Insulation in Holton Heath
Loft top-ups, cavity checks, garage ceilings and warm roof work around Holton Heath and BH16, surveyed before anything is priced.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Holton Heath is mostly houses of an age that were insulated when they were built, to the standard of the day. That is the problem. There is something up there, so nobody thinks about it, and the standard of the day is a long way short of what a loft is expected to hold now.
Three things bring people to the phone here. A heating bill that has crept up in a house that is not old and does not feel draughty. A bedroom over the garage that is several degrees behind the rest of the house whatever you do with the radiator. Or condensation appearing on the underside of the roof, usually spotted while somebody is putting the Christmas boxes away.
All three come back to the same survey: what is actually up there, how deep it really is once you lift it, and whether the roof space can still breathe. You get photographs, a written quote with the material and the depth on it, and no pressure to do the expensive parts first.
The work
The bedroom over the garage is always the cold one
Topping up an eighties loft. Better than a third of the housing here went up between 1983 and 2008, the peak falling in the eighties, and houses of that age came with insulation fitted, which is why they get overlooked. The depth that counted as generous then is roughly a third of what is expected now, and it has settled since. The roofs are trussed rafter, so instead of an open space with a purlin you work through a row of timber triangles with steel plates at every joint, and the material has to be fed along the bays rather than walked in. We lift and straighten what is there, then run the between and over layer of ordinary eco roll across the joists so no timber is a line of heat loss. Aim at 270mm, with 250mm carried right to the wall plate worth more than a deeper pile in the middle, and 0.16 the u-value expected of a renovated roof.
The cavity that may already be half done. Cavity walls of this era were often built with partial fill boards against the inner leaf and a clear gap left in front of them, which is a completely different starting point from an empty cavity. Injecting more into that can bridge the gap that keeps the outside wet and the inside dry, so the borescope goes in and somebody looks before anybody quotes a fill.
The bedroom over an integral garage is always the cold one, because its floor sits over outside air, and rigid board, foil faced PIR, between the garage ceiling joists, boarded over, makes a difference you can feel within a day. A ceiling that follows the roof slope takes a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX instead. A lot of these houses have boarded soffits with very little airflow through them, and deepening a loft without opening a real air path is how condensation starts on the underside of the felt. Vent trays hold the material clear of the eaves, and background ventilation is a regulation in its own right, with Approved Document F the document behind it. The tank and its pipework get lagging, loft legs keep storage clear of the new depth, and downlighters get fire rated covers.
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 and nothing to wait for. External wall insulation changes the look of the building and is the exception, which the Planning Portal covers. No conservation area covers the housing here and there are only five listed entries nearby, so for most addresses there is nothing to apply for at all, though on a listed building even internal work needs listed building consent from Dorset Council.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
We do not price this by the square metre. The area is the easy part. An estate house with a trussed roof and a boarded loft, a bungalow with a low hipped roof and tight eaves, and a bedroom sitting over an integral garage are three different jobs before any material is ordered. Boarding that has to come up and go back is time before a roll is laid. Approved Document L sets what the work is expected to reach. Ask what finished depth is being laid, and whether the eaves and the hatch are in the price.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. We are nine miles round the top of the harbour, so a loft running with condensation, or a room over a garage you cannot get warm with cold weather due, gets a visit quickly. The first visit is about telling insulation from ventilation, 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
If the loft is becoming a bedroom rather than a warmer loft
Everything at Holton Heath drains towards Poole Harbour, and the harbour is a protected site with a nutrient problem, so schemes that add overnight accommodation in this catchment have to show that the extra nitrogen they generate is dealt with before permission is granted. That sounds like a developer's problem and mostly it is, but it catches ordinary householders in one specific case: a loft conversion, an annexe or an extension that creates a bedroom. Insulating the loft you already have does not engage any of it. Converting that loft into a room can.
So decide which job you are doing before you start collecting quotes. If you want a warmer house, the work is permitted development, nothing needs mitigating, and we can be booked in for whenever suits you. If you want another bedroom, the insulation is the straightforward part and the consents are the long part, so get that question answered first and then put the insulation into the conversion specification rather than paying for it twice.
It matters technically as well: a converted roof is insulated at rafter level as a warm roof, not across the loft floor, so material laid now would come straight back out. Planning permission is not the only consent a job can need, and the Planning Portal's list is a useful reminder of the others.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Holton Heath, Sandford, Organford, Upton and Wareham across BH16 and BH20, from a base about nine miles away. 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
Holton Heath questions we get asked
Our house is mid eighties. Was it built with insulation?
Some, and not enough. The 1980s are the biggest single period in Holton Heath, with just over a quarter of homes built then, and those houses got roughly 100mm in the roof space and often a partial cavity fill. Both were normal at the time and both are about half of what is used now. The roof is the straightforward part: a second layer cross laid over the first.
How can I tell if our cavity was filled when built?
From outside, look for a grid of small mortar plugs about the size of a coin across the brickwork, which means a retrofit fill drilled in later. A house built here in the 1980s may instead have boards built into the cavity as it went up, which you cannot see at all. A borescope through one mortar joint settles it in a minute and I do that on the visit.
The room over our garage is always freezing. Why?
Because it has cold air under the floor, cold air in the garage and usually a sloping ceiling with nothing behind it. That layout came in with the 1980s houses that make up the largest part of Holton Heath, and it is the most common complaint I get in this village. The work is the garage ceiling from below and opening the sloped section from inside to fill it.
We want a loft conversion instead. Anything extra out here?
There is. Holton Heath drains into the Poole Harbour catchment, so any scheme that adds a bedroom has to answer the nutrient rules before Dorset Council will grant permission. None of that touches a re-roof or a repair, which is why I ask early what you are actually planning. If the conversion is a maybe rather than a plan, do the roof now and lay it so it lifts later.
Does much of this happen inside the house?
Less than people expect. The roof work happens above the hatch and the only traffic through the house is up and down a ladder with bagged material. The ground round Holton Heath stays wet, so if the floor void is part of the job, boards come up one room at a time and go back the same day. Dust sheets go down before anything comes through the door.
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Find out what is really in your Holton Heath loft
Tell us which room is cold and we will come and lift a corner of what is up there. Free site visit, free written itemised quote.