Insulation in Freshwater and Totland
Loft insulation, solid wall insulation and warm roofs across Freshwater, Totland and Colwell. We survey before we price, and 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.
The walls are the reason so many Freshwater and Totland rooms stay cold, and the loft is still the first job. A large share of the housing was built before cavities existed, so there is nothing to fill and no quick morning's work available. What there is is a proper order to do things in, and it starts at ceiling level.
People ring us here about the same handful of things. A seaward room that is cold and slightly damp no matter what the heating does. Mould coming back along the top of an outside wall or behind a wardrobe. A flat in a big old house where the top-floor rooms are freezing and nobody is sure who is responsible for the roof. Or a bungalow where the loft has clearly never been touched since it was built.
The visit comes first and it is free. We get into the roof space and into the rooms that are cold, look at what the walls actually are, and check what the roof is doing at the eaves. Then it comes back written and itemised, part by part, so you can take it apart and compare it. If the honest answer is loft only for now, that is what it will say, and we will tell you what to look at next winter instead of selling it to you this one.
The work
Damp air comes into these roofs most of the year
Lofts, and what is usually up there. Nearly three in ten dwellings across Freshwater and Totland are bungalows, so the loft is the ceiling of the whole house and a top-up is worth more than it would be on a two storey place. What we lift out is normally thin, settled and full of gaps where it has shrunk back from the joists. It goes into bags and off with us. Mineral wool roll goes back between the joists and a second layer over and across them so no timber is left bare as a cold bridge, and Approved Document L puts a loft being upgraded at a u-value of about 0.16, which is 270mm in ordinary roll. Where you want the loft usable, boarding sits on raised legs above that depth rather than crushing it.
The big old houses that are now flats. Around a fifth of the dwellings here are flats or maisonettes, a lot of them carved out of Victorian and Edwardian villas. If you are on the top floor the roof space above you is almost certainly not yours to instruct: the structure and the outside belong to the freeholder and are dealt with through the service charge, and there is a formal consultation with leaseholders before works over a certain size, set out in section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. We will survey and quote for a managing agent or a residents' company, and we will say straight away if the person ringing is not the person who can order it.
Better than a quarter of the housing here predates 1919, and a solid wall has nothing to fill. The choice is internal wall insulation battened and boarded on the inside face, built so the wall can still dry, or external wall insulation, EWI, built up and rendered over the outside. Both are priced by the elevation or the room rather than by the metre. Where a later house does have a cavity we check it with a borescope before anything is drilled, because plenty of the newer stock is already filled, and the most exposed elevation here faces south west, which is the one to think hardest about.
Once a loft has become living space the ceiling is not the boundary any more and the insulation goes at the rafters: PIR rigid board such as Celotex between and under them, or a foil faced multi-layer quilt like TLX where the headroom is too tight for board. A vapour control layer goes on the warm side and a clear air gap stays above, which matters more on this coast than most places because the air coming into the roof is damp for a good part of the year.
The details decide whether any of it works. Vent trays keeping the eaves open, covers over the downlighters, lagging on the tank and every pipe left above the new insulation, and a hatch that is insulated and draught sealed rather than left as a hole in the layer.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One team, one person to ring, nothing sub-contracted out. The quote is itemised line by line: survey, clearing, material and depth, ventilation and disposal. What comes out leaves with us. Loft and cavity work is permitted development wherever you are, and Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets that out. There are 29 listed entries around Freshwater and Totland, so if yours is one of them there are other permissions you may require before anything on the outside changes. Because we come over on the Lymington to Yarmouth crossing, an island job is planned as a single run with the materials already loaded, and that is built into the dates you are given.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
We do not price this by the square metre. The area is the easy part. A post-war bungalow with a hall hatch is one job, a top floor flat in a converted villa where access runs up a communal stair is another, and an older solid walled cottage where a room has to be cleared and lined is another again. Old material to bag and take away comes before anything new goes down. Approved Document L sets what the work is expected to reach. Two quotes for the same loft are usually two different jobs: ask which removes the old material.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. If mould is coming back on the seaward wall of a Freshwater bedroom faster than you can wash it off, book the site visit rather than buying more spray, because that wall is running cold and wet and there is a reason for it. The first visit tells insulation from ventilation. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
Solid walls on an exposed coast, and the order to fix them in
Over a quarter of the housing across Freshwater and Totland predates 1919, with the single largest group built before 1900. Those walls are solid, one thickness of brick or stone the whole way through, and they never kept the rain out by being sealed. They kept it out by being thick, and by drying back out from both faces between one soaking and the next. Out on the West Wight, with the most exposed elevation facing south west into the Channel, they get soaked often.
A wet wall conducts heat far better than a dry one, so a good part of what feels like poor insulation is really a wall that has not been dry since October. Which is why the first thing we look at on an old wall is not insulation at all. It is the pointing, the render, the gutters and the downpipes, because a wall you have stopped wetting is already warmer before anything is fitted to it.
After that comes the choice. Internal wall insulation is the cheaper way in, it can be done one room at a time, and it warms the room quickly. It also costs you some room size, means dealing with skirtings, sockets and window reveals, and it leaves the wall itself colder and wetter than before, which is why we use breathable materials such as wood fibre and a lime finish rather than a sealed foil-faced board, and why the reveals and the floor junction have to be detailed or you build a cold bridge exactly where the mould already appears.
External wall insulation keeps the whole wall warm and dry and takes no room from you, but it changes the face of the building, so it is a planning question first on a listed house and a serious design decision on any of these frontages. For most people here the sensible order is loft first, keeping the rain off the wall second, and internal wall insulation on the one cold room third, and quite a few never need the third step at all.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Freshwater, Totland, Colwell and the PO40 end of the West Wight, over from the yard on the Lymington to Yarmouth crossing, with Yarmouth and Norton next door. 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
Freshwater and Totland questions we get asked
You are on the mainland. How does that work?
We bring everything across on one ferry crossing rather than trickling over with materials, so the survey has to be right first time. That means measuring the roof space, counting downlights and checking the eaves before I quote, not on the morning of the job. Freshwater and Totland work gets booked as a block so no crossing is wasted. The site visit and the written itemised quote cost nothing either way.
Our cottage predates 1900. Can the walls be lined?
They can, but not with anything that traps moisture. Over a quarter of the stock in Freshwater and Totland was built before 1919, and those walls are solid, with no cavity, and they dry by letting water back out through the surface. Line them internally with a breathable board bedded in lime rather than a plastic faced board. Do the roof space first; it is the easiest surface in the house to improve.
Nearly a third of homes here are bungalows. Does that matter?
It matters more than anything else on the list. At 29.4% bungalow, the roof over a Freshwater or Totland home covers the whole of the living space rather than half of it, so every degree lost through the ceiling is lost from a room you actually sit in. The loft is the one job where the area you insulate matches the area you heat.
Does the Isle of Wight council control this kind of work?
Only where the outside changes. There is no conservation area over Freshwater or Totland, and the 29 listed entries are mostly buildings like Weston Manor and the Farringford Hotel rather than ordinary houses. Material between and over ceiling joists is invisible from the road and needs nothing from the Isle of Wight planning department. A rooflight or a vent tile on a listed roof is a different conversation.
The south west side of the house gets all the weather.
So that is the elevation to deal with first. Wind and driven rain here work at edges and openings rather than the middle of a wall, which means the corners, reveals and eaves on the south west face get wet and stay wet. Anything put behind a wall in that state will not dry out. I sort the wetting first, then line it, and I start on the exposed face.
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Start with the loft, then look at the walls
A free survey in the roof space and the cold rooms, then an itemised written price with each part on its own line.