Insulation in Lymington
Loft top-ups, floors in the older houses, and straight answers about flats and shared roof spaces.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
What you can do here depends less on the town than on which sort of Lymington home you are in. A house with its own loft is usually a day's work and a second layer over the joists. A top floor flat is a different conversation, because the roof space above your ceiling probably is not yours. The free visit tells you which of those you are.
Most people ring about one of three things. A cold top floor, whether that is a bedroom under a sloping ceiling or a flat under the roof. An old terraced house that will not hold heat and has cold, draughty floorboards into the bargain. Or a house bought in the last year where the survey flagged thin insulation and nobody has been up to look since.
None of those has a single answer, so we look before we price. That means getting into the roof space where there is one, putting a rule into whatever is up there, checking whether the eaves are open and whether the ventilation still works, seeing where the tank and the pipe runs sit, and asking what is under the ground floor in the older houses.
If the building is flats we will also tell you honestly who has to instruct the work before we quote it. Then you get a written itemised quote with the method on it as well as the number.
The work
The party wall often stops short of the roof
Loft top-ups in the post-war and eighties houses. Roughly three quarters of the town's housing went up between the war and the end of the two thousands, the peak falling in the eighties, and those lofts were built with a single thin layer pushed between the joists that has settled since. We lay between and over: fresh mineral wool eco roll between the timbers, a second run at right angles over the top so the joists stop bridging the cold, around 270mm all in, which is what takes a ceiling to the u-value of about 0.16 that Approved Document L expects of a renovated roof. Most are a single day.
Terraced roofs and party walls. Better than a fifth of the homes here are terraced, and in the older terraces the loft is a small, awkward void, sometimes behind a parapet, with the party wall between you and next door very often stopping short of the underside of the roof. You can only insulate your own ceiling, so the layer has to be taken properly to the wall on both sides rather than trailed off short, and the eaves stay clear so the shared roof space still ventilates. Where the party wall is genuinely open we will say so, because that is a fire separation question as well as a heat one and it is not something to bury under a roll of quilt.
The older houses near the town centre and the quay sit on ventilated voids under floorboards, and on a windy day you can feel it. Insulation goes in between the floor joists from below where there is a crawl space, or from above where the boards are coming up anyway, carried on netting so it stays in contact with the boards and cannot slump. The airbricks stay clear, always. Blocking them to stop a draught is how a dry void turns into a damp one.
Converted attics and chalet style bedrooms have no loft left to work in, so it is rigid board: PIR such as Celotex between the rafters with a clear air gap kept above, a foil faced board fixed under the rafters to break the cold bridge, or a multi-layer quilt like TLX where the depth simply is not available. Dormer cheeks and the voids behind the knee walls go in at the same time, with a vapour control layer on the warm side.
The eighties houses have proper cavities and are worth a borescope check before anyone quotes a fill, particularly on the south west elevations that take the weather off the water. The Georgian and Victorian houses have no cavity at all, so the choice is internal wall insulation built to breathe or external wall insulation, and with 160 listed entries in the town the second of those is a planning conversation before it is a technical one. Then the practical bits: an insulated and draughtproofed hatch, fire rated covers over downlighters, lagging on the cold water tank and any pipework left above the new layer, and bathroom ducting taken outside rather than left to empty into the roof space.
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. Insulating a loft, a floor or the inside face of a wall is an improvement rather than development, so it falls inside permitted development, which is what the Planning Portal's insulation guidance says. Building control is engaged once a thermal element is renovated, or when a loft becomes a room. Lymington has around 160 listed entries, the parish church of St Thomas the Apostle among them, so on the older streets anything changing the outside face needs checking with New Forest District Council first.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
No rate per square metre: the area is the easy part. A Georgian terrace with a hatch on a narrow landing and a void you cannot stand up in, a purpose built flat where the only way in is a communal hatch, and an eighties house with a proper loft ladder are three different days before any material is bought. Old material has to be bagged and taken away first. Approved Document L sets what the work is expected to reach. Ask what finished depth is being laid, and whether the eaves and pipe runs are in it.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. A loft dripping with condensation, or a room that will not hold heat before a cold snap, gets looked at quickly. Lymington is a straightforward run for us along the coast road, so you will get an honest day on the phone rather than a promised hour we would miss. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
In a flat, the roof space is usually not yours
A sizeable share of the homes in this town are flats, some in purpose built blocks and some carved out of larger houses. If you are on the top floor and cold, the space above your ceiling is very often part of the common parts and belongs to the freeholder rather than to you, and no honest firm should sell you work in it without that being sorted out first. The starting point is your lease, which sets out what is demised to you and what is not.
If the roof void is not yours, the person who has to instruct the work is the freeholder or the residents' management company, and where the cost comes back to leaseholders through the service charge above a statutory limit they have a right to be consulted under Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. That is not a reason to give up. It is the reason to start with the managing agent rather than with a contractor.
There is an upside once you do. A block loft is usually one continuous void running over several flats, so insulating it is a single job rather than four separate ones, which makes it a far better piece of work per flat than any of you could arrange alone. Access is normally a communal hatch on the top landing, so it barely touches anybody's home.
If the block has a flat roof instead of a pitched one there is no void to work in, and the only sensible route is a warm roof built in at the next re-covering, so it is worth raising before the roof cycle comes round rather than after. Meanwhile, inside your own front door, draughtproofing, sealing the gaps around a loft hatch or service runs, and an internal lining on the coldest outside wall are all yours to do and all worth doing.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Lymington, Pennington, Woodside and Boldre on SO41, out through Everton to New Milton and up towards Brockenhurst, and New Forest District Council is the planning and building control authority for this address. 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
Lymington questions we get asked
Ours is one of the listed houses in town. What now?
Lymington has 160 listed entries and plenty of them are ordinary houses rather than churches. On a listed house the plaster ceilings, panelling and floors are usually protected, so consent from New Forest District Council comes before any of that is opened. Quilt laid over existing joists in the roof space normally passes without difficulty. What gets refused is fixing through historic plaster or cutting into a visible slope.
We are in a terrace. Where does the insulation stop?
At the party wall, and it needs to reach it. Terraces and semis together are about half the homes in Lymington, and in an older terrace the roof space often runs on over the dividing wall with a gap you can see through. That gap is a draught path and a fire path. I close it at the wall line and carry the material right up to it rather than stopping short.
The house is mid eighties. Was the cavity done then?
Possibly, and possibly only partly. The 1980s are the largest single period in Lymington and just over a quarter of the town went up between 1983 and 2008, which is when partial fill boards in the cavity became normal. Partial fill leaves a deliberate gap, so a later injected fill can bridge it if those boards were badly fitted. Worth checking before anything else is added.
Is it worth insulating under the floorboards in an old house?
In the older parts of Lymington, yes. The ground here drains freely, so the void under a suspended timber floor is dry enough to work in and the airbricks are usually doing their job. Material goes between the joists on netting with the ventilation left running underneath. Where there is a solid floor there is nothing to do short of lifting it, which is rarely worth doing.
We might convert the roof one day. Anything to know?
One thing catches people out here: Lymington drains to the Solent catchment, and any scheme adding a bedroom has to satisfy the nutrient rules before permission is granted. Improving the roof space now engages none of that. If a conversion is likely later, I lay the material so it can be lifted and reused between the rafters rather than fixing anything down permanently.
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Get a look before you get a price
A free site visit in Lymington, a rule in whatever is up there now, and a written itemised quote with the method on it as well as the number.