Loft insulation in New Milton

Seal it before you fill it. An uninsulated hatch with nothing round the frame is a chimney out of your landing, and it quietly undoes a good deal of whatever gets laid above it.

So the hatch takes insulation on its back and a compression seal on the frame, and the loft ladder is tried afterwards to make sure it still drops clear. The holes where pipes and cables come up through the plaster get closed. Recessed lights are the other way out, and every one of them takes a fire rated hood instead of wool tucked round the fitting. None of that is expensive, and it decides how much of the depth you actually get to keep.

What comes out, and what stays. Very little in a New Milton loft is bare and very little is anywhere near depth. The old layer settles, gets compressed under boards and feet, goes patchy across the middle and is missing altogether at the edges. Dry and sound, it is straightened out and kept under the new work. Wet, or contaminated with droppings, it is bagged at the hatch and taken away, priced on a line of its own. A ceiling with a thermal bridge at every joist and a draught coming off the hatch will not hold its heat whatever the packet on the roll claims.

Then the depth, in two crossed runs. A single layer sitting level with the joists gets a ceiling perhaps a third of the way to where it ought to be, with every timber conducting heat straight up through it. So one run goes in between the joists and a second is turned square and laid across them. Around 270mm all in puts the ceiling at the u value Approved Document L expects, and for most houses on this side of town it is one of the cheapest cuts in heat loss still going. Glass wool rolls or the denser rockwool batt do most of the work. A loft with joists at odd centres, or a trussed roof too tight to open a roll out in, is better served by loose fill, poured or blown. Rigid PIR board where headroom is the constraint, multi-foil quilt behind that, and sheep wool if you would rather have it.

The perimeter is where the hours go. In a New Milton loft, insulation is taken out over the wall plate and stopped dead, and a vent tray goes into each rafter bay to hold an open channel above it. That channel is what lets the roof breathe over the top of the new depth. Fill the eaves instead and the moisture leaving your house has only cold felt to land on: interstitial condensation forms inside the layer where nobody looks, and by the end of the winter there is wet wool and black mould up the rafters. The ventilation standard behind that is Approved Document F, and a breathable membrane alters the detail at the edge rather than the principle.

Tanks, cables, and roofs that are already rooms. Cables are dressed over the new depth instead of under it, since cable buried in insulation runs warm. The cold water tank and the pipework with it are standing in cold air now, so both get lagged and the patch beneath the tank is left thin on purpose. If the loft carries storage, the boarding goes back up on loft legs above full depth rather than flat on the joists, and only the part you use is boarded. Where the roof has already been turned into a room, the whole job moves up to the rafters: board between them, board under them, a clear gap kept behind, taped joints, and the sloping ceilings and dormer cheeks treated as one continuous warm roof.

Getting into it sets the pace. A New Milton semi with a small landing hatch, a bungalow loft you can walk around, and a top floor flat reached through a communal hatch are different jobs, and the first is work on a ladder over the stairs.

What is already there. Old material that has settled or gone damp comes out and is bagged. A loft full of boxes has to be moved and put back. Trussed rafters with diagonal bracing slow the laying down. Old cable lying in the wool is lifted clear, and downlighters are boxed over so they do not overheat.

Keeping the storage. If you still want to use the loft, the boarding has to be raised on legs above the new depth. Boards laid straight on top squash the wool and it does very little.

Damp air and ventilation. The eaves must stay clear, or warm, moist air condenses on the underside of the felt, and air this close to the sea carries plenty of moisture. Approved Document L sets what the work should reach.

Ask anyone else what depth is being laid and in how many layers, whether the old material is coming out, and whether the eaves are being kept clear.

A quarter of the homes here are flats and maisonettes, which makes one question more useful in New Milton than almost anywhere else on this list. Is the roof void above your ceiling part of what you lease, or is it retained by the freeholder?

A good many leases stop at the plaster. Where yours does, the loft is not yours to insulate, and a contractor who goes up on your word alone has put you in the wrong rather than saved you money.

The way through it is dull but quick. Look at the lease plan and the demise wording, then put the question to the managing agent in writing. We are happy to survey, quote and send the specification straight to the agent, and where a block wants to do the whole roof at once we will price it that way, but we will not open a communal hatch on a verbal yes. It is worth starting early, because a block decision moves at the speed of a managing agent rather than at the speed of the weather, and a loft booked in the spring is a loft finished before the winter it was meant for.

The drive from our Boscombe base to New Milton is eight miles. We insulate lofts in the town, Barton on Sea, Ashley, Bashley, Tiptoe, Hordle and the BH25 addresses around them, with New Forest District Council as the planning and building control authority.

You deal with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, a business Thomas Hannen owns. He goes up the ladder himself to see the loft and price it. A verified Checkatrade customer gave us 10 out of 10. The visit is free, and you keep the itemised written quote at no cost. Before you book a visit in New Milton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in New Milton 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.