Insulation in Brockenhurst

Loft insulation, and the lofts nobody has found yet. A lot of the housing in Brockenhurst is Victorian or older, so these are houses that have been added to over a very long time.

The result is roof voids at different levels: the main loft, a lower one over a back addition, a flat area over a bay or a porch, and sometimes a void behind a knee wall reached through a hatch in a wardrobe. Insulating the main loft to 270mm of ordinary eco roll and leaving the rest bare is why a lot of these houses still feel cold afterwards. We open everything that can be opened, lay in two layers with the second across the joists, so no timber is left as a straight line of heat loss, and where a void has no access at all we tell you what it would take to make one. An even 250mm carried right out to the wall plate is worth more than a deeper heap in the middle.

Rooms in the roof, dormers and knee walls. Where the roof space is living space the insulation belongs at rafter level, not on a floor: rigid PIR board cut between the rafters with a clear ventilation gap above it, a layer under the rafters so the timber is not a cold bridge, and the little triangular voids behind the knee walls treated as well, because those are usually open to the eaves and blowing cold air into the back of the plasterboard. Where a sloping ceiling has no depth to spare, a foil faced multi-layer quilt such as TLX is the compromise and it will not reach the 0.18 u-value that rigid boards can manage at rafter level.

A good number of the ceilings we work over are lath and plaster, so we work off crawl boards and keep weight off them. Old roofs in Brockenhurst are often felted with bitumen rather than a breathable membrane, or have no underlay at all under the tiles, and that decides how much ventilation the work has to preserve. Insulating hard against the underside of a roof that cannot breathe is how you get damp rafters, so we would rather lose a little depth and keep the air path. The pre-1919 houses have solid walls with nothing to fill, so the choice is an internal lining with the vapour control thought through, or external wall insulation, which changes the look of the building and is a planning question here before it is a building one. Newer houses have cavities, and those get a borescope check first so nobody fills a cavity that already has slumped material in it. Suspended timber ground floors are common in the village and are worth insulating between the joists, provided the air bricks keeping the void ventilated are left clear. With the Lymington River as close as it is to the older part of the village, blocking those bricks to stop a draught is how you get rot in the joist ends.

Then the small work that finishes it: an insulated, draughtstripped hatch, tank and pipework lagging once the loft above them has gone cold, fire rated covers over downlighters, vent trays at the eaves, and raised loft legs where you want storage without squashing everything flat.

A house with one hatch on the landing and a clear loft, a rambling older place with three roof voids and a hatch inside a wardrobe, and a converted attic where the work happens at rafter level are three different jobs before a roll is opened.

What is up there. Old material has to be bagged and taken away, storage moved and put back, and the depth worked right into the corners. The eaves must stay open for air.

Solid walls. Many older houses in Brockenhurst have solid walls, which cannot be cavity filled. They need lining inside or insulating outside, with breathable materials so moisture is not trapped, as BS 5250 explains.

Rafter level. In a room in the roof, insulating between and under the rafters means taking down and replacing ceilings, which is a bigger job and brings in building control.

Getting in. A hatch in a cupboard, or a void only reached through another void, adds hours before any mineral wool is unrolled, and older roofs often have no boarding to kneel on, so crawl boards go down first.

Approved Document L sets what the work has to reach. When you compare quotes, ask what depth is going down, whether the old material is removed or covered, and whether the hatch and pipework are included.

Brockenhurst is 12.7 miles from our base in Boscombe, and we insulate homes there and in Boldre, Sway, Lyndhurst, Beaulieu and the villages down towards Lymington. For planning they all answer to the National Park Authority.

The work is done by Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. It is owned by Thomas Hannen, who goes into the loft and prices the job himself. A customer verified by Checkatrade rated us 10 out of 10. The survey visit is free, and the written quote, broken into items, costs nothing. Before you book a visit in Brockenhurst, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Brockenhurst 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.