Insulation in Norton
Bungalow lofts, chalet rooms, old solid walls and the ventilation that has to go with them, surveyed first and priced in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
One home in three around Norton is a bungalow, and on a bungalow the ceiling is the largest heated surface in the house. That is why a loft top-up does more here than the same work does on a two storey home, and why it is nearly always the first thing we would spend your money on.
People ring us about the same handful of things. A bungalow that costs a fortune to keep warm in a cold spell, where the loft has an old thin layer laid between the joists and nothing over them. A chalet room upstairs with sloping ceilings that is hot in July and freezing in January. A solid walled cottage that feels cold and slightly damp even with the heating on. And condensation in the roof space, usually where somebody has stuffed the eaves solid with wool.
We look at all of it before we price any of it. The visit is free, the itemised written quote is free, and if the answer is a cross layer, vent trays and a sealed hatch, that is what you will get quoted for. Where the right answer is to leave a wall alone and spend the money on the roof instead, we will say so.
The work
Driven rain is why we say no to some cavity fills
Bungalow lofts, which is most of our work here. A third of the homes here are bungalows, and a bungalow gives you a huge, low roof space over every room in the house, so the depth you get into it matters more than it would anywhere else. The awkward parts are the hips and the eaves. We straighten what is already down, close the gaps where runs have been pulled apart for a cable or an aerial, then lay fresh mineral wool across the joists at right angles, between and over, to about 270mm finished. Eco Roll is easy to work in a low space and cuts cleanly round the tank and the pipe runs. Old material stays unless it is wet, black underneath or full of nesting, in which case it is bagged and it goes with us.
Chalet rooms, dormers and sloping ceilings. Plenty of homes here have a room already in the roof, which means there is no loft to lay anything in and the work moves to rafter level. Rigid board, Celotex or another PIR, goes tight between the rafters with a clear air gap kept above it and a further layer under, taped to give a continuous vapour control layer facing the room. Where the head height cannot spare the thickness, a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX does a lot in very little depth. The small flat roof over a dormer and the cheeks either side of it are usually the coldest square metres in the house and the ones nobody has touched.
A quarter of the housing at this end of the Island predates 1919, and those ceilings are often lath and plaster on shallow joists. Insulation still goes over them, but nobody should be walking on them or screwing boarding down through them, so a raised deck goes in first if you want storage. Down at the other end of the house a suspended timber ground floor can take a breathable quilt between the joists, and the airbricks that ventilate the void underneath stay clear afterwards, because blocking them causes rot.
The post-war houses and bungalows do have a cavity wall, and the survey starts with a borescope: what is in there, whether the fill has slumped, whether the cavity is clean. But this is an exposed coastal corner a couple of kilometres from the water with the weather coming off the south west, driven rain keeps the outer leaf wet for long spells, and a full fill in a badly exposed wall can carry damp across to the inner leaf. Where that is the risk we will say so and put the money into the roof and the draughts instead. Internal wall insulation on the coldest room, or external wall insulation on the whole envelope, are both real options and both bigger jobs than a loft. Vent trays go in first, the hatch gets a board and a draught seal, the tank and pipework get lagging, and downlighters get covers.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Nothing inside a loft, a sloping ceiling or the inside face of a wall needs planning permission, and Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets out where that stops. There is no conservation area over Norton itself, though boundaries at this end of the Island run close, so check the address before pricing work on the outside of a wall. Twelve entries here are listed, and consent comes first on those, including work you cannot see from the road. regulation 23 means renovating more than half of an element brings the whole of it up to current standard, and Approved Document F is why we look at ventilation before we add depth. The Isle of Wight Council is the authority for both.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
No rate per square metre: the area is the easy part and everything round it is the awkward part. A bungalow with the water tank sat in the middle of the loft is one morning; a flat with a roof space shared across the block is another. Old material to bag and take away, and boarding to lift and put back, come before anything new goes down. Approved Document L sets what the work has to reach. Ask what depth is being laid, whether the old material comes out, and whether the eaves and hatch are included.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. A loft dripping with condensation, mould that keeps coming back, or a room that will not hold heat gets seen quickly. The first visit settles whether that is insulation, ventilation or both, because insulating a space that cannot breathe makes it worse. Norton is across the water, so we plan Island work in whole days. Outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm is by arrangement.
Worth knowing
A solid wall has to breathe, and that changes what can go on it
About a quarter of the homes here were built before 1919, which in practice means solid walls, brick or stone with no cavity, built to get wet in winter and dry out again in spring. They handle water by absorbing it and letting it go, and the lime mortar and soft plaster were part of that.
Wrap a wall like that in something that will not let vapour through and you stop the drying half of the cycle. The wall stays wet, the damp shows up at skirtings and in corners, and the timber ends built into the wall are the part that pays for it. That is why we will not put an impermeable board straight onto an old solid wall and call it a job done.
What we do instead is start with the cheap, reversible work and only then touch the walls. The loft first, because it is the biggest single loss and nothing about it harms old fabric. Then the draughts: the hatch, the floorboards, the letterbox, the gaps around service pipes.
If the walls still need doing after that, internal wall insulation goes on with a breathable build-up, wood fibre rather than foil-faced foam, detailed carefully at joist ends, window reveals and the junction with the floor so there is no cold spot left for moisture to find. It is a slower job and it is the one that leaves the house working the way it was designed to. If the building is listed, all of this needs consent first, and that conversation is worth having before you order anything.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Norton, Freshwater, Totland, Yarmouth and the PO41 addresses at the west end of the Island, with the Isle of Wight Council for planning and building control. Send us the postcode and we will confirm before we arrange the visit.
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
Norton questions we get asked
A quarter of Norton predates 1900. Can those walls be insulated?
They can, but not with anything that traps water in them. 26.0% of the stock here predates 1919 and the pre-1900 share alone is 23.2%, which means solid walls built to breathe and to dry out through their surface. A plastic backed board or a cement render on the inside face pushes the damp back into the wall instead. Where we line an old wall we use a breathable build up, with lime rather than cement at the reveals.
A third of the homes are bungalows. Why does that help?
Because the loft covers the entire footprint of the house. Bungalows are 34.6% of the dwellings at Norton, and where a two storey house loses heat through a ceiling above half its floor area, a bungalow loses it above all of it. Getting the depth right is therefore the single biggest thing you can do to the fabric. The catch is that these lofts are shallow at the eaves, so rafter trays keep the airway open.
Getting a builder over from the mainland. Is that a problem?
It is a scheduling question rather than an obstacle. Norton is on the Isle of Wight and we come over on the ferry, so work here gets booked in blocks rather than an hour at a time, and the material crosses with us in one load. That means the survey has to be thorough first time. Thomas comes out, measures and photographs what is there, and the written quote is itemised so nothing gets added later.
Two kilometres from the water. What corrodes first up here?
Fixings and vents, in that order. Norton sits 2.2km from the coast and salt carried inland keeps metal damp between showers, so nails, clips and the mesh in eaves vents go long before the covering does. In a roof space that matters, because a blocked vent turns new insulation into a condensation problem. We open up and replace corroded vent mesh as part of the insulation work rather than as a second visit.
Is the council on the Island different about permission?
The Isle of Wight Council is the planning authority here and the rules it applies are the national ones. Norton has 12 listed entries and no conservation area of its own, so on an ordinary house internal insulation is maintenance and needs no application. Where it changes is external wall insulation on an older property, or anything altering the outside face. Given how much of Norton predates 1919, that comes up more often than the loft question.
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Want to know what is in your loft?
We will get up there, measure the depth, look at the eaves, the hatch and the tank, and put the options in writing. The visit and the quote are both free.