Insulation in Wareham

The loft top-up over one original layer. About half of Wareham was built between the war and the early eighties, the peak falling in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a loft of that age got one layer of wool between the joists and nothing over them.

In a Wareham loft, forty years of settling has taken the depth out of it, and the joists themselves are a cold bridge running across the whole ceiling. We repair and straighten what is down, then lay eco roll across the joists at right angles, between and over, to a finished depth of around 270mm. That is the depth a loft has to reach for the 0.16 u-value Approved Document L sets for a renovated roof.

Wareham has more terraced housing than anything else, close to a third of it, and an old terrace loft is its own problem. The party wall often stops short of the underside of the roof, so the roof space runs on into next door. Insulation stops at your wall, not in the middle of the run, and where the wall is short it wants building up, not covering over. The hatch in these houses is usually a small drop-down on a narrow landing, so every roll goes up a ladder in a stairwell.

Once a roof space has been made into a room the work moves to rafter level: rigid board, PIR such as Celotex, cut tight between and under the rafters with a clear ventilation gap kept above it, and a vapour control layer before it is boarded and skimmed. On a sloping ceiling or a dormer cheek where the head height is already tight, a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX gets you performance without losing another inch of room. If the covering is coming off anyway, a warm roof done from above is the better build.

Ground floors, which nobody thinks of. The town sits on low ground in flood zone 3 with the Piddle about 150 metres off, and a lot of the older houses have floorboards over a ventilated void with airbricks in the outside wall. That void is cold and it is meant to be. Insulating between the floor joists cures a genuinely draughty room, and on ground like this it wants closed-cell rigid board rather than wool, because wool that gets wet stays wet. The airbricks stay clear whatever else happens.

The estate houses have cavity walls and many were filled years ago, so a borescope survey comes before anyone talks about injecting more. The older brick in the centre is solid, which means internal wall insulation or external wall insulation, EWI, and with getting on for two hundred listed entries in Wareham the front elevation is rarely the place to start. Boarded storage gets lifted and re-decked on legs so the wool is not compressed, the hatch gets a board and a draught seal, the tank and pipework get lagging, and downlighters get covers.

Insulation in Wareham has no honest rate per square metre, because the same area of insulation takes very different time in different houses.

The house type. A terrace in the old town may have a tiny hatch over the stairs and a shallow roof space. A bungalow, and a fifth of Wareham's homes are bungalows, has a wide loft that is easy to cover but a lot of eaves to keep clear. A flat has a loft only on the top floor, and in a block the freeholder has a say.

The walls. The pre-war houses have solid walls, which cannot be cavity filled and need lining inside with a breathable board or insulating outside. The estate houses from the town's big building years, around the turn of the seventies, have cavities, and a borescope check tells us whether they are empty.

Clearing first. Old material to bag and take away, and boxes to move and put back, come before anything new goes down.

The target. Approved Document L sets the U-value the work has to reach, and on a solid wall that governs how thick the lining is and how much room you lose.

When comparing, ask what depth or thickness is being fitted, whether the old material comes out, and how ventilation is being kept.

We insulate homes in Wareham, Stoborough, Sandford, Ridge and Holton Heath, and the BH20 addresses out towards Wool and Bere Regis. Wareham is 12.5 miles from our Boscombe base, and Dorset Council covers planning and building control.

The company you deal with is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales as company 15471719, and the survey and pricing are done by its owner, Thomas Hannen. Checkatrade shows a verified customer giving us 10 out of 10. The visit to look at your house is free, as is his itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in Wareham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Wareham 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.