has almost no thermal value left. Raised loft legs sit the boards above a full depth and give you back a storage deck without wrecking what is underneath, and we would rather board a small usable area properly than the whole loft badly. Bungalows are close to a quarter of the housing here and plenty of them have had the roof space converted or a dormer added, so there is no loft floor to insulate: the work goes to rafter level, rigid PIR board cut between the rafters with the ventilation gap kept above it and a second layer under them to kill the cold bridge, or a foil faced multi-layer quilt such as TLX where the depth is not there. Multi-layer only performs with sealed laps and an air gap either side, so we will tell you which of the two your ceiling can take. An uninsulated hatch undoes a surprising amount of a good loft, so does an unlagged tank once the space around it is properly cold, and downlighters need fire rated covers.
How it runs
Insulating a Bransgore home: roof, walls and floor
Thomas comes out and looks at the whole house, not only the loft. Most homes in Bransgore were built in the seventies and eighties, when the loft got a thin layer of mineral wool and the cavity was often left empty.
A bungalow has as much roof as floor, so the loft is usually the first job. He checks the loft depth, drills or looks into the cavity, and asks about damp. The written quote gives the survey, clearing, the material and its depth, ventilation and disposal. Any cavity fill is blown in by a registered cavity-wall installer.
Old insulation is bagged and taken away, never left in the loft or the garden. Floors and landings are covered under the hatch. A wet patch, a split in the felt, or wiring that should not be buried is photographed and priced on its own before anything is laid over it.
Insulating a loft, a cavity or a floor is not development, so there is nothing to apply for at almost every address, and the Planning Portal explains where that changes. External wall insulation changes the look of the building, and a room in the roof is a building regulations job. Bransgore has no conservation area. A listed building needs consent before anything touches the fabric, and the other permissions page covers leaseholds too. New Forest District Council is the authority.
Cost
What goes into the price of insulating a house
Which part of the house decides most of it. Topping up a loft in Bransgore is the simplest job. Filling a cavity is quick once it is proven clear and dry. A solid wall on one of the older cottages can only be lined inside or insulated outside, which is a much bigger job.
What is in the loft now. A bungalow loft from that era usually has a thin layer of old mineral wool, often flattened, plus a cold water tank and pipework. Old insulation that is damp or dirty comes out and is bagged. Boxes and boarding have to be moved or raised.
Whether the cavity suits filling. Most of the village's houses have cavity walls, but a gable facing the south west takes a lot of driven rain. A cavity fill on an exposed wall can bridge water across to the inside if the brickwork or pointing is poor. A borescope check tells us whether it is suitable.
Ventilation. Adding insulation cuts air movement. Eaves vents, a sealed hatch and trickle vents may be needed, and Approved Document L sets what the work should reach.
Getting in. A hatch on the landing is easy. A small hatch over a stairwell or a crawl space is slower.
Ask any other quote what depth goes down, whether the cavity has been checked, and whether ventilation is included.
If it is urgent
Mould, condensation or a room that stays cold
If black mould keeps coming back on a ceiling corner, or water drips from the loft, open the windows in that room and keep it heated. Wipe the mould off with a mould cleaner, not bleach and water, and look up in the loft for wet insulation or droplets under the felt.
Phone us about this one. Insulation work is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and a call we cannot pick up is returned soon after. Our visit then finds out whether the cause is missing insulation, blocked ventilation, or both, before anything new is added, because more insulation in a loft that cannot breathe makes it worse.
Worth knowing
Why the edges of a Bransgore roof feel colder than the middle
The weather that matters here comes off the southwest, and it arrives at the eaves. Where a roof has open eaves or a soffit that has never been sealed, wind gets into the edge of the loft and blows straight through the surface of soft mineral wool.
It is called wind washing, and it is why a loft that measures a good 270mm at the hatch can be doing very little in the last metre before the wall plate, which is exactly the strip sitting over your bedroom walls. If the upstairs rooms are cold around the outside edges but fine in the middle, that is usually what you have, not a shortage of depth.
The fix is not to stuff the eaves, because the roof still has to breathe or you trade a cold room for condensation. Vent trays hold an open ventilation path above the insulation while the edge itself is closed off to the wind, and a denser board or a tucked edge at the perimeter stops the draught crossing the surface.
Some checks need no installer: on a windy day put a hand at the edge of the loft and see whether you can feel air moving over the wool, and when you compare quotes, ask specifically whether the eaves are being baffled and the ventilation kept open. On an exposed elevation that detail is worth more than another 100mm laid across the middle.
Who you are dealing with
The person who surveys your house
You speak to Thomas Hannen. He owns the business and comes to survey the loft and walls himself before he prices anything. He drives the 5.6 miles from Boscombe for it, whether the house is in the middle of Bransgore or out at Thorney Hill, Sopley, Burley, Hinton or Christchurch.
New Forest District Council deals with any planning or building control. The registered company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, England and Wales, company number 15471719. A customer verified by Checkatrade gave a score of 10 out of 10. The survey visit costs you nothing, and the written quote breaking down each item is also free. Before you book a visit in Bransgore, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Bransgore?
Most repairs in Bransgore need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In Bransgore |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Bransgore. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Bransgore, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Bransgore. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Bransgore. |
Questions
Questions about insulation in Bransgore
Most houses here are detached. Does that change anything?
Yes, a detached house puts more exposed surface round the same rooms. 41.3% of Bransgore is detached and 31.6% of the whole village went up in the 1970s and early 1980s, so the typical house has four exposed walls and a loft laid to the depth that counted as right then. Four walls means the roof is doing proportionally more, not less. We measure what is actually up there instead of assuming a depth from the age of the house.
Can the ground floor be insulated from below round here?
Only where the void underneath is dry, and drainage around Bransgore is impeded, so often it is not. Before anything goes between those joists we lift a board and look: standing water, a wet oversite or blocked air bricks means the ground has to be dealt with first. Insulating a damp void puts a sponge where the air used to move. Over a solid floor the answer is different and usually waits until the finish comes up.
We are outside the National Park. Does that simplify permission?
It settles who you ask. Bransgore falls to New Forest District instead of the Park authority, there is no conservation area over the village, and the 13 listed entries are scattered rather than concentrated. For most addresses that means the outside of the building is not controlled and only the listed few need consent. It matters most if external wall insulation is on the table, because that is where the boundary changes the answer.
Our cottage roof has no felt under the tiles. Does insulating hurt?
It helps, as long as air can still move. 18.2% of Bransgore predates 1919 and roofs of that age were often laid straight onto battens with nothing beneath, so the space has always been ventilated through the gaps between tiles. Raising the depth makes it colder, which is fine, because those same gaps keep letting moisture out. What changes is the hatch and any pipework, now sitting in cold air and needing attention in the same visit.
The converted garage is freezing. What can be done to it?
Ceiling first, then the floor, then the walls. A garage converted after the event usually has a shallow flat or lean to roof over it, a solid floor laid on the old slab and walls built to a garage standard rather than a room one. If there is any depth above the ceiling that is the easiest gain and the least disruption. We open one small hole to see what is up there before quoting rather than guessing.
Nearby, and next door
Insulation near Bransgore
Nearby places we also cover for insulation, with straight-line distances from Bransgore, and the other trades we offer in Bransgore itself.
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Our other trades in Bransgore
Insulation guides
Part L: do you have to insulate when you re-roof? Black mould on walls: what causes it and what stops it PIR board vs mineral wool: which insulation?Everything we do in Highcliffe Insulation, all areas Every area we cover
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Get a price for insulating your Bransgore loft
Tell us the address and which room is cold. We will get into the loft, measure what is actually there, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge either way.