Insulation in Thorney Hill
Loft, rafter, wall and floor insulation for the exposed houses and cottages on the forest edge, surveyed before it is priced.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most houses in Thorney Hill went up between the war and the middle of the eighties, and almost all of those have a proper loft over them. A second layer laid over the joists is usually a single day. The older cottages along the forest edge are the harder question, because they have no cavity in the walls and very little room in the roof. The free site visit sorts you into one or the other before anybody talks about materials.
The calls come in three shapes. A bedroom that will not warm up no matter what the heating does. A loft somebody has finally looked into, where the original layer is flat, patchy and stops well short of the wall. And a house that is warm enough in the middle and cold at the outside walls, which usually means the walls rather than the roof.
So we look before we price. That means getting into the roof space, putting a rule into whatever is up there rather than guessing, checking whether the eaves are still open and the ventilation path works, seeing where the tank and the pipe runs sit, and drilling a small hole in an outside wall where a cavity is likely so a borescope can tell us what is actually in it.
On the older cottages we check what the walls are made of and whether the ground floor is suspended timber over a vented void. Then you get a written itemised quote with the method on it as well as the number.
The work
The old cottage lofts here are tight to the collar
Top-ups in the post-war and seventies houses. These are the bulk of the village, with more than four in ten homes built between 1945 and 1982, and their lofts were built with one thin layer pushed between the joists. Forty years on it has settled, been compressed by everything stored on top of it, and pulled away from the edges. We lay between and over: fresh mineral wool between the timbers, a second run at right angles across the top so the joists stop bridging the cold, 250mm to 270mm all in, which is what takes a ceiling to the 0.16 U-value Approved Document L expects of a renovated roof. Most are a day, two if the old material is coming out.
Houses of that age normally do have a cavity wall, but what is in it varies from nothing to a partial fill that has slumped down the wall and left the top third bare. We borescope before anyone quotes a fill, and on the elevations that take the weather here, which is the south west face, we say honestly when a full fill is not the right answer. Wet insulation in a wall does no thermal work at all, and it is a great deal harder to take out than it was to blow in.
Roughly a fifth of the homes here are pre-1919 and those walls are solid, so the choice is an internal lining built to breathe or external wall insulation, and external work on a cottage inside the National Park is a planning conversation before it is a technical one. Their roof spaces are usually shallow and tight to the collar, so the loft job becomes careful hand work into the corners rather than a barrow of rolls slung across the middle. In the older houses insulation goes between the ground floor joists on netting, and the airbricks stay open.
Detached is the commonest house type in the village at nearly 40%, which means more external wall and more roof per household than a terrace has, so both surfaces are worth money. Where a bedroom is already up in the roof there is no loft left to work in, so it is rigid board: PIR such as Celotex between the rafters with a clear air gap kept above, a foil faced board under the rafters, or a multi-layer quilt like TLX where the rafter depth is not there. Dormer cheeks and the voids behind the knee walls go in at the same time, with a vapour control layer on the warm side.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Insulating a loft, a floor or the inside face of a wall is an improvement rather than development, so no planning permission is involved and it sits inside permitted development, which is what the Planning Portal's insulation guidance says. Building control is engaged once a thermal element is renovated or a loft becomes a room. Thorney Hill sits inside the New Forest National Park, so the National Park Authority is the planning authority rather than the district council, and anything that changes the outside face of a building is checked against the National Park Authority's interactive property map and its heritage and conservation guidance before it is priced. Building control here is New Forest District Council.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
No rate per square metre. A cottage with a hatch on a narrow landing and a roof space you cannot stand up in, a seventies semi with a proper loft ladder, and a chalet where the work is all at rafter level are three different days before any material is bought. 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, whether the old layer is removed or covered, and whether the eaves stay clear.
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 looked at quickly. The first visit tells you whether it is insulation, ventilation or both, because insulating a roof space that cannot breathe makes it worse. Thorney Hill is a short run out through Bransgore, so getting somebody to look at it quickly is rarely the problem.
Worth knowing
Wind gets into a loft here, and it takes heat with it
The village sits high and open with the forest on one side, and the weather arrives off the south west. That does something specific to a loft that nobody mentions when they sell you depth. Air pushed in at the eaves runs across the top surface of open mineral wool, and where it does that it strips heat out of the material the same way wind strips it out of a jumper.
It is called wind washing, it happens at the perimeter rather than in the middle, and it is why the cold patch on a ceiling below shows up as a band around the outside of the room rather than in the centre. Depth in the middle of the loft does not fix it.
What fixes it is treating the edge as its own piece of work. The layer has to be carried right out over the wall plate rather than stopped a hand's width short, which on a shallow roof means getting on your front to do it properly. Vent trays hold the ventilation path open above it so the eaves still breathe, because the answer to a draught is never to block the vent. Where the perimeter is badly exposed, capping the outer metre with a denser board or a breathable membrane keeps the moving air off the top of the quilt. The hatch gets the same attention: an unsealed hatch in an exposed house is a chimney. The other half of it is the walls.
Driven rain on the south west elevation is exactly the situation where a full cavity fill can go wrong, because water crossing a bridged or debris filled cavity ends up in the fill and then on the inside face as damp. So on that elevation the borescope comes out first, and Approved Document F is worth reading alongside Approved Document L, because the tighter you make a house the harder you have to think about where its air is coming from.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Thorney Hill, Bransgore and Burley on BH23, out through Sopley and towards Ringwood East and Christchurch. The New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for this address and New Forest District Council does building control.
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
Thorney Hill questions we get asked
Does the National Park have a say on loft insulation?
Not on what goes inside the roof. Thorney Hill falls under the New Forest National Park authority, which is the planning authority here rather than the district council, and its interest is in what the landscape can see. Material in a loft is invisible to it. Panels, a change of covering, external wall insulation or a dormer are a different matter and go to the Park for a decision.
Four in ten houses here are detached. Why does that matter?
Detached homes are 39.7% of Thorney Hill, and a detached house loses heat through four walls rather than two. There is no neighbour either side keeping the flank walls warm, and the roof is open to the wind on every side. It means loft depth earns more here than it would on a terrace, and it means draught sealing is worth doing on all four elevations instead of just the front and back.
The draught comes in at the top of the wall. Why?
That is wind washing at the eaves. Air driven at the south west face gets under the tiles and blows across the edge of the loft material, lifting it and stripping heat out of the corner of the ceiling below. It is the single most common fault I find around here. An eaves baffle holds the material down and keeps a clear air path above it at the same time.
Our bungalow has bedrooms in the roof. What can be done?
Quite a lot, without stripping ceilings out. Bungalows are 20.7% of Thorney Hill and many were altered to put rooms in the roof, which leaves sloping ceilings, short vertical walls at the sides and a flat section over the top. The cold usually comes from the small voids behind those side walls, which are empty and open to the eaves. Those get filled and sealed before anything else.
Do we need anything cleared before you start?
Only the ladder route and whatever is stored up there. There are three listed entries at Thorney Hill, the Church of All Saints among them, so consent almost never arises on an ordinary house. What does hold jobs up is a loft full of boxes, because material cannot be laid over the top of them. Anything you cannot shift, tell me at the visit and I will price around it.
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Get a look before you get a price
A free site visit in Thorney Hill, a rule put into whatever is up there now, and a written itemised quote with the method on it as well as the number.