Insulation in Sopley

Lofts under a trussed roof. Three quarters of the housing here went up between 1945 and 1982, with the peak in the 1970s and early eighties, and that means most of the lofts are trussed: thin timbers in a W pattern every couple of feet, none of which can be cut, and just enough room to work in if you know where to put your feet. Those roofs were finished with a thin quilt laid one way between the joists, and it has been walked on and stored on ever since. We keep what is sound, take out what has been compressed beyond use, and bring the whole space up to depth with mineral wool laid between and over, the second layer running across the timbers so no truss carries cold straight through the ceiling.

Where your loft actually stops. Terraced houses are nearly half the stock here, and in a run of them the wall between one loft and the next does not always carry on up to the underside of the roof. Sometimes it does, sometimes it stops at ceiling height with a fire barrier above it. Either way the top of that wall is a cold path if nothing is done to it, and it is the edge that gets skipped because it does not look like the outside of the house. We insulate up to it properly and we do not cut, squash or work past a fire barrier to save ourselves a job.

Houses of this age were built with a cavity and a good many round here still have nothing in it, which makes the walls the biggest single thing left to do once the loft is right. It is a borescope job before it is a quote: what the cavity measures, whether anybody filled it in an earlier scheme, and whether that fill has settled and left the top of the wall bare. Where an old fill has bridged and is carrying damp across, more material is the wrong answer and we will tell you so rather than sell it.

A lot of these houses have picked up a rear extension, and the join is where the heat goes: a flat roof deck with an inch of board in it, and a cold bridge where the new wall meets the old one. If that roof is being recovered anyway, a warm roof with rigid board above the deck is the right build-up and far cheaper done while the covering is off.

At the village end, inside the Sopley conservation area, there are houses with solid walls and no cavity to fill, where an internal lining has to be vapour open and finished in lime rather than sealed up tight, and there are converted attics with no loft left to work in. Those are rigid board jobs: PIR such as Celotex between the rafters with a clear air gap kept above it, a foil faced board fixed under the rafters, or a multi-layer quilt like TLX where a sloping ceiling has no depth to give away. Dormer cheeks and the voids behind the knee walls are done at the same time. Add an insulated hatch, covers over the downlighters, lagging on the tank, and vent trays at the eaves.

No rate per square metre. A terrace with a small hatch on the landing and a trussed roof over it, a bungalow with one wide open loft, and a cottage where the roof pinches down almost to head height at the wall plate are three different days before a roll is opened. Old material that has to be bagged and taken away is a cost before anything new goes down. Approved Document L sets what the finished work has to reach. Ask any quote what depth is going down and whether the eaves are being kept clear.

We cover Sopley, Bransgore, Thorney Hill, Burley and the Ringwood East side on BH23 and down into Christchurch, and here it is the New Forest National Park Authority that deals with planning. 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.