Insulation in Spetisbury
Loft top-ups that keep your storage, floors done from below, and breathable linings where a solid wall genuinely needs one.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
The right first job in Spetisbury depends entirely on which sort of house you have. On the old cottages it is usually the roof space, then the floor and the draughts, before the walls. On the post-war houses it is the loft and then the cavity. We come and look for free and tell you which, in writing.
A Spetisbury house can lose heat through its walls, its landing, its loft and its floor. A cottage that eats heat and still has a cold corner in every room. A landing that is freezing while the room below it is fine. A loft full of boxes with a grey, flattened layer somewhere underneath them. Or a floor you can feel the cold coming up through in socks.
Adding more material on top of what is there rarely deals with any of that. The visit is a proper look instead: the real depth of what is in the loft once it is lifted, whether the eaves are still open, whether the walls have a cavity in them at all, what is under the ground floor, and where the tank, the pipe runs and the ceiling penetrations sit.
The written itemised quote follows from what we find, and it says what depth is going in and what is happening to the ventilation as well as what it costs.
The work
You cannot roll a cut roof end to end
Lofts that are also the storage. Plenty of lofts in Spetisbury have a floor of chipboard over the joists and the family's belongings on top. Underneath, the old quilt is compressed to nothing where anybody has walked and has settled into the gaps everywhere else, so it measures a third of what it was meant to be.
A renovated ceiling is expected to reach a U-value of 0.16, nearer 270mm of quilt than the 250 people remember. The fix is a raised deck on legs: the boarding goes back at a height that lets full depth mineral wool run underneath it, an eco roll between and over the joists, and you keep the storage instead of choosing between the two.
Purlins and struts. The houses that went up in Spetisbury between 1945 and 1982 mostly have a cut roof rather than a trussed one, with purlins and struts coming down onto the ceiling joists and a tank sitting in the middle of it. You cannot roll a loft like that from one end to the other. Every strut, every tank stand and every run of pipework is an edge that has to be cut round and closed up properly, and those edges are where the heat loss in a half done loft always turns out to be.
A fifth of Spetisbury predates 1919, and in those cottages the ground floor is often boards on joists over a ventilated void. Insulating between those joists, held on netting with the airbricks left clear so the void still breathes, makes more difference to how a room feels than anything you could do to the walls of the same house. Brick, flint and cob walls have no cavity to fill and stay sound by drying through their faces, so internal wall insulation on one has to be vapour open, a wood fibre or mineral board finished in lime. Anything built here from the sixties on does have a cavity, and that gets checked with a borescope, never assumed. Where a roof space here has become a room in roof it is rigid board rather than roll, PIR between the rafters with a clear air gap above and a multi-layer quilt such as TLX under a sloping ceiling with no depth to give.
How it runs
Insulating a house in the village, what happens and when
Thomas looks in the loft, checks the walls and asks which rooms are cold, then tells you what is worth doing first. On houses from the late sixties and seventies that is usually the loft, then the cavity walls; on the older cottages it is the roof space, the floor and the draughts, with any lining of the solid walls inside coming last. He prices it himself, and the quote lists the survey, clearing what is up there, the material and its depth, ventilation, and disposal. One quote covers everything.
Most of this work happens inside, so access is through the house: a loft hatch on the landing, or one room at a time for wall lining. We cover floors and furniture and clean up each day. Spetisbury lofts of this age are often part boarded and full of stored things, which we move and put back. Anything unexpected, like damp timbers or old wiring lying in the insulation, is photographed, priced and agreed with you first.
None of this is a planning matter for an ordinary house in Spetisbury; The Planning Portal explains where the limits sit. Building control comes in if you renovate a thermal element, or turn the roof space into a room. The village has no conservation area, but on the listed entries in the parish listed building consent covers work inside too, and Dorset Council deals with both.
Cost
Roof, cavity or lining: what changes the figure
We do not price insulation per square metre without seeing the house first. What is there now. Many lofts of this age have a thin original layer that can stay under the new one, or it has gone damp and dirty and has to be bagged and removed first.
Getting into the loft. A small hatch, a loft full of boxes, or boarding that has to come up all add time before any mineral wool goes down.
The walls. Cavity walls from the sixties and seventies can often be filled from outside in a day, once a borescope check shows the cavity is clear. Solid walls in the older cottages need internal lining, which means insulated plasterboard, a skim, and refitting sockets and skirting.
Ventilation. Adding insulation without keeping the eaves clear can cause condensation, so vents or eaves trays may be needed. Approved Document L sets what the finished work has to reach.
Doing it in the right order. If the roof is due for re-covering in the next year or two, it can be cheaper to insulate at rafter level while the tiles are off. Thomas will say so, and not sell you a loft job twice.
Ask any other quote what depth or thickness they are fitting, whether the old material comes out, and how they will keep the roof space ventilated.
If it is urgent
A cold room, condensation or mould that keeps returning
Insulation problems are rarely emergencies, but a loft running with condensation or mould spreading across a ceiling needs looking at. Keep the loft hatch shut so warm damp air from the house stays out of the roof, and do not pack more insulation in yet, as that can make condensation worse.
We look at the ventilation, the depth of insulation and any roof leak, and tell you what is causing it before recommending anything. Booked work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If water is coming through a ceiling, ring us. When nobody answers, you will get a call back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Two sorts of house, two different first moves
Spetisbury puts old and post-war building side by side. There is the older stock along the street, solid walled, low eaved and put up long before anybody thought about heat at all. And there is everything added since the war, most of it from the late sixties and early seventies, built with a cavity and a shallow layer in the loft that was normal at the time.
Telling which one you are in is not difficult. Measure a window reveal: a solid wall gives you roughly the depth of a brick and a bit, a cavity wall gives you noticeably more, and a hollow sounding wall upstairs usually means a lining rather than masonry.
It matters because the cheap wins are in completely different places. In the newer houses the order is nearly always the loft up to full depth, then the cavity, then the hatch and the draughts, and the whole lot is inexpensive relative to what it saves off the bill.
In the older ones the walls are the last thing to touch and the most expensive, so the money goes into the roof space, the ground floor and the openings first, and only then do you look at whether a breathable internal lining is worth it in the rooms you actually sit in. Somebody quoting you a cavity fill on a cob cottage, or a wall lining before the loft has been measured, has not looked at the house.
Who you are dealing with
Insulation work near Blandford and Bryanston
We insulate homes in Spetisbury, Charlton Marshall, Blandford Forum, Bryanston and the Winterbornes, where Dorset Council handles planning and building control. We are 14.2 miles away in Boscombe. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is the business, on the register for England and Wales as company 15471719. Before you book a visit in Spetisbury, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Thomas Hannen, the owner, looks in the loft and at the walls himself before writing the price. Look us up on Checkatrade and you will find a verified customer's 10 out of 10. The survey visit and the written, itemised quote are free.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Spetisbury?
Most repairs in Spetisbury 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 Spetisbury |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Spetisbury. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Spetisbury, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Spetisbury. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Spetisbury. |
Questions
Questions about insulation in Spetisbury
Our semi dates from about 1970. Where is the heat going?
Through the ceiling and up the party cavity, in that order. Much of Spetisbury is post war, a lot of it from the late 1960s and early 1970s, when semis went up with an open cavity between the pair and a thin loft layer above. There are plenty of semis in the village. That party cavity behaves like a chimney if it is open at the top, so the head gets sealed.
The old cottages at the far end. Same approach?
No, different rules apply to them. About 20.1% of Spetisbury predates 1919 and those walls are solid, so they have to stay able to dry outwards. Cement render and vapour tight linings trap water in the masonry and push the damp through to the inside face. The roof space is still the first place to spend, because it behaves the same whatever the walls are made of.
The worst weather hits one side. Does that change anything?
It changes where we seal rather than what we lay. In Spetisbury the most exposed face looks south west, so that side carries the driven rain and the wind pressure. Air gets pushed in at the reveals and along the eaves on that face and drawn back out on the sheltered side. Sealing the pressured elevation first stops the flow that is carrying heat out of the rooms behind it.
Is planning likely to be involved at all?
Rarely: there is no conservation area covering Spetisbury and 18 listed entries in the parish, Cedar Court among them, so most houses have nothing to clear before starting. Dorset Council only becomes interested if you alter the outside or make the roof space habitable. If yours is one of the listed ones then internal work counts too, and I check the entry before quoting, not after.
Why was our quote different from the one next door?
Because the two lofts are not the same, even in a matching pair. One has a boarded storage deck that has to come up and go back, the other has bare joists. One has downlights punching through the ceiling that need covers over them, the other has none. Access, hatch size, tank position and how far the eaves can be reached all move the figure, and each is listed separately.
Nearby, and next door
Insulation near Spetisbury
Nearby places we also cover for insulation, with straight-line distances from Spetisbury, and the other trades we offer in Spetisbury itself.
Insulation nearby
Our other trades in Spetisbury
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?Everything we do in Blandford Forum Insulation, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Start with a survey of the whole house
A free site visit in Spetisbury, a rule put in whatever is up there already, and a written itemised quote with the method on it as well as the number.