Loft insulation in Lymington
Clearing, topping up and laying to full depth in Lymington lofts, from quayside town houses to estate bungalows.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Where to start
A loft with a room already in it is not the same job as a loft with a floor. Once there are sloping ceilings, dormer cheeks and cupboards behind the knee walls, the insulation follows the rafters instead of the joists, and everything about the specification changes with it.
Two quite different phone calls come out of the town. One is a cold loft floor: a house where the ceiling has one flattened layer on it and the rooms below cool off as soon as the heating drops. The other is a converted roof, where the top bedroom is cold in winter and airless in summer, and nobody knows what, if anything, is behind the plasterboard.
They need different quotes, so they get different surveys. On a cold loft we measure the depth away from the hatch, test the air path over the wall plate and read the underside of the covering. On a converted roof there is nothing to measure, so it is a matter of working out how the slope was built, where the voids behind the knee walls run and whether anything was ever taped. Either way you get photographs, a free site visit and a free written itemised quote.
Under the slope
Rafter level, party walls, and the bits of a town roof nobody sees
Where the roof is already a room in roof, the work becomes a warm roof. PIR rigid board such as Celotex is cut tight between the rafters with an air gap deliberately kept above it under the felt, a second layer goes across underneath them so the timber is not left bridging, the joints are taped, and a vapour control layer sits behind the plasterboard so moisture from the bedroom cannot get into the structure. Multi-foil quilt earns its place in the shallowest strips where nothing else will fit. The parts people forget are the voids: the triangle behind each knee wall, the flat ceiling over the middle of the room, and the dormer cheeks, which are usually the coldest surfaces in the house. Skip those and you have insulated the easy part of the roof and left the draught exactly where it was.
A cold loft in the same street is simpler and the rules are firmer. First layer between the joists, friction fitted so nothing is open at the timber. Second layer cross laid over the joists at right angles, burying them so they stop carrying heat into the plaster. About 270mm all in is what a renovated ceiling is expected to reach under Part L in Approved Document L. Mineral wool roll on an open run, rockwool batts where the bays vary, glass wool, loose fill in the corners and sheep wool if you prefer a natural fibre. Whatever is up there now is read first: settled, compressed, patchy and stopping short of one wall is the usual state of it, and anything damp, dusty or contaminated with droppings comes out in bags.
Terraces and semis add one detail that detached houses do not have. The loft ends at a party wall, and the last bay against it is the one that gets left out, because it is awkward to reach and easy to call finished. It gets the same depth as the middle of the floor. The gable end of a terrace is the other cold spot worth a look, and where a party wall stops short of the underside of the roof we will point it out rather than lay over the gap and say nothing.
Then the same finish as everywhere. Material runs out over the wall plate and stops there with a vent tray at each rafter, so an air gap stays open and cross ventilation still crosses the roof; block it and the dew point moves into the layer, interstitial condensation forms unseen, water collects on the underside of the felt and black mould follows on the timbers. A ridge vent or tile vents take over where the eaves are boxed in, and a breathable membrane changes the detail rather than the need. Fire rated covers over recessed lights and downlighters, cable and wiring lifted above the new layer, lagging on the cold water tank and its pipework, a board and a draught seal on the hatch, and storage put back on loft legs so the boarding and the raised floor clear full depth with the loft ladder reset to suit.
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.
Insulation inside a roof space is not development, so nothing is applied for and no permitted development right is used up, which Planning Portal guidance on insulation confirms. Building control still applies, because regulation 23 brings a whole element up to current standard once more than half of it is renovated. There is no conservation area over the housing, but the town carries well over a hundred and fifty listed entries, and on a listed building consent covers the inside as well as the outside, so we check that at the visit rather than after it. VAT rules on energy saving materials are worth reading before you order.
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 quayside town house with a trap over the stairwell, a 1980s estate house with a wide landing hatch, and a bungalow with a long shallow roof are three quite different mornings. 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. Lymington is a straightforward run for us, so a roof space that is running with water gets seen within a day or two. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Flats and shared roofs
In a flat, the roof space above you may not be yours to insulate
A fair number of homes in the town are flats, and a good many of those are top floor flats in converted houses. The ceiling is yours. The roof space above it very often is not: leases usually keep the roof and the loft with the freeholder as part of the structure, along with the obligation to keep them in repair, which is the sort of thing section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 sits behind.
That changes what you should do first, and it is not complicated. Look at the lease, or ask the managing agent, before anyone orders material. If the loft is demised to you, the job runs exactly as it would in a house. If it is not, the freeholder has to agree, and in a block the cost may be theirs rather than yours, which is a much better outcome than paying for it yourself. We are happy to survey and quote either way, and to put the quote in a form you can hand to an agent. What we will not do is go into a roof space where the right to be there has not been settled.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Lymington, Pennington, Woodside, Boldre and the SO41 addresses along the river, with New Forest District 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
Questions from Lymington houses
Our top bedroom is in the roof and freezing. Can that be improved without stripping it out?
Often, yes. If there is access into the voids behind the knee walls a good deal can be done from inside them, and the flat ceiling above the room can usually be treated from the loft area beyond it. The sloping part is the piece that normally needs the plasterboard off, so we survey first and tell you honestly how much can be reached without opening the room up.
What is the difference between a warm roof and a cold loft?
Where the insulation sits. A cold loft has it on the floor, so the roof space above is deliberately cold and ventilated. A warm roof has it in the slope, so the space under the tiles is kept warm and dry and the ventilation gap runs above the insulation instead. They are opposite approaches and mixing them by accident, which happens when a conversion is done piecemeal, is what causes condensation in the structure.
Do you do the loft in a terraced house without disturbing next door?
Yes. Everything is done from inside your own roof space and nothing is fixed to the party wall. The one thing we look for is whether the party wall runs right up to the underside of the roof, because if it does not, that is a fire separation matter we would tell you about rather than quietly cover with wool.
We rent. Who should be arranging this?
Your landlord, in almost every case, because the roof and the loft are part of the structure and the repairing obligation for the structure normally sits with them. It is worth asking, because insulation is one of the cheaper improvements a landlord can make and it shows on the EPC. We can survey and quote to whoever is going to instruct the work.
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Want to know what is really above your ceiling?
We will go up, measure it, look at the eaves and the hatch, and put an itemised written price in front of you. Nothing to pay for the visit.