Insulation in West Moors
Bungalow lofts taken to full depth right into the hips, boarded storage re-decked, and cold rooms in the roof sorted at rafter level.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Half the homes in West Moors are bungalows, which means the ceiling and the roof above it are the biggest heat losing surface in the house by a distance. Getting the loft right here does more, for less money, than anything else you could spend it on.
The calls are nearly always one of three. A bungalow that is warm in the middle and cold in every corner, which is what a hipped roof does when the wool stops short of the eaves. A chalet with a room in the roof, or a dormer added later, where that upstairs room is freezing in January and unbearable in July. And a loft somebody has just been up into for the first time since they moved in, with the wool flattened under boards and daylight visible along the eaves.
None of it is difficult work and most of it is a day or less. We are a few minutes up the road, so we come and look before anyone talks about money. The site visit is free, so is the written itemised quote, and if the honest answer is a cross layer, vent trays and a sealed hatch, that is what you will be told.
The work
A hipped roof runs out to nothing at the corners
Between and over, to the corners. Most of these roofs went on in the late sixties and early seventies, when a loft got one thin layer laid between the joists. We repair what is there, close the gaps at the ends of the runs, then lay eco roll across the joists at right angles to a finished depth of about 270mm, which is what the 0.16 u-value in Approved Document L asks of a renovated roof. Half the dwellings in West Moors are bungalows, and on a bungalow the corners are the job: a hipped roof narrows to nothing at every hip, so the last metre is cut work on your knees, and it is the metre most quotes quietly skip.
These roofs sit close to the wall head and the gap over the wall plate is small to begin with. Push wool into it and you have stopped the roof breathing, which is how a dry loft turns into a condensation problem two winters later. Vent trays go in first so the airflow the Approved Document F standard expects is kept, and the depth runs right up to them.
There are a lot of chalets and dormers here, some built that way, some converted since. Once the roof space is a room, loft wool is no longer the answer for it: the work moves to rafter level, with rigid PIR board such as Celotex cut tight between and under the rafters, a ventilation gap kept above, and a vapour control layer before boarding. Behind the dwarf walls at the sides there is a triangular void that is usually forgotten, and that void is what makes the room cold. Where head height is tight, a multi-layer foil quilt such as TLX buys performance without stealing another inch.
Boarded storage, which nearly every bungalow here has. A bungalow loft is big, low and useful, so it gets chipboard screwed straight to the joists and everything in the house ends up on it, squashing the wool to a fraction of its depth. The boards come up, the full depth goes underneath, and the deck goes back on legs so you keep the storage. The hatch is usually a bare sheet of ply, a hole in everything you have just paid for, so it gets boarded and draught sealed; the tank and pipework get lagging because the loft is colder afterwards, and downlighters get covers. Cavity walls of this age were often filled at some point, so a borescope comes before anyone discusses more fill.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The quote is itemised: survey, clearing, the material and its depth, ventilation works and disposal on separate lines.
Nothing you do inside a loft needs planning permission, and with no conservation area over West Moors and a single listed entry in the parish, insulating the outside of a wall is normally permitted development too. Planning Portal guidance on insulation covers the exceptions. Building control is the part that actually bites: regulation 23 of the Building Regulations means that once you renovate more than half of a thermal element, the whole of that element has to be brought up to standard, which is why a roof room is a different conversation from a top-up. Dorset Council for both.
Cost
What decides the price of an insulation job
No rate per square metre. A bungalow with a hall hatch and an empty loft, the same bungalow boarded out and full, and a chalet with a room already in the roof are three different jobs before any material is ordered. Old material to bag and take away, and storage to move and put back, come before anything new goes down, and Approved Document L sets what the work has to reach. Comparing quotes, ask what depth is being laid, whether the old material is removed or covered, and whether the hatch and pipework are included.
If it is urgent
Damp, condensation or a room you cannot heat
Ring rather than use the form. Condensation dripping in the loft, mould that keeps coming back, or a room that will not hold heat gets looked at quickly. Insulating a roof space that cannot breathe makes it worse, so the first visit settles which it is. West Moors is minutes from us. If the cold room is the one in the roof, say so, because that is rafter work.
Worth knowing
In a bungalow, the ceiling is the whole house
A two-storey house of the same floor area puts half its rooms above the other half, so the ceiling under the loft covers only the upstairs. A bungalow spreads the whole house out under one roof. Every room you use sits directly under that loft, so roughly twice as much ceiling is exposed to a cold roof space, and heat loss through it is the single biggest line in the house.
That is why the same loft job pays back faster in West Moors than it does almost anywhere else we work, and why we will usually tell you to spend on the loft before you spend anything on the walls.
It cuts the other way on the awkward parts. A bungalow roof is mostly edges: hips, verges and a long run of low eaves, and the wool has to be cut into all of them rather than rolled down the middle and left. When you compare quotes, ask specifically what happens in the last metre at the hips and whether vent trays are included, because that is where the difference between two prices usually sits.
It is also worth knowing that a chalet or a bungalow with a loft conversion is not a loft job at all in the eyes of the work: nothing you lay on the floor of a boarded room helps, and the insulation has to follow the shape of the roof instead. If your neighbour four doors down had theirs done, the house is the same age and the same build, and what they were told will very likely apply to yours.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover West Moors, Ferndown, Three Legged Cross, Verwood and the BH22 addresses either side of the Ringwood road, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. Send the postcode if you want to be sure. 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
West Moors questions we get asked
Over half of West Moors is bungalows. Why does that matter for heat?
Because 50.9% of homes in West Moors are single storey, and in a bungalow the roof is the main route heat takes out of the building. There is no first floor sitting between your living rooms and the cold. The second consequence is perimeter: a long low eaves line running all the way round the house, and the eaves are exactly where quilt tends to run out before it reaches the wall plate.
Nearly two thirds of the estate dates from one period. Does that show?
It does. 64.6% of the housing here went up between 1945 and 1982, with the heaviest run in the late 1960s and early 1970s at 29.0%. Those houses were built to the same details within a few years of each other, so they fall short in the same places: shallow quilt one way between joists, nothing carried over the wall plate, no trays at the eaves. Neighbours tend to need identical work.
Only one building here is listed. Do we need to ask anyone?
Not for the loft. West Moors has no conservation area and a single listed entry across the whole village, so for practically every address the roof space is repair and maintenance with nothing to apply for. Dorset only becomes relevant if you turn that space into a room, because then structure, stairs, escape and ventilation all come into it, and that is not the same job as laying quilt.
The ground here stays wet. Does that reach the roof space?
Not directly, but it decides how we treat the ground floor. West Moors sits on naturally wet ground, so a suspended timber floor depends on its air bricks to keep the void underneath dry. Pack insulation between the joists and let those bricks get blocked or buried and the timber stops drying out, which trades a warm floor for a rotten one. We open them up and net them instead.
Do we have to move out while you are up there?
No. The work happens in the roof space and on the landing under the hatch, and you carry on downstairs as normal. We sheet the route from the front door to the hatch, seal material into bags before it comes down, and nothing loose travels through the house. What you notice is a ladder in the way for the day and the door on the latch while bags go out to the van.
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Free site visit anywhere in West Moors, and a written itemised quote showing the depth, the vent trays and the boarding as separate lines.