Loft insulation in Broadstone

The second layer is the fix. What is nearly always in a Broadstone loft is a single thickness of mineral wool pushed down between the joists and levelled off with them. It was fine for its day and it leaves the timber uncovered, so every joist is a cold bridge running through the ceiling.

We straighten what is sound, fill the gaps where it has settled, then run a new unbacked roll over the top at right angles to the first. Cross laid like that it counts as two layers rather than one thick one, and the finished depth comes to about 270mm. Glass wool roll does most of it, with batts where bracing breaks the run up.

What comes out. Not everything in a Broadstone loft is worth keeping. Wool compressed flat under boarding, anything wet or patchy, anything contaminated by droppings, and the old loose fill that migrates towards the eaves all get bagged up in the loft and carried down. That is a line on the quote before any new material appears, and it is the line most quotes leave off.

Eaves and ventilation. The insulation is taken out over the wall plate and stopped there, with the air gap above it held open by an eaves vent tray in each rafter bay. Cross ventilation from one side of the roof to the other is what keeps the timbers dry, and a lot of the roofs in Broadstone have a bitumen felt underlay rather than a modern breathable membrane, which makes the eaves the only route the air has. Block them and the loft reaches dew point sooner than it used to: condensation drips off the felt, then dark mould spreads along the rafters.

The tank, the lights and the wiring. Broadstone houses of this era usually still have a cold water tank in the loft. Once the ceiling is properly insulated the loft gets colder, so the tank and its pipework need lagging and a lid, and no insulation is laid beneath the tank. Recessed lights get fire rated covers rather than being smothered, and cable is lifted and clipped above the new layer, since buried wiring runs hot.

Storage and sloping ceilings. If you use the loft, boarding goes on loft legs to make a raised floor clear of the full depth, with a platform at the loft ladder and an insulated, draught sealed hatch. Where a house has a room in the roof or a dormer with a sloping ceiling, the work is at rafter level instead: rigid board cut between the rafters with the ventilation gap kept open above, a layer of PIR under, and the vapour control taped through. That is a warm roof and it is quoted separately.

We do not charge a rate per square metre. The floor area is quick to lay. The edges and the clearing take the time.

Getting in. A hall hatch with a fitted ladder is easy. A chalet with the opening squeezed onto a tiny landing, or a loft only reached through a wardrobe, is slower before any material goes up.

What is up there. A bungalow loft is often boarded and full of storage, which has to be moved and put back. A thin, flattened layer of old mineral wool, often grey with dust, gets lifted, bagged and removed. Boarding over the new depth has to be raised on legs, or the insulation is squashed.

The roof structure. Traditional joists with a clear run across them are quick. A trussed roof full of bracing is slower, because each bay is cut and fitted round the timbers.

The edges. Ventilation air has to keep moving in at the eaves, so nothing is packed tight against them. Under an old roof with bitumen felt there is no breathable membrane, so that gap matters more. Depth into the corners, boxing over downlighters and lagging the pipework is most of the labour. Approved Document L sets the target.

Ask any other quote what depth goes down and in how many layers, whether the old material comes out, and whether the eaves are kept clear.

Nearly two thirds of the houses in Broadstone went up in the decades after the war, with the biggest push in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and they were built with nothing over the ceilings at all.

Insulation arrived later as a retrofit, across the whole neighbourhood at much the same time and to the standard of that time. That is why your loft and your neighbour's tend to be in identical condition, and why heat loss upward is still one of the bigger items in the house.

It makes the work predictable in a useful way. The joists are shallow, so a single layer between them was never going to be deep enough, and there is almost always room to cross lay over the top without touching what is there. The cold water tank sits in the middle of the loft, the hatch is small and unsealed, and the run out to the eaves is where the original job stopped. So the quote for a house on these roads is nearly always the same shape: keep the sound material, clear the poor, cross lay, trays at the eaves, lag the tank, seal the hatch. If a neighbour has had theirs done, ask whether the edges and the hatch were in the price, because that is usually the difference between two quotes.

Broadstone lofts, and those in Merley, Corfe Mullen, Canford Heath and Upton, are 7.3 miles from our base in Boscombe. BCP Council handles the planning and building control side. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and it is Thomas Hannen's company. Before you book a visit in Broadstone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

He goes up the ladder, looks at every corner of your loft and prices it himself. On Checkatrade a verified customer has marked us 10 out of 10. Coming out is free, and the written, itemised quote costs nothing.

Most repairs in Broadstone 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.