Insulation in Owermoigne
Loft depth, a proper air path at the eaves, rafter level board in conversions and breathable work on old walls, priced in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
The insulation job in a village like Owermoigne is rarely just laying wool. It is getting depth into a roof space that was never built with a ventilated eaves detail, without turning the loft into a cold damp box. So we look at the airflow and the ceiling together, and quote them together.
The calls come in three shapes. A cottage that eats oil or logs through the winter and still has a cold bedroom at the end of it. A converted barn, annexe or room over a garage that was finished quickly and never insulated properly at the rafters. And a roof space where somebody has already added wool, pushed it hard into the eaves, and produced condensation on the underside of the felt and dark spotting on the ceiling below.
We come out, get into the roof, and tell you which of those you have before anyone talks about materials or depth. The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. If the honest answer is that your money is better spent on ventilation than on another hundred millimetres of wool, that is what the quote will say.
The work
No soffit, no eaves gap, nowhere for the air to go
No soffit, no eaves gap. Older village roofs were cut on site, so you get purlins, heavy rafters, an uneven ceiling below and often no ventilated eaves at all, because the rafters land more or less on top of the wall. The wool still goes down the same way, straightened out, gaps closed, then a fresh eco roll across the joists at right angles, between and over, to roughly 270mm finished, which is what brings a ceiling to a U-value of 0.16 rather than the 250mm people remember. What changes is the edge. Where there is no eaves gap to protect we either open one up with vent trays and over-fascia vents, or bring air in through tile vents higher up the slope, rather than lay depth into a roof that has nowhere for moisture to go.
Conversions around here, barns, annexes and rooms over garages, are usually warm at one end and cold at the other. In a room in roof it is rigid PIR board cut tight between the rafters with a ventilation gap held above it and a second layer under the sloping ceiling, taped so the vapour control layer is continuous, or a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX where there is head height to lose. A room over a garage needs the floor doing as well, because an unheated garage under a bedroom is as cold as a roof above it.
A rubble stone or old brick wall has no cavity and was built to absorb water and give it back, so it wants a breathable answer or none at all. Internal wall insulation on the coldest room is the usual route, detailed properly at joist ends and window reveals. Newer houses on the edges of the village have a cavity wall, and there the survey starts with a borescope. Where a cottage floor is coming up anyway is the one moment when insulating it is straightforward; at any other time it means taking up a floor for the sake of it. The practical end matters too: an insulated hatch, fire rated covers over any downlighter, lagging on the pipe runs above the new layer, and a raised deck where storage goes back.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Insulation inside a loft, at rafter level or on the inside of a wall needs no planning permission, and Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets out where that stops. There is no conservation area over Owermoigne, so external wall insulation is normally permitted development, though the design still has to suit the building. Thirteen entries sit in and immediately around the village, and on a listed building listed building consent comes before work you cannot see from the road, internal linings included. Building control catches most jobs: regulation 23 means renovating more than half of an element brings the whole of it up to the current standard. Dorset 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 stone cottage with the hatch in a bedroom ceiling and no boarded floor to stand on is one morning; a converted barn open to the ridge 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. Owermoigne is a run out west, so we fix a morning not an hour. Outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm is by arrangement.
Worth knowing
This is radon ground, so sealing the house up needs a bit of thought
Owermoigne sits in a radon affected area, in the lower band, where a small share of homes are expected to be above the action level and building control expects basic radon protection in new work such as an extension or a conversion. Radon comes up out of the ground, so it has nothing to do with your loft, but it has a lot to do with how airtight the rest of the house becomes.
Draught-proofing and insulating reduce the amount of air changing in a building, and if that air is coming up through a suspended floor, less air change means a higher concentration indoors. That is not a reason to leave the house cold. It is a reason to be deliberate about where the air comes from.
In practice it changes a few things we do. Airbricks and underfloor vents stay clear, and nothing we lay goes anywhere near blocking them, whatever it does for the draught in the hall. If a ground floor is being insulated we keep the void below it ventilated rather than sealing it up. Where the house is tight and the extract in the kitchen and bathroom is old or missing, we will point at that before we point at more insulation, because Approved Document F treats ventilation and fabric as one system rather than two.
And if you are converting or extending, radon protection is a building control item that belongs in the build-up under the new floor, which is far cheaper to design in than to retrofit. A test kit from the health authority is inexpensive and settles the question for your address rather than for the map square.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Owermoigne, Crossways, Warmwell, Winfrith Newburgh, Wool and the DT2 addresses across this side of the county, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. Send us the postcode and we will confirm before we come out.
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
Owermoigne questions we get asked
What is actually on the written quote you leave?
Line by line, what goes where and what comes out. For a loft at Owermoigne that means the area covered, the depth being added, whether the existing material stays or is bagged and taken away, the eaves trays, the hatch and the tank jacket, each on its own line so you can drop one if you want to. Thomas writes it after the visit rather than at the door, and both the visit and the quote are free.
Twenty miles out from Bournemouth. Will you actually come?
Yes, Owermoigne is on our regular run west and we work along that side of Dorset. Distance changes how the work gets booked rather than whether we turn up, so a survey out here is grouped with other jobs in the same direction and we give you a day rather than a vague window. Thomas drives out and looks himself, so there is nobody standing between you and the man pricing the job.
Moignes Court is listed. Does that affect what we do?
Listing attaches to the named building and to nothing around it. Owermoigne has 13 listed entries, Moignes Court and the Parish Church Of St Michael among them, and there is no conservation area over the village, so an ordinary house here is unrestricted for internal work. On a listed building the test is what the work does to old fabric, and a reversible layer over a ceiling is a far easier conversation than a lined wall.
Which side of the house do you look at first?
The south west face, because that is the exposed elevation at Owermoigne and it takes the driven rain. Wind driven water works at edges and openings, so it finds a way in at a verge, a window head or a gable rather than through the middle of a wall, and it wets whatever sits behind. A patch of wall that never dries out will read cold indoors permanently. We check that face first and price it on its own.
The ground drains well here. Is a solid floor worth insulating?
It can be, though it is the most disruptive item on the list. Owermoigne sits on freely draining ground, so an old solid floor is less likely to be wet, but doing one properly means taking it up, laying insulation, and putting a new slab or a floating deck over the top. That is a room out of use for a while. Most people do it when the floor is coming up anyway, and leave it until then.
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Not sure whether the loft or the ventilation is the problem?
We will get into the roof, measure what is there, check how the eaves are breathing, and put the options in writing. The visit and the quote are both free.