Insulation in New Milton
Loft top-ups on the post-war estates, top floor flats, cold rear extensions and cavity walls, surveyed properly and priced in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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New Milton is a post-war town, so most lofts here were built with a shallow layer of wool between the joists and nothing across the top of them. Adding a second layer at right angles, opening the eaves back up and sealing the hatch is the whole job on the majority of these houses, and it is a day at most.
Heat problems in New Milton homes tend to fall into a few types. A back bedroom or a top floor flat that never feels warm, whatever the thermostat says. A loft somebody has finally climbed into, where the wool has settled to half its depth and there are bare boards showing where the storage goes. A cold single storey extension or sun room off the back of the house. And condensation: water on the inside of the windows in the morning, or dark spotting where a wall meets a ceiling.
We come and look before anybody talks about materials. The site visit is free, the itemised written quote is free, and on a straightforward loft we will tell you it is a straightforward loft. Where the problem is really a flat roof or a wall rather than the ceiling, we would rather say so on the first visit than sell you depth you will not feel.
The work
Laying over the joists is the half that matters
Laying over the joists is the half that matters. Most of the estates in New Milton went up between the fifties and the late eighties, and those roofs are trussed rather than cut on site, so the loft is a forest of thin timbers with a single thin layer of mineral wool threaded between the ceiling joists.
We work the existing layer back into the corners and the awkward triangles the truss webs make, then run a fresh layer of Eco Roll across the whole ceiling at right angles, between and over, to a finished depth of about 270mm. Bare timber is a cold bridge straight through to the plasterboard. Nothing has to come out unless it is wet, black or has been lived in by something.
Flats, and who owns the roof space above you. A quarter of the homes in New Milton are flats, and the top floor ones are where the heat loss is. Sometimes the hatch in your hall opens into a roof space that is yours alone, and the work is the same as a house. Sometimes it opens into a single space running over the whole block, in which case the freeholder or the management company has to agree, and if the block is paying for it, section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 sets out the consultation the leaseholders are owed. We will quote in a form a managing agent can put out, and we will tell you honestly when a job needs that route.
The other cold spot on this stock is the single storey extension with a flat roof, often added long after the house and often with little or nothing in the deck. If the covering is due anyway the answer is a warm roof, rigid board over the deck rather than stuffed under it. Where a loft has been converted, insulation goes at rafter level in Celotex or another PIR with a ventilation gap above and a taped vapour control layer facing the room, and a dormer cheek gets the same attention as the flat part. A third of the town went up between 1983 and 2008, and those houses have a cavity wall with something already in it, so the survey starts with a borescope: what is in there, has it slumped, is the cavity clean at the bottom. On the inter-war houses at the edges of New Milton there may be no useful cavity at all, and then it is internal wall insulation on the coldest rooms.
How it runs
Insulating a New Milton home, roof to walls
Thomas comes round, puts his head into the loft, checks the walls and writes the price himself. You deal with Thomas from the first visit until the job is signed off. Every line is set out on the written quote: clearing and bagging old material, the insulation and its depth or thickness, ventilation, boarding, the hatch, and disposal.
Most houses in town are post-war or eighties, with cavity walls and trussed roofs, so the likely work is topping up a loft, sorting a cold single storey extension, and insulating a top floor flat. In a block the roof space may belong to the freeholder, so we find out whose it is first. We lay dust sheets along the landing, keep the eaves clear for ventilation, and bag and remove everything that comes out. Damp or damaged timbers get photographed and priced for you, and nothing more is done until you agree.
Insulation in a loft or on the inside of a wall needs no planning permission. New Milton is outside the National Park, and away from the small Old Milton Green conservation area, external insulation is normally permitted development too; Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets out the limits. There are a handful of listed buildings in the town, so tell us on the first call if yours is one. Under regulation 23, renovating more than half of a roof, wall or floor brings the whole element up to the current standard. Both planning and building control sit with the district council, New Forest.
Cost
What changes the price of insulating a home
Which part of the house matters most. A loft top-up, a cold extension ceiling and a cavity wall are different jobs with different materials: mineral wool between and over the joists, rigid PIR boards at the rafters, or a blown cavity fill.
Getting in. A top floor flat with a small hatch over the stair is one morning; a semi with half the loft boarded out for suitcases is another. Old material to bag and remove, and boarding to lift and put back, come before anything new goes down. Rafter-level work in a room in the roof means taking plasterboard down first and putting it back after.
Ventilation. Close to the sea the air is damp, and a loft or flat roof that cannot breathe gets condensation. Adding insulation without keeping the eaves open makes it worse, so vents and eaves trays are part of the price.
The standard. Approved Document L sets the U-value the work has to reach, and on a room in the roof or an extension that sets the thickness.
Ask anyone else what depth or thickness is being laid, whether the old material comes out, and whether the eaves and hatch are included.
If it is urgent
Condensation, mould or a room that will not warm up
Ring the number below for this. Treat it as urgent if there is black mould spreading across a bedroom ceiling in a top floor flat, or a loft where the underside of the felt runs wet after a cold night.
Open a window, keep the room heated, and wipe the mould with a mould spray, not bleach. The first visit works out whether the cause is missing insulation, blocked ventilation at the eaves, or both, because adding material to a space that cannot breathe makes the damp worse. In a flat, check who owns the roof void. Booked work is done Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Ring for anything urgent, and if you cannot get through we phone you back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
The wind off the open ground to the south west takes depth out of insulation
The weather here arrives from the south west with very little in its way, and that changes one specific thing about a loft. Wind driven into the eaves does not stop at the fascia, it tracks along the underside of the roof and blows through the open face of the quilt at the perimeter.
It is called wind washing, and it is why the first metre in from the wall plate on an exposed elevation performs worse than the middle of the same ceiling, sometimes badly worse. On a sheltered house you can get away with ignoring it. Here you cannot.
What that means in practice is that the perimeter is where we spend the time. Vent trays go in to keep a clear air path without letting the airflow scour the insulation, the quilt is taken right out over the wall plate rather than stopping short of it, and where the roof is exposed we will often finish the outer edge in rigid board instead of soft wool so there is nothing for the wind to get into.
The same weather matters on the walls. Driven rain keeps an exposed elevation wet, and a wet wall conducts heat better than a dry one, so if you are thinking about lining that wall on the inside, the pointing, the render and the rainwater goods get sorted first. Insulating the back of a wall that is soaking from the front just moves the damp somewhere you cannot see it.
Who you are dealing with
Who you deal with for the insulation
Our base is eight miles away in Boscombe. From there we cover New Milton, Barton on Sea, Bashley, Ashley, Everton and the rest of BH25, where New Forest District Council is responsible for planning and for building control. If you are unsure whether your road counts, give us the postcode.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns and runs it, and he goes into the loft and puts the price together himself. A verified customer's score on Checkatrade gives the firm 10 out of 10. You are not charged for the visit, nor for the itemised quote in writing. Before you book a visit in New Milton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in New Milton?
Most repairs in New Milton need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In New Milton |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for New Milton. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Old Milton Green Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around New Milton. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers New Milton. |
Questions
Questions about insulation in New Milton
The house was built in the eighties. Is the loft good enough?
No, an eighties loft was good enough on the day and it is not now. The biggest single cohort in New Milton is the 1980s at 19.9%, and a loft from then typically carries 100mm of wool between the joists where current practice is more than double that depth.
The material is usually still sound, so it stays put and new wool goes over the top at right angles to close the joist line. That is a top-up, not a strip out.
We are a couple of miles inland. Does salt still reach us?
It does, carried in the wind rather than as spray. New Milton sits about 2.8km back from the coast, far enough that the covering weathers normally but close enough that salt on a south westerly settles on metalwork and holds damp against it. Ventilation grilles and the eaves trays are what suffer for it. If those have corroded shut, adding depth without opening them up leaves you with a wet roof space.
A quarter of homes here are terraces. Does that change access?
The material comes in through the front door, which is the only real difference. Terraces are 25.4% of New Milton and a mid terrace usually has no side access, so bales are carried in over sheeting and waste goes back out the same way. There is no scaffold and no skip for a loft job. Where the roof space runs on over a party wall, we check whether that wall is closed off at the top.
Why did the last top-up not show on the bill?
Usually because it stopped at the eaves or the hatch was left bare. Wool laid neatly between joists and finished a foot short of the wall plate leaves a cold ring right round the ceiling, and an uninsulated hatch is a hole in the middle of it. Air moving through those gaps carries away more than a thin patch does. On a New Milton top-up the eaves trays, hatch and tank are separate lines for that reason.
Is there a better time of year to have this done?
Any month, though the roof space itself sets the limit. A loft in New Milton is unpleasant in July and perfectly workable in February, so winter is often quicker to book and you feel the difference straight away. What we do avoid is opening the eaves or a flat roof in a strong south westerly, because the exposed side takes the driven rain and a stripped section will not stay dry.
Nearby, and next door
Insulation near New Milton
Nearby places we also cover for insulation, with straight-line distances from New Milton, and the other trades we offer in New Milton itself.
Insulation nearby
Our other trades in New Milton
Insulation guides
Part L: do you have to insulate when you re-roof? Black mould on walls: what causes it and what stops it PIR board vs mineral wool: which insulation?Builders in New Milton: all our building work Everything we do in New Milton Insulation, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Want to know what depth you have got?
We will get into the loft, measure what is down, check the eaves and the hatch, and put the options in writing. The visit and the quote are both free.