Insulation in Everton
Loft insulation, cavity wall fill and warm roofs across Everton and the SO41 villages between Lymington and New Milton. The visit and the written quote are both free.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
On an Everton bungalow the loft is the ceiling of the whole house, so what you do up there matters more than it would on a two-storey place. The catch is the edges. A low hipped roof runs out of height at the eaves long before the insulation runs out, and that is where most of the heat you are paying for actually leaves.
Three things bring people to the phone here. A room that is fine in the middle and cold the moment you sit near an outside wall. A ceiling that shows faint lines through the paint in winter, which is the joists telling you the top layer was never run across them. Or a house bought in the last year where the loft was clearly done once, a long time ago, and never touched since.
We get into the roof space and into the rooms below it before anybody says a number. Half the answer is always the same, which is depth. The other half is what the roof is doing at the perimeter, how the eaves are ventilated, and whether the walls have anything in them. You get it back in writing, itemised, and you decide which parts to do and in what order. If the honest answer is that the loft alone will fix it, that is what the quote will say.
The work
A bungalow loft is the only storage in the house
Loft insulation in a low, hipped roof. Bungalows are 41.7 per cent of the dwellings along this stretch and most of them went up in the late fifties and early sixties, under shallow roofs with hips at both ends and very little height where the rafters meet the wall plate. Across the middle it is a straightforward day. At the hips, and in the last half metre all the way round, it is on your knees working material down to the wall plate without blocking the airflow, and that perimeter is the difference between a loft that performs and one that reads well on paper. We lay mineral wool between the joists and a second layer over and across them so no timber is left bare.
Depth, and the only number worth arguing about. Approved Document L puts a renovated loft at a u-value of around 0.16, which is 270mm in ordinary mineral wool or nearer 250mm in a denser product. Old material that has settled, compressed or gone damp comes out first and leaves with us rather than getting buried under the new.
A bungalow loft is often the only storage in the house, which is exactly why so many of them have boards laid straight onto the joists with the insulation squashed flat underneath. The boarding goes back on raised legs above the full depth, with the roll running on underneath it. Where a loft has been converted or a dormer added, the insulation belongs at rafter level: PIR rigid board between and under the rafters, or a foil faced quilt where the headroom will not take board, with a vapour control layer on the warm side and a clear air gap above.
The later houses on the edges of the village usually have something in the cavity already, and drilling into a wall that is already full wastes your money, so we check with a borescope rather than guess. Under three kilometres from the water, the seaward elevation is the one that stays damp between showers, and that is the wall where a bridged or slumped fill shows itself inside. Then vent trays at the eaves, covers over the downlighters, lagging on the tank and every pipe now above the insulation, and a hatch that is insulated and draught sealed rather than left as a hole in the ceiling, which on a bungalow sits in the hall right where the warm air collects.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The quote is itemised: survey, clearing, the material and its depth, ventilation works and disposal on separate lines. Nothing is left open or unusable overnight.
Loft and cavity work is permitted development and needs no application, as Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets out. Everton sits in New Forest district rather than the national park, though the boundary is not far off, and if you are unsure which side of it your address falls on, the National Park Authority's interactive property map will settle it in a minute. Only external work would ever turn on the answer, and there is no conservation area over the village.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
A bungalow with a hall hatch and an empty loft is one job, one where the loft is boarded out and full of forty years of storage is another, and a converted roof with a dormer in it is another again. Old material to bag and take away, storage to move and put back, and eaves that must stay clear 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.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. A loft dripping with condensation, mould coming back faster than you can wash it off, or a room that will not hold heat before a cold snap gets looked at quickly. If a bedroom on the seaward side has gone from chilly to mouldy along the top of the outside wall, book a visit, because that corner is where the cold bridge is.
The one local thing
Two and a half kilometres from the sea, and what the wind does
Everton sits 2.6km from the coast with its most exposed elevation facing south west, straight into the prevailing weather off the Solent. On a two-storey house that mostly shows up as driven rain on one wall. On a bungalow, where the eaves run round the entire building at head height and the roof is shallow, it shows up inside the loft.
Wind gets in under the tiles and at the eaves and moves across the surface of the insulation, lifting and scouring the edge of the roll and carrying warm air out with it. The trade calls it wind washing, and it is why a loft can measure a full 270mm in the middle and still leave a cold ring round every room below it.
What that changes is where the care goes, not what gets bought. The roll needs tucking down firmly to the wall plate rather than stopping short, but never so far that it blocks the eaves gap, so vent trays go in first and hold the air path open behind it. On an exposed perimeter we will often use a rigid board at the edge, where mineral wool would be lifted, and keep the wool for the open middle.
Salt air is the second half of it: it keeps everything damp for longer between showers and it eats at metal fixings from the edge inwards, so the loft is the wrong place to run bare pipework and the right place to be generous with lagging. If a quote for a seaward bungalow talks only about square metres and depth, it has not been up there and looked at the eaves.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Everton and the SO41 villages between Lymington and New Milton, out through Hordle, Milford on Sea and Barton, and it is a short run from the yard. 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.
Questions
Everton questions we get asked
We are close to the Solent. Does salt reach the loft?
It reaches the fixings, not the quilt. Everton sits under three kilometres from the coast, and salt in the air corrodes nails, clips and steel straps from the edge inwards while keeping surfaces damp between showers. That matters when we lift tiles at the verge to fit vents, because a corroded fixing snaps rather than comes out. We allow for replacing them rather than finding out on the day.
Everton has a lot of bungalows. Is the whole ceiling done?
All of it, and in a bungalow that is every ceiling in the house. 41.7% of Everton dwellings are bungalows, so there is no upstairs acting as a buffer and the cold surface runs from the front wall to the back. It also means we are working over bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen in one go, and the kitchen and bathroom ceilings are where the moisture comes through.
Are we in the National Park for planning purposes?
Your planning authority in Everton is New Forest District, not the National Park authority, which is a distinction that matters a few miles up the road. There is no conservation area covering Everton either, so a loft job, a rooflight or a change of covering is ordinary work for almost everybody. Fifteen listed entries exist in the settlement, Efford House among them, and those are the exception we check for.
Why does the seaward wall feel damp inside in winter?
Driven rain on the exposed face, which in Everton is the south west elevation. Water crosses a cavity on a mortar snot or a badly fitted tie, or soaks straight through solid work, and a wet wall reads as cold to the touch and conducts heat out. Filling that cavity with insulation before the water path is fixed makes it worse. We deal with the wall first.
Our bungalow is from about 1960. What is in there now?
Typically a thin layer laid decades after the house went up, sitting between shallow joists. The peak building period in Everton was the late 1950s and early 1960s, and ceiling joists from that era are far shallower than the depth of insulation now expected. The answer is a second layer run across the joists rather than trying to cram everything between them, which also covers the timber itself.
Nearby, and next door
Insulation near Everton
Insulation nearby
Our other trades in Everton
Everything we do in Lymington Insulation, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get the eaves looked at, not just the middle
A free survey in the roof space, then an itemised written price with the perimeter, the depth and the ventilation each on their own line.