Insulation in Highcliffe
Loft top-ups, dormer and sloping ceiling work and wall insulation across Highcliffe and BH23, surveyed before anything is priced.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most Highcliffe houses already have some loft insulation and still lose heat, because the material stops short of the walls, sits crushed under boarding, or was laid to a standard nobody uses any more. That is a top-up and a tidy-up, not a rebuild.
People here ring for three things. A bungalow with a heating bill out of proportion to its size. A top floor flat with a ceiling that feels cold to the hand in January. Or damp appearing on the inside face of an outside wall after a windy night, which is not a plumbing fault and is not condensation either.
We look at the loft, the walls and the way air moves through the house as one job, because treating any of them on its own is how people end up paying twice. You get photographs, a written quote with the depth and the materials on it, and a straight answer if the honest recommendation is to spend the money on something else first.
The work
Cut roofs here, and a purlin at shin height
Bungalow lofts, and there are a lot of them. Highcliffe filled out in the late fifties and early sixties, which means cut roofs with purlins rather than the modern trussed rafter, so there is room to move about up there and a purlin sitting at knee height to catch your shin on. Those roofs went up with an inch or so of material and most were topped up once, decades later, so we find two layers with a settled, compressed one underneath, both stopping well short of the wall plate. Close to three in ten homes here are bungalows, and a bungalow loses more heat through its ceiling than any other shape of house, so getting the depth even and carrying it out over the wall head is the single biggest thing you can do to it.
The finished job is one layer between the joists and a second run across them, so the timbers stop being cold lines you can see on the ceiling in frosty weather. Aim at 270mm laid as a full width roll, so there is no joint down the middle of every bay. Vent trays go in at the perimeter first so the material can be pushed right out over the wall head without closing the air path at the eaves, because a loft that is insulated and not ventilated grows condensation under the roof. Two hundred metres from the water, that matters more than it does inland.
Flats and the communal roof void. Close to four in every ten homes in Highcliffe are flats, and a cold top floor flat is a common call. The awkward part is who can instruct it: the roof space over a block belongs to the freeholder and is managed out of the service charge, so a leaseholder cannot simply book it. We will survey it and put what it needs in writing for the managing agent. If you sit on the residents' company, note that above a certain cost per leaseholder the leaseholders have to be consulted first under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
A lot of the bungalows here have been opened up into the roof, and once that has happened there is no loft floor to fill. It becomes a warm roof build-up: rigid PIR board cut tight between the rafters, a continuous layer of board or multi-layer foil over them so every rafter is not a cold bridge, a vapour control layer on the room side, and a clear air gap kept above the insulation. Dormer cheeks and the flat top of a dormer are where these jobs are won or lost.
The cavities in fifties and sixties houses here are narrow, and on this stretch of coast whether a cavity should be filled at all is a real question rather than a formality, particularly on the south west walls that take the driven rain. Where a wall cannot take a fill the answer is internal wall insulation on that elevation. The rest is the boring end: a hatch with rigid board on the back and a seal round the frame, raised boarding on legs so storage does not crush the new depth, fire rated covers over downlighters, and lagging on the cold tank and its pipework.
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. A loft top-up, a cavity fill and internal wall insulation are permitted development, so there is no application. External wall insulation is the one that changes what the house looks like from the pavement, and the Planning Portal explains where that line sits. Highcliffe has no conservation area of its own, and the council keeps the list for the wider borough. There are 18 listed entries here, Highcliffe Castle among them, and on a listed building even internal work needs listed building consent.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
No rate per square metre, because the area is the easy part and the awkward part is everything around it. A top floor flat reached by a communal hatch, a fifties bungalow with a purlin roof full of stored boxes, and a chalet bungalow with dormers and no loft floor at all are three different jobs before anything is ordered. Old material to bag and take away comes before a roll is laid. Approved Document L sets what the work is expected to reach. Ask whether the eaves trays, the downlighter covers and the pipe lagging are itemised or just assumed.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. We are under eight miles along the coast road, so a loft running with condensation, or a room you cannot get warm with cold weather forecast, gets seen quickly. The first visit is about whether the problem is insulation, ventilation or both, because insulating a roof space that cannot breathe makes it worse. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Whether to fill the cavity on the seaward side
Highcliffe sits a couple of hundred metres from the water and the weather that matters comes in from the south-west, so the elevations facing that way take rain with wind behind it rather than rain falling on them. That changes one decision and only one. On a sheltered inland street a cavity fill is about the cheapest warmth you will ever buy.
On a wall that takes driven rain, filling the gap can give water a path across a cavity that was built to stop exactly that, and the sign is a damp patch on the inside face of an outside wall a day or two after a gale rather than during it. This is not an argument for never filling. It is an argument for looking at the wall before the loft, on that side of the house at least.
So the order matters. Pointing, sills, render cracks and anything letting water into the outer leaf get sorted first, because a fill will not fix a wall that is already wet and will make it harder to dry. If the elevation is genuinely exposed, the safer routes are a fill designed for exposed conditions rather than a standard one, or internal wall insulation on that elevation only and a normal fill everywhere else.
When you take quotes, ask what exposure the wall has been assessed at, what is being done about the sills and the pointing first, and what happens if damp appears afterwards. A firm that will not answer those on a seaward wall has told you something useful.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Highcliffe, Walkford, Mudeford and Christchurch across BH23, and along the coast to Barton on Sea and New Milton. 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
Highcliffe questions we get asked
We are leaseholders in a block. Who signs this off?
The freeholder or the managing agent, not you. Flats make up 38.2% of Highcliffe, far more than the villages inland, and in a block the roof space is nearly always retained by the freeholder. Your own ceiling can be improved from below if you are on the top floor, because that is inside your demise. Anything above the ceiling line needs written instruction from whoever holds the roof.
We are 200 metres from the sea. Does that matter inside?
It matters at the edges. Highcliffe sits about 0.2km from the coast and salt laden air corrodes metal from the outside in, so clips, nails and eaves grilles go long before anything in the middle of the roof. Blocked or rusted eaves vents are the reason a roof space goes damp after it is improved. I clear and replace those first, then lay the new material.
Our bungalow is from about 1960. What is up there?
A thin layer, if anything, laid when the house was built. Nearly two thirds of Highcliffe went up between 1945 and 1982 and the peak was the late 1950s and early 1960s, so a whole street can be the same house with the same roof space. On a bungalow of that age the ceiling joists are shallow, so new material has to run across them rather than sit between.
Does BCP council need to know about any of this?
Only if the roof structure or its use changes. There is no conservation area over Highcliffe and the 18 listed entries are buildings like Highcliffe Castle and Greystones rather than ordinary houses, so nothing goes to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole for approval. Building control comes into it if you turn the roof into a room, or if a ceiling comes down and goes back up.
Which side of the house should we deal with first?
The south west face, because that is the exposed elevation here and it takes the driven rain off the sea. Wet walls carry heat away and they carry it worst on the side that never gets a chance to dry out. In a Highcliffe flat that usually means the gable end of the block. I would sort that wall and the eaves above it before touching the sheltered side.
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