Insulation in Fordingbridge

Loft top-ups on the estates. Most of the housing on the edges of the town went up through the seventies and early eighties, under trussed roofs with the webs running through at knee height. Those lofts were insulated to the standard of the day and have not been touched since, so what is up there has settled, gone flat under storage and dropped away from the joists. It comes out, gets bagged and leaves with us, and mineral wool roll goes back between and over the joists so the timber is covered rather than left as a cold bridge. Approved Document L puts a loft being upgraded at a u-value of about 0.16, which is 270mm in ordinary roll, and there is no honest shortcut to it.

The older streets near the river. Around a fifth of the housing in Fordingbridge predates 1919, and those brick houses near the Avon carry purlin roofs, shallow eaves and very often lath and plaster ceilings. You do not walk on a lath ceiling and you do not stand storage on it. Work is done from boards spread across the joists, and depth is fed carefully into the last half metre at the eaves without choking the airflow. If you want the loft usable afterwards the boarding goes on raised legs over the full depth rather than crushing it.

A seventies or eighties wall here usually has a cavity, and where it is empty, clean and dry it can be drilled and filled from outside in a morning. We check with a borescope first, because plenty of the later stock is already filled and drilling a full wall is money for nothing. The older brick in the town centre is solid all the way through, so there is nothing to fill: it is internal wall insulation battened and boarded on the inside face, or external wall insulation, EWI, rendered over the outside, and on a period frontage that second option is rarely the one to reach for.

Where the loft has already become living space, insulating its ceiling does nothing and the work goes to the rafters: PIR rigid board such as Celotex cut between them with a second layer underneath, or a foil faced multi-layer quilt like TLX where the sloping ceiling has no headroom to give away. A vapour control layer goes on the warm side and an air gap stays open above the board. Then vent trays hold the eaves open, downlighters get covers, the tank and every pipe now sitting above the insulation get lagging, and the hatch is insulated and draught sealed.

No rate per square metre: the area is the easy part and everything round it is not. A seventies semi with a landing hatch and a clear loft is one job, an older town house where the ceilings are lath and the eaves are shallow is another, and a flat reached through a communal stair is another again. Old material to bag and take away, and stored belongings to shift, come before anything new goes down. Approved Document L sets what the work is expected to reach. Ask what finished depth is being laid, and whether the eaves, the hatch and the pipework are in it.

We cover Fordingbridge and the SP6 villages along the Avon, out through Sandleheath, Alderholt, Rockbourne and Breamore. 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.