Insulation in Bryanston

Terraced lofts, and what happens at the party wall. Terraces are 31.1 per cent of the dwellings here, and a terraced loft is a narrow strip with an outside wall at one end and a shared wall at the other. In a lot of the older rows the party wall was never taken up to the underside of the roof, so there is an open gap over the wall head. If you can see or feel into next door's roof space you are heating theirs as well as yours, and that gap is a fire separation matter as much as a heat one, so it is worth raising with building control rather than quietly stuffing something into it. We lay mineral wool, ordinary eco roll, to 270mm between and over, and take an even 250mm out across the wall plate where the ceiling meets the bedroom wall instead of stopping where it gets awkward, which is what brings a ceiling to the 0.16 u-value expected of a renovated element.

Flats, maisonettes and floors over cold spaces. Flats are 23.7 per cent of the housing here. In a top floor flat the roof space above you almost always belongs to the freeholder and is dealt with through the service charge, so the first move is finding out who manages the building, and we will look and put it in writing for you to send them. Where a flat or a room sits over a garage, a bin store or an open passageway, the floor is where the heat loss happens, and insulating between those joists from below is straightforward and routinely overlooked because nobody thinks of a floor as a cold surface.

Most of the stock here went up between 1945 and 1982, with the peak in the 1970s and early 1980s, and that generation was insulated to whatever the standard was on the day, usually 100mm laid one way between trussed rafters. It is not failed, it is short, and a cross layer over the top brings it up to depth in a morning. Trussed roofs are awkward to move around in, so where you want storage we fit raised loft legs and board a defined area rather than flattening everything under a deck.

Where an older house has had the roof space turned into a room in the roof, usually with a dormer on the back built as a warm roof, the insulation goes to rafter level: rigid board, PIR and foil faced, cut between the rafters with the ventilation gap kept open above, a layer under the rafters, and the small voids behind the knee walls done at the same time. Where a sloping ceiling has no depth to give, a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX gets part of the way. The pre-1919 houses, nearly a fifth of the stock, have solid walls with nothing to fill, so it is internal wall insulation, which costs a little room size and means moving skirtings and sockets, or external wall insulation, EWI on a quote, which is a planning question here before it is a building one. Anything from the 1930s on has a cavity wall, and that gets a borescope check first, because a cavity filled decades ago and since slumped looks identical from the pavement to one that was never filled.

Then the insulated and draughtstripped hatch, vent trays so the eaves stay open once the depth goes up, tank and pipework lagging, and fire rated covers over downlighters before anything is laid over the top of them.

A terrace with a small hatch over the stairs and nowhere to stand a ladder, a 1980s house with a clear loft off the landing, and a top floor flat reached through a communal stair are three different days before any material is unwrapped. Old material to bag and take away, storage to move and put back, eaves kept clear and depth into the corners all come first, and Approved Document L sets what the work has to reach. Comparing quotes, ask what depth is being laid, whether the old material is removed or covered, and whether the hatch and pipework are included.

We cover Bryanston, Blandford Forum, Blandford St Mary, Durweston, Stourpaine and Pimperne, and most of DT11. 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.