Insulation in Broadstone
Loft top-ups, boarding done properly, rafter level work in converted roofs and cavity wall insulation across Broadstone. We measure the eaves as well as the middle.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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In Broadstone the loft is nearly always the job worth doing first. On a bungalow the roof sits directly over every room in the house, so what is up there decides more of your heating than anything else you could spend the same money on.
The signs in Broadstone tend to be familiar. The back bedroom is freezing and the front room is fine. The heating runs all evening and the house is cold again by breakfast. Or somebody has been up to put the Christmas boxes away, seen the state of the insulation under the boards, and wondered how long it has been like that.
We come out, get right into the loft instead of peering in from the ladder, and check the depth at the edges as well as in the middle, because that is usually where the difference is. Then you get a written price for what actually needs doing.
The work
Four shallow eaves instead of two on a hipped roof
Loft top-ups and full relays. Broadstone went up in a rush either side of 1960, and 63.1 per cent of the housing dates from between 1945 and 1982, the peak falling in the late fifties and early sixties.
Those Broadstone lofts got an inch or two of mineral wool if they got anything, and where a top-up has been added since it has usually gone on in one direction only, so the joists run through it as a cold bridge. We work to 270mm of ordinary eco roll in two layers, the second across the first, and take an even 250mm right out over the wall plate and not just to the last easy reach, which is how a ceiling under a pitched roof reaches the 0.16 u-value. Material that is compressed, damp or full of loft dust comes out, gets bagged and leaves with us.
Hipped roofs and the awkward perimeter. Bungalows are 42.0 per cent of the dwellings here and a lot of them are hipped on all four sides, which gives you four shallow eaves instead of two and very little room to work where the rafters meet the ceiling. That corner is where insulation gets thin, where the draught gets in, and where vent trays have to go so the roof still breathes once the depth goes up. On a bungalow the ceiling is also the largest single surface losing heat, so the last half metre decides whether the outside walls of your rooms feel cold.
Where a chipboard deck has been laid straight onto the joists over the original insulation, everything under those boards is squashed flat. The fix is raised loft legs, so the deck goes back at a height that leaves full depth underneath and you keep the storage. Where a bungalow has had the roof space turned into a room in the roof there is no loft floor left to treat and the work moves to rafter level: rigid PIR board cut between the rafters with a ventilation gap kept clear above, a layer under the rafters, and insulated dwarf walls at the sides. Where a sloping ceiling has no depth for rigid board, a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX gets part of the way, and a dormer is built as a warm roof.
Broadstone housing of this age has a cavity, and a fair few were filled decades ago with material that has since slumped and left the top of the wall bare, so it gets a borescope check before anyone quotes to refill it. If you are in one of the top floor flats around the village centre, the loft above you normally belongs to the freeholder, so the first call is to whoever manages the block. We will still look and put it in writing for you to send them. Then lagging on the tank and pipework, and covers over the downlighters.
How it runs
Insulating a bungalow: ceilings, chalet rooms and cavities
In a bungalow the loft sits over every room in the house, so it is where most of the heat goes and where insulation pays back quickest. Thomas goes up through the hatch, measures the depth that is there now, checks the eaves are clear and looks at the ventilation.
In a chalet he checks the sloping ceilings and the small voids behind the knee walls, which are harder to reach. He also looks at the outside walls to see whether the cavity has been filled.
The quote for a Broadstone house itemises the survey, clearing, the material and its depth, ventilation works and disposal. The whole job comes under that single quote. Floors and the hatch are sheeted, and old material is bagged and leaves with us. If the loft shows rot or a roof leak, we photograph it and price it separately, and you decide.
A loft, a cavity or a floor can be insulated without a planning application, and the Planning Portal explains the limits. External wall insulation is different because it changes the look of the house, so check it first, especially in one of the conservation areas by the centre.
Cost
Access, old wool and bungalow ceilings: what sets the cost
Nobody should quote insulation off the floor area alone. Getting in. A bungalow with a hatch in the hall and a clear loft is a quick start. The same bungalow boarded out and full of storage is a day of moving boxes before any material is unrolled. A top floor flat reached over a communal landing needs the managing agent's agreement too.
Rooms in the roof. A chalet bungalow has sloping ceilings, knee walls and small voids behind them. Insulating those means working in tight spaces, or from inside the room, and it takes far longer per metre than a flat loft.
What is up there. Old thin mineral wool that is compressed or dirty is bagged and taken away. The eaves have to stay clear for ventilation, and the depth has to reach right into the corners. Approved Document L sets the standard the work has to reach.
The walls. Post-war cavity walls can often be filled from outside. Whether the cavity is clear, and how exposed the wall is, is checked before anyone quotes.
Ask any other quote what depth is going down, whether old material is removed or covered, and whether the hatch and the pipework are included.
If it is urgent
Condensation, mould or a room you cannot heat
A loft running with condensation, black mould coming back on a bedroom ceiling, or a room that will not warm up before a cold spell are worth ringing about quickly. Do not add more insulation yourself first, because packing a roof space that cannot breathe makes the damp worse.
Ring us. The first visit works out whether the problem is ventilation, a missing layer or both. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Ring when it cannot wait. Scheduled work runs Mon to Fri, 8am to 6pm, and if we miss you we call back.
Worth knowing
In a bungalow the ceiling is not one job among several, it is the job
Something over four in ten homes in Broadstone are bungalows, which is unusual even for this part of Dorset, and it changes the sums. In a two-storey house of the same floor area, only half the rooms sit under the roof. In a bungalow every room does.
You are heating the same space through roughly twice the ceiling area, so the loft is a far bigger share of the total heat loss and the money spent up there works harder than the same money spent almost anywhere else on the building. It also means a thin, patchy or squashed loft shows up as cold rooms everywhere rather than just upstairs.
What that should change about how you buy the job: ask what depth is going in at the eaves, not in the middle. A hipped bungalow roof has a long, low perimeter, most of it too tight to crawl into comfortably, and it is the first thing a rushed job skimps.
Ask whether vent trays are included, because pushing insulation to the wall plate without them blocks the airflow and you trade cold rooms for a damp roof. And if you are thinking about converting rather than just insulating, say so before the work starts: the insulation then belongs at rafter level and doing the loft floor first is money spent twice.
Who you are dealing with
Insulation work from a Boscombe firm, 7.3 miles away
Insulation across BH18, Merley, Corfe Mullen, Upton and Canford Magna is run from Boscombe, 7.3 miles away, and BCP Council covers planning and building control. Thomas Hannen, who owns the company, climbs into the loft and prices the job himself.
That company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. A customer of ours, verified by Checkatrade, gave us 10 out of 10 there. You pay nothing for the survey visit, or for the written quote with the items set out. Before you book a visit in Broadstone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Broadstone?
Most repairs in Broadstone 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 Broadstone |
|---|---|
| Who decides | BCP Council is the planning authority for Broadstone. BCP Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Ridgeway and Broadstone Park Conservation Area and Tudor Road and Golf Links Road Conservation Area. They cover parts of Broadstone, so check whether your street is inside one. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Broadstone. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Broadstone. |
Questions
Questions about insulation in Broadstone
Why do bungalow lofts here lose so much heat?
In a bungalow the ceiling under the loft is the whole house, not just the upstairs. With 42.0% of Broadstone dwellings being bungalows, that is the single biggest cold surface most people here own. Heat rises into the roof space and leaves through the tiles. It also means the area we insulate is roughly double what a two storey house of the same floor area needs.
Our estate went up together. Does that matter?
It matters for what we find. 63.1% of the housing here went up between 1945 and 1982, with the peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so lofts on a whole road were often done to the same standard on the same day. If your neighbour's roof space has thin matted glass wool between the joists and nothing over them, yours almost certainly does too.
Does Broadstone's surface water risk affect insulating the floor?
Sometimes, and the check comes first. Broadstone sits in a high surface water band, so the airbricks that ventilate a suspended timber floor matter more than the insulation you put between the joists. If those vents are silted or bridged by a raised path, the void stays damp and anything laid in it stays damp. We look under the floor before quoting for it, not after.
Do I need anything from BCP before insulating?
For a loft top up, no. Broadstone has two conservation areas near its centre, Ridgeway and Broadstone Park, and Tudor Road and Golf Links Road, but loft insulation is out of sight and changes nothing about how a house looks, and there are only four listed entries in the whole settlement. So for almost every house here it is straightforward work under Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. It changes if you are in one of those four, or if you want the roof stripped and boarded over the rafters, which alters the outside and matters more inside a conservation area. We tell you which side of that line you are on.
The hatch in our bungalow is tiny. Problem?
Not usually, and it decides how we work rather than whether we can. A lot of the 1950s and 1960s bungalows in Broadstone have a small hatch over a landing cupboard or the hall, so material goes up in compressed rolls and gets opened out in the loft. If the hatch is over a stairwell we bring a platform. Thomas looks at the hatch on the free site visit and prices the handling into the quote.
Nearby, and next door
Insulation near Broadstone
Nearby places we also cover for insulation, with straight-line distances from Broadstone, and the other trades we offer in Broadstone itself.
Insulation nearby
Our other trades in Broadstone
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 Broadstone Insulation, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a price for insulating your Broadstone home
Tell us the address and which rooms are cold. We will get into the loft, measure what is really up there, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge either way.