Loft insulation in Norton

What is up there now. In an older house it is rarely tidy. One thin layer between the joists, settled and patchy, missing altogether over the edges, sometimes with old loose fill underneath that has drifted towards the eaves. Anything wet or contaminated with droppings is bagged in the loft and carried out. What is sound is straightened and kept, because there is no sense throwing away material that is still doing a job.

Building the depth back. A new unbacked roll is cross laid over the joists at right angles to whatever is between them. That covers the timber rather than leaving each joist as a cold bridge, which matters more here than in a modern house because the joists are irregular in both spacing and depth. Two layers get to about 270mm, which is roughly what a current U value asks of a ceiling. Where a chimney breast, a purlin or a brace breaks the run up, glass wool batts cut to fit are easier to get tight than roll.

Working over a lath and plaster ceiling. These ceilings will not take weight. Nothing is stood on one, nothing is dragged across one, and a foot through a bedroom ceiling turns a day's work into a fortnight's. We move on boards spanning the joists and lay outwards from them. It is slower than an open modern loft and it is priced as labour rather than sprung on you afterwards.

Keeping the roof ventilated. Old roofs here often have no underlay at all, so the space ventilates through the covering itself and the timbers stay dry. Where a roof has been relaid on felt or a breathable membrane at some point, the eaves become the only air path there is. Either way, material stops over the wall plate, vent trays hold the air gap open, and cross ventilation is checked from one side to the other. The bigger job is usually sealing the ceiling below: the hatch gets an insulated board and a draught seal, and gaps around pipes, cables and the loft ladder frame get closed.

Everything else in the space. The tank and its pipework end up on the cold side once the ceiling works, so they are lagged and the tank gets a lid, with nothing laid underneath it. Recessed lights take fire rated covers and old wiring is lifted clear rather than buried. If you use the loft for storage, boarding goes on loft legs to make a raised floor above the full depth, with a platform at the head of the loft ladder, so the wool underneath is never compressed. Where a cottage already has a room in the roof, a dormer or a sloping ceiling, the work moves up to the rafters instead: rigid board such as Celotex cut between them, PIR beneath and the air gap held open above, which is a warm roof and a job of its own.

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 pre-1919 cottage with a small trap in a bedroom ceiling, a post-war bungalow with a proper landing hatch, and a house where the roof space is split in two by a chimney breast are three quite different 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.

Around a quarter of the homes here predate 1919, and that stock behaves differently. Solid walls and old roofs move moisture rather than block it, and they have stayed sound for a century by letting water vapour pass and dry off. The risk when you insulate one is not the insulation itself. It is what happens to the vapour once the roof space above the new layer sits closer to dew point than it used to.

The way through it is straightforward and it is the order that counts. Seal the ceiling plane first, so the warm damp air from the house is not getting up there in the first place: hatch, service holes, the gap round a soil pipe, the loft ladder frame. Then lay the depth loose, in mineral wool that lets vapour through rather than a sealed system laid tight over an old ceiling, which is where interstitial problems start. Then leave the roof above it open, with the eaves clear and the air able to cross. Done in that order an old house takes full depth without complaint. Done the other way round, with the eaves stuffed and the ceiling still leaking air, you get a warm bedroom and wet timbers.

We cover Norton, Norton Green, Freshwater, Totland, Yarmouth and the PO41 addresses around them, with the Isle of Wight 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.