Insulation in Breamore
Loft insulation, rafter level work under sloping ceilings, solid wall and floor insulation around Breamore. We survey what is there before anyone talks about depth.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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In a village where a lot of houses buy their heat by the tanker or off the meter, the loft is the first thing to sort in Breamore and usually the cheapest. Every bit of heat the fabric holds on to is heat nobody has to pay to make twice.
A Breamore house that needs insulating usually says so in the rooms under the roof, in the loft or on the fuel bill. The house never feels warm in the rooms under the roof, however long the heating runs. There is condensation in the loft or on the inside of a bedroom window, and mould that keeps coming back in the same corner.
Or the fuel is going faster every winter and somebody has finally decided to do something about the house, not the boiler. We come out, get into the roof space properly, and tell you what is there, what it is doing and what is worth changing, in that order.
The work
Hand cut joists, so every roll gets cut to fit
Hand cut joists, so every roll gets cut to fit. There are more than sixty listed entries in and around this village, and an old roof was not put together with a truss plant.
Ceiling joists are hand cut, they sit at odd centres, and a roll of mineral wool that is right for one bay is two inches wide for the next. That just means the material gets cut to fit rather than dropped in and left with gaps down both sides, and it makes the second layer across the joists matter more than usual. Full depth is 270mm of ordinary eco roll worked in two directions, an even 250mm carried right to the wall plate, and 0.16 is the u-value a loft ceiling is expected to reach when the roof is renovated. Where old material has settled to half its thickness, gone sooty around a flue or got wet under a slipped tile, it comes out and goes with us.
Ceilings that will not take weight. A lath and plaster ceiling holds itself up and nothing else. Put a knee between the joists and you have a plastering job as well as an insulation one. We work off crawl boards, and where you want storage afterwards it goes on raised loft legs over a proper depth rather than boarding screwed straight onto the joists squashing the wool flat.
Where there is a room in the roof there is no loft floor and the insulation belongs at rafter level: rigid PIR board between the rafters with the ventilation gap kept open, then a layer under them so the timber is not a cold bridge. Where headroom is tight a foil faced multi-layer quilt such as TLX gets part of the way, with sealed laps and an air gap either side. A dormer on one of those rooms is built as a warm roof, cheeks and top together. Where an old roof still has bitumen felt under the tiles rather than a breathable membrane, that vented gap is not optional and we will not fill it, whatever depth it costs you. A wall with no cavity is either internal wall insulation, which takes a little off the room and means dealing with skirtings and reveals, or external wall insulation, EWI on a quote, which changes how the building looks. On a wall that has always breathed, the material matters as much as the thickness, and wood fibre suits these buildings better than foil faced board. Newer houses do have cavity walls, checked with a borescope, because an unfilled cavity and one full of slumped fill look identical from outside. A suspended timber ground floor over a vented void is a real source of draught and can be insulated between the joists provided the air bricks stay clear. With getting on for four in ten homes out in Breamore on oil, that draught costs more than it would in town. Then lagging on pipe runs through a cold roof space and covers over the downlighters.
How it runs
Insulating an older home without trapping damp
Thomas visits and goes over the whole building: the loft, the walls, the floors and the ventilation. In an older house the walls are often solid and the floors may be suspended timber or laid straight on the earth, and they rely on air moving through them to stay dry.
Adding the wrong insulation to a Breamore house traps moisture. He tells you what suits your house. The quote separates the survey, clearing out old material, the new material and how thick it goes, any ventilation work, and disposal. Each line is priced on its own, so you can see where the money goes.
Old material is bagged and taken away from Breamore. Floors and stairs are covered under the loft hatch. Because it is a long drive, materials are ordered in advance and delivered for the start. If the survey finds damp, a leak or wiring that should not be buried, it is photographed and priced before anything goes over it.
Insulating a loft, a floor or a cavity is not development, so there is no planning application, and the Planning Portal explains the exceptions. Filling a cavity is still notifiable building work, which the registered installer normally self-certifies. A loft top-up is not seen from the road, but anything that changes the outside may need permission if a conservation area applies, which is worth checking with the council. On a listed building even an internal lining needs consent first. New Forest District Council is the authority.
Cost
What goes into the cost of insulating an old house
The material matters. On an old solid wall or lath ceiling in Breamore, breathable materials such as sheep's wool, wood fibre or mineral wool let moisture pass. Foam boards and spray foam do not, and they can cause damp and rot. Breathable materials often cost more, and on older buildings they are the ones that work.
Getting into the loft. Access through a landing hatch is simple. A loft reached through a cupboard, or with no loft at all where the rooms go up into the roof, means insulating between and under the rafters, which is slower.
What has to come out. Old, damp or dirty material is removed and bagged first.
Ventilation. Any insulation cuts air movement. Eaves ventilation, a sealed hatch and air bricks under a timber floor must stay clear. Approved Document L sets the standard, and it allows a lower target on historic buildings where the full standard would harm them.
Consent. On a listed building, a written specification may have to be agreed first.
Ask any other quote what material is going on a wall that must breathe, what depth is going in the loft, and whether consent has been checked.
If it is urgent
Mould or damp after insulation went in
If black mould keeps coming back, a room will not warm up, or damp has appeared since insulation was fitted, open the windows and keep the room heated. Look for anything recently boarded over, foamed or sealed, because that is often where moisture is being trapped.
Ring us instead of sending the form. Insulation work is scheduled Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and when a call is missed, we return it as soon as we have a moment. The first visit finds whether the cause is missing insulation, the wrong material, poor ventilation or a leak, before anything else is added.
Worth knowing
Buying heat by the tanker changes what insulation is worth
Close to four in ten households around Breamore run on oil, and a good number of the rest are on electricity with no mains gas at all. That does not change the physics of a loft, but it changes the arithmetic.
Heat bought by the tanker or off a meter costs more per unit than mains gas, so the same 270mm of mineral wool saves more money in this village than it does on an estate in town. It also changes how people notice the cost. There is no monthly bill nagging at you, just a delivery, so a badly insulated house here tends to go unnoticed for years and then get blamed on the boiler.
The order of work is worth getting right. Loft first, because it is the cheapest surface to treat and the one losing most. Then the draughts, which means the hatch, the eaves, the floor void and any open flue in a room nobody uses. Walls after that, once you know what you have.
Insulation fitted in a home is zero rated for VAT until 31 March 2027 under VAT Notice 708/6, so no quote for it should be adding VAT. And if a heat pump is on your mind at any point, do the fabric first: an uninsulated house needs a bigger unit running hotter to keep up, so the loft is not a delay to that plan, it is the cheapest part of it.
Who you are dealing with
The person who surveys and insulates your home
The survey and the price come from Thomas Hannen, who owns the business. He travels 16.1 miles from Boscombe for a house in Breamore, and also covers Woodgreen, Rockbourne, Sandleheath, Fordingbridge and most of SP6. The local authority is New Forest District Council.
Before you decide, look up Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, which is registered in England and Wales with company number 15471719. A verified Checkatrade customer has rated it 10 out of 10. The survey costs nothing, and the quote you receive, written out item by item, is free. Before you book a visit in Breamore, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Breamore?
Most repairs in Breamore 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 Breamore |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Breamore. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Breamore Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Breamore. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Breamore. |
Questions
Questions about insulation in Breamore
Does the conservation area cover the whole of Breamore?
Yes, the conservation area covers the village of Breamore, and 63 listed entries sit within it, farm buildings as well as houses. What is controlled is appearance: maintenance in the same material passes, a change of covering or material does not.
New Forest District holds the boundary map and it does not always run where people assume, so it is worth checking instead of guessing. None of it reaches a quilt laid over a loft floor, which cannot be seen from outside.
Plenty of houses here burn oil. Does insulation help?
It changes how often the tanker comes, which is the one lever most people here have. A lot of Breamore households heat with oil or electricity and few are on a gas main, so the heat is bought ahead and stored. A ceiling that leaks empties a tank. The loft is the part of the fabric that improves without touching a wall, a window or a finished room, so it comes first.
Our outbuilding is listed. Can it be insulated at all?
With consent, and it has to be designed rather than simply fitted. Breamore's list runs to 63 entries and a good number are farm buildings, which surprises people who assume listing is about houses. In a building of that kind the frame, the roof structure and often the internal face are all part of what is protected, so insulation has to work around them instead of being fixed through them. That conversation starts with the conservation officer.
How do we tell how much is up there already?
Push a rule down beside the hatch and read it against the top of the joist. If the material sits level with the timber then nothing crosses the joists and the frame is a cold line running through your ceiling. If it stands well proud, there is a second layer and the only question is whether it reaches the eaves. Send Thomas a photograph of the hatch with the rule in it before he drives out.
Does any of this need signing off by building control?
Not a cold loft; laying material over the joists is not notifiable. Building control comes into it when you insulate the roof slope itself, a flat roof or a wall, because that counts as renovating an element of the fabric and there is a standard to meet. In Breamore the conservation area sits on top of that, and consent as well for a listed building. Thomas sets out which of them apply, in writing, beforehand.
Nearby, and next door
Insulation near Breamore
Nearby places we also cover for insulation, with straight-line distances from Breamore, and the other trades we offer in Breamore itself.
Insulation nearby
Our other trades in Breamore
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 Verwood Insulation, all areas Every area we cover
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Get a price for insulating your Breamore home
Tell us the address and what the cold room is. We will get into the roof space, measure what is actually there, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge either way.