Insulation in Bryanston

Terraced lofts, and what happens at the party wall. Where a house here is in a terrace, the loft is a narrow strip with an outside wall at one end and a shared wall at the other.

In some older terraces and semis 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 under a pitched roof to the 0.16 u-value.

Flats, maisonettes and floors over cold spaces. 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.

A house built between the war and the early 1980s 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. An older cottage with solid walls has 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.

Insulation is not priced by the square metre, because what is in the way decides more than the area does.

Getting into the space. A loft hatch on a wide landing is easy. One above the stairwell needs a platform, and a small cottage hatch makes every trip up slower. A top floor flat reached by a communal stair means carrying everything further.

What is already there. Old, compressed or damp material has to be bagged and removed before new goes down. Boarding and stored boxes have to come out and go back.

Which wall you have. A cavity wall can be filled from outside; a solid brick or flint wall cannot, so it needs internal lining or an external system, which is a bigger job.

Ventilation. Keeping the eaves clear, adding vents and lagging pipes and tanks that will now sit in a colder loft all take time. Approved Document L sets the standard the work should reach, and getting depth into the corners and round the hatch is most of the labour.

Ask any other installer what depth they are laying, whether the old material is removed or covered, and whether the hatch and pipework are included.

We insulate homes in Bryanston and nearby Blandford Forum, Blandford St Mary, Durweston, Stourpaine and Pimperne, across most of DT11. Bryanston lies 17.3 miles north west of our Boscombe base and falls under Dorset Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Bryanston, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Surveys and prices are done by Thomas Hannen himself, as it is his business. A verified customer's score on Checkatrade is 10 out of 10. Neither the survey visit nor the written quote, priced item by item, costs you anything.

Most repairs in Bryanston 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.