Insulation in Furzehill
Loft top-ups, warm roof work and wall insulation across Furzehill and BH21, surveyed properly before anything is priced.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
From the hatch with a torch you cannot tell what a Furzehill loft actually needs. There is nearly always something up there already, and the useful question is whether it is deep enough, dry enough and carried right out to the eaves.
People ring us here for one of three reasons. A bedroom that never warms up, usually the one over the garage or the one in the roof. A heating bill that has stopped making sense in a house that felt fine ten years ago. Or mould coming back in the same corner every winter, wiped off in October and back by January.
All three are fabric problems and all three are worth a proper look before somebody sells you a cure. We go into the loft rather than peering into it, lift a corner of whatever is there, and check the eaves, the hatch, the tank and the ceiling underneath. You get photographs of what we found and a written quote that says what depth is going down, where it stops, and what happens at the edges.
The work
The ceiling under the tank stays cold, on purpose
Loft top-ups. Most of Furzehill went up between the late sixties and the middle seventies, and those roofs were built with an inch or two of mineral wool and nothing else. Almost all have been topped up once since, so what we find is two generations of material: an old settled layer squashed flat with a newer roll thrown across it, stopping short of the walls. Starting again is rarely the answer. We lift, straighten and top up to an even finished depth, one layer between the joists and a second across the top so the timber is covered too. Aim at 270mm of mineral wool. A loft that honestly measures 250mm out to the wall plate beats one that reads deeper in the middle and nothing at the edges.
Bungalow lofts, which are most of the awkward ones. A quarter of the housing here is bungalows, and a bungalow has more ceiling per room than any other shape of house, so more of its heat loss goes straight up. The trouble is at the eaves, where the rafters come down onto the wall plate with almost no headroom, which is exactly where the wool stops and exactly where the cold bridge over the wall head sits. Vent trays hold the material out over the wall without closing the air path.
Half the lofts we survey have chipboard laid straight onto the joists with the material crushed flat underneath, which is storage bought at the cost of the ceiling below it. Raised boarding on legs keeps both. The cold water tank and its pipework get lagging, and the patch of ceiling directly under the tank is left uninsulated on purpose so a little warmth still reaches it in a hard frost. Downlighters dropped through a seventies ceiling get fire rated covers so the wool can run over the top, and the hatch gets rigid board on its back and a compression seal round the frame.
Where a bungalow here has been converted upward, or a dormer added, there is no loft left to fill and it becomes a warm roof: PIR board such as Celotex cut tight between the rafters, a continuous layer over them to kill the cold bridge, a vapour control layer on the warm side and a clear air gap kept above. Houses of that age have an unfilled cavity wall, and in a sheltered spot like this a cavity fill is usually the cheapest warmth you will ever buy. The older cottages have no cavity, so it is internal wall insulation on the coldest elevations, or external wall insulation.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team start to finish, one person to ring, no sub-contracting. The quote is itemised: survey, clearing, material and depth, ventilation works and disposal on separate lines. What comes out leaves with us. Laying insulation in a loft, filling a cavity or lining a wall on the inside is permitted development, so there is nothing to apply for. External wall insulation is the exception because it changes what the house looks like from the road, and the Planning Portal sets out where that line falls. There are listed farmhouses and cottages around Furzehill, Wilksworth Farmhouse among them, and on a listed building even internal work needs listed building consent from Dorset Council.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
The area is the easy part. Everything around it is what sets the price. A chalet bungalow with a hatch on the landing, a seventies detached with a boarded loft full of boxes, and an old cottage with no loft worth the name are three different jobs before a single roll is ordered. Boarding that has to come up and go back is time before any material is laid. Approved Document L sets what the work is expected to reach. Ask what finished depth is being laid, and whether the hatch and the pipework are in it.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. We are eight miles up the road, so a loft that has gone wet, or a room you cannot get warm with a cold snap forecast, gets looked at quickly rather than booked in for a fortnight on. The first visit is about whether the problem is insulation, ventilation or both. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Sealing up a house in a radon area, in the right order
Furzehill sits inside a radon affected area, the lowest of the affected bands. It is not a reason to panic, but it does change the order you do things in. Radon seeps up out of the ground and collects indoors, and what keeps the level down is air moving through the house.
Sealing a house up does the opposite by design. So if the plan is a warmer front door, a blocked chimney and sealed floorboards, put a radon test in first rather than last. A test runs over months rather than days, which is the real reason to start it early.
It also changes what to ask for on anything touching the ground. A garage conversion, an extension or a new floor slab here is expected to be built with basic radon protection, a membrane detail in the floor, and it is a small item built in and an expensive one retrofitted. On a suspended timber floor, do not let anybody block the airbricks while insulating between the joists.
Those vents keep the void dry and keep ground gas moving under the house at the same time. Background ventilation is a regulation in its own right and Approved Document F sets it.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Furzehill, Colehill, Holt and Wimborne Minster, and the rest of BH21 from a base about eight miles away in Bournemouth. 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
Furzehill questions we get asked
Our land is Green Belt. Does that limit the work?
No. Green Belt controls new building footprint, not what happens inside a roof you already own. Insulating the loft, lining a ceiling or filling a cavity in Furzehill needs nothing from that policy at all. It bites if you want a detached garden room or an outbuilding, which is where people usually meet it. The planning authority is Dorset Council and they have no interest in a top up.
Our house is late sixties. Is it insulated properly?
Not by any standard used now. Just under half of Furzehill was built between 1945 and 1982 and the busiest stretch was the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a thin layer between the ceiling joists was the whole specification. What is up there has settled and been walked on. The usual answer is a second layer cross laid over the top, running the other way to bridge the joists.
Our bungalow eaves are tight. Can you reach the edge?
With the right kit, yes. Just over a quarter of homes in Furzehill are bungalows, and the eaves on those hipped roofs close down to almost nothing, which is exactly where the cold gets in and where most installers stop short. I use rafter trays to hold the material out to the wall plate while leaving the air gap open. Stuffing it solid to the edge causes the condensation people complain about.
There are old farmhouses round here. Are they done differently?
They are. Furzehill has 14 listed entries, Wilksworth Farmhouse among them, and on a listed building the ceilings themselves are usually part of what is protected. Nothing gets fixed through historic plaster and nothing gets stripped without consent from Dorset Council. On an unlisted farm cottage the constraint is physical instead: irregular joist spacing and no clear run, so material gets cut to fit rather than rolled out.
What happens to the old material you pull out?
It goes into bags at the hatch and out to the van the same day, not into a heap on your landing. Old mineral wool breaks up as soon as it is disturbed, so the route from the loft opening down to the front door gets sheeted before anything moves. Whatever is sound enough to stay gets left in place and topped over, which keeps both the mess and the waste down.
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Get your Furzehill loft looked at properly
Tell us which room is cold and we will come and see it. Free site visit, free written itemised quote, and a straight answer on what is worth doing first.