Loft insulation in Highcliffe
Loft top-ups, cleared roof spaces and boarded storage on legs across Highcliffe and BH23, with the eaves and the ventilation looked at before anything is laid.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Two hundred metres from the water, the loft is the coldest and dampest part of the house, so depth on its own is not the answer. We measure what is there, add a second layer across the joists, and keep the eaves open so the roof space can still dry itself out.
The usual reasons people ring. Bedrooms that never feel warm even with the heating up. A loft boarded over years ago, with a thin flattened layer trapped underneath. Or damp on the roof timbers that has appeared since somebody added insulation without touching the ventilation.
We always look first. The site visit costs nothing and it means getting through the hatch and out along the roof to the wall plate on both sides, measuring the depth in several places rather than judging it by eye, and photographing the eaves, the corners and anything up there that will need dealing with. The quote that follows is itemised: clearing, material and depth, the edges, the hatch, the tank and the pipework, each on its own line.
The work
A day in the roof space, and what it covers
Measuring, then topping up. Nearly every loft here has something in it, usually a single thickness of mineral wool laid between the joists and finished flush. That leaves the timber uncovered and each joist carrying heat straight through the ceiling. What is sound stays put and gets straightened, and a new unbacked roll is cross laid over the top at right angles. Two layers that way come to roughly 270mm, which is the depth a current U value asks for.
Clearing before laying. Wool that is wet, settled to nothing, patchy, or contaminated by droppings is bagged in the loft and carried out rather than buried under something new. Old loose fill goes the same way, especially where it has drifted into the eaves and closed them off. Nothing new goes down until the floor of the loft is in a state worth insulating.
Keeping the roof breathing. Insulation stops over the wall plate and the air gap above it is held open with a vent tray in each rafter bay, so cross ventilation still runs through the space. This is the part that matters most this close to the sea, because the air here is damp for much of the year and a roof space that cannot exchange it stays wet. Cover the eaves and you get droplets forming on the underside of the felt, then black mould along the timbers. A roof relaid on a breathable membrane is more forgiving than one on old bitumen felt, but neither survives blocked eaves.
Tank, lights and cables. Once the ceiling works properly, the loft is colder than it was, so the cold water tank gets a jacket and a lid, the pipework is lagged, and no material is laid underneath the tank. Recessed lights are covered with fire rated hoods, and cable and wiring are lifted and clipped above the new layer rather than buried in it.
Storage and sloping ceilings. Where you want to keep using the loft, boarding goes onto loft legs as a raised floor, so the full depth stays uncompressed and you get a platform at the top of the loft ladder. The hatch itself gets an insulated board and a draught seal. Where there is a room in the roof, a dormer or a sloping ceiling, the job moves to the rafters: rigid board cut between them with the ventilation gap kept open above, PIR beneath, taped so the vapour control is continuous. That is a warm roof, and it is priced as its own job.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: the survey, clearing and bagging whatever is up there now, the material and its depth, keeping the eaves clear, the hatch and any pipework, and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.
Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Insulating the roof space of an existing house is not development and needs no application, which Planning Portal guidance on insulation makes clear, so it falls inside permitted development. Building control applies where a thermal element is renovated rather than topped up, since regulation 23 requires the whole element brought up to standard and Approved Document L sets what that is. BCP Council is the authority. There is no conservation area over the housing here and 18 listed entries in the area, and the council keeps the list if you want to check your own address before starting.
Cost
What decides the price of a loft
No rate per square metre, because the floor area is the easy part and the awkward edges are where the time goes.
Getting to it. A bungalow with a hatch and fitted ladder on the landing, a top floor flat where the only opening is on a shared landing, and a house with the loft boarded out and in use are three quite different half days. A hatch on a landing you can stand a ladder under is one job. A hatch over a stairwell, a crawl space you can only move through on your knees, or a loft full of boarding that has to come up and go back, is time before any material is laid.
What is up there now, and what it is sitting on. Old material that has to come out, be bagged and taken away is a cost before anything new goes down, and so is a loft full of boxes that has to be emptied and put back. Joists at 400 centres with a flat run across them is a different afternoon from a trussed roof full of bracing.
Ventilation, and the edges nobody reaches. Insulation stops at the wall plate and the eaves have to stay clear, or you trade a warm bedroom for a wet roof. Getting depth right into the corners and around the hatch, boxing over downlighters and lagging anything that now sits in the cold, is most of the labour. Approved Document L sets what the work is expected to reach.
Comparing quotes? Ask what depth is actually being laid and in how many layers, whether the old material is coming out or being covered over, whether the eaves are being kept clear, what happens to anything you store up there, and whether the hatch and the pipework are included. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.
If the loft is wet
Water running off the felt, or mould on the underside
Ring rather than use the form. Droplets on the underside of the felt, black mould spreading across the roof timbers, or insulation that is visibly damp are all telling you the same thing: warm wet air is getting into a space that cannot breathe. That does not wait, because it is the timbers that pay for it. We look before anything is added, because putting more insulation into a loft that cannot ventilate makes it worse. Highcliffe is twenty minutes along the coast from us, so a loft with water running off the felt gets looked at quickly. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
This close to the water, ventilation matters more, not less
Highcliffe sits a couple of hundred metres from the sea, and that changes what a loft has to cope with. The air drawn in at the eaves is damp for a large part of the year and it carries salt, so the roof space is rarely as dry as one a few miles inland. Steel corrodes faster up there, which shows up on tank fittings and old clips, and on a still night the space sits close to dew point without any help from the house.
The wrong response is to close the eaves and try to keep the sea air out. Do that and the moisture that matters, which is the warm damp air rising out of your kitchen, bathroom and airing cupboard, has nowhere to go and condenses on the first cold surface it meets. The right response is to seal the ceiling and open the roof. That means an insulated, draught sealed hatch, gaps around pipes and cables closed, extract fans that actually discharge outside rather than into the loft, and the eaves kept clear with trays. Then the depth over the ceiling can go up as far as you like and the timbers above it stay dry.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Highcliffe, Walkford, Friars Cliff, Mudeford, Christchurch and the BH23 addresses around them, with BCP Council for planning and building control. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of 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
Highcliffe questions we get asked
We are in a top floor flat. Can we order loft work?
Often not on your own. In most blocks and converted houses the roof void stays with the freeholder, and the instruction has to come from them or the managing agent, even when the hatch is inside your flat. We are happy to survey and quote in a form an agent can put to the leaseholders. Getting that agreed first saves a wasted appointment.
Does the salt air affect what you use up there?
It affects the fixings and the metalwork rather than the insulation. Mineral wool does not mind the coast. What we watch is anything steel in the loft, the tank fittings, old clips and staples, and whether the space is ventilating properly, because damp air sitting still is what does the damage over the years.
Our loft was insulated and now it is damp. What went wrong?
Nine times out of ten the eaves were filled. Insulation pushed hard into the edge blocks the only air path a felted roof has, so the space stops drying and the moisture from the house condenses on the underside of the covering. We pull the material back off the ventilation path, fit trays, seal the hatch, and only then look at depth.
How long, and what does it do to the bills?
Most houses are a day. Heat loss through the ceiling is the biggest single item left in a typical house here, so a full depth loft with the edges done and the hatch sealed shows up on the heating bill every day of the winter, and the depth is recorded on an EPC when one is next done.
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Want yours measured and looked at properly?
We will get into the loft, measure the depth at the middle and the edges, check the eaves, the tank and the ventilation, and put an itemised price in writing. The visit and the quote are free.