Loft insulation in Owermoigne
Two layers over the ceiling, the eaves left to breathe, and an itemised written price before anything is ordered.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
There is no single right material for a loft. Roll, batt, loose fill and rigid board each solve a different problem, and which one goes where is decided by the shape of your roof rather than by what is on the van.
Three things start the call. Rooms that never quite get warm, with a heating bill saying the same thing. A loft that plainly has too little in it, thin and uneven with bare timber showing along the edges. Or damp, which out here usually means mould on the underside of the roof or a musty smell the moment the hatch comes down.
Houses in the village are a mixture of old and recent and the roofs vary enormously, so nobody should be quoting this from a doorstep. We come and look. Depth taken at several points, a hand past the wall plate to test whether the air can still move, a note of what is stored up there and what services cross the ceiling, and photographs of the lot. Both the site visit and the written itemised quote are free.
Inside the roof
Picking the material for the loft you actually have
Mineral wool does most of the work in most lofts, and it comes two ways. Glass wool roll is the cheapest way to cover a clear run of regular joists, and it is what goes down when a trussed roof gives you a straight line to work along. Rockwool batts are stiffer, cut cleanly and hold their shape, which is what you want in an older cut roof where the joists were sawn by hand and no two bays are the same width. Loose fill, poured and levelled, gets into places neither will lie flat in: bracing that boxes a corner in, the space behind a chimney breast, the last strip where a shallow roof runs out of headroom. Sheep wool does the same job as glass wool if you would rather have a natural fibre in the house. None of these is better than the others in the abstract. They are answers to different shapes.
Whichever it is, it goes on in two layers running in two directions, and that part is not negotiable. The first sits between the joists, friction fitted so there is nothing open at the timber. The second is cross laid over the joists at right angles, burying them so they stop conducting heat down into the ceiling. Roughly 270mm all in is the depth a renovated ceiling is expected to reach under Part L in Approved Document L. Whatever is already there gets read before any of it is laid: settled, patchy, compressed under boxes and missing along one wall is the usual picture, and if it is dry it stays as the base. Damp material, material that has broken down to dust and anything contaminated with droppings is bagged in the loft and carried out to the van.
Rigid board is the exception to all of the above, and it belongs at rafter level rather than on the floor. Where a roof has already been made into a room in roof, with a sloping ceiling, dormer cheeks and cupboards behind the knee walls, wool on a floor is no use to you. That is a warm roof: PIR rigid board such as Celotex cut tight between the rafters with an air gap kept above it under the felt, a second layer beneath them, taped joints and a vapour control layer so moisture cannot get behind the plasterboard, and multi-foil quilt in the shallowest corners. It is slower and it wants doing properly, because a sealed slope built badly hides its condensation inside the structure where you will not find it for years.
The rest is the same on every loft and it is the part that gets rushed. Material runs out over the wall plate and stops, with a vent tray at every rafter keeping the air gap open so cross ventilation still crosses the roof; block that and the dew point moves into the layer, interstitial condensation forms, water gathers on the underside of the felt and black mould follows on the rafters. A ridge vent or tile vents take over where the eaves are boxed in, and a breathable membrane changes the detail rather than the requirement. Fire rated covers go over recessed lights and downlighters, cable and wiring come up above the new layer instead of being buried, the cold water tank and its pipework get lagging, the hatch takes a board and a draught seal, and storage goes back on loft legs so the boarding and the platform sit clear of full depth with the loft ladder reset to match.
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 a loft is work inside the building. It is not development, so no planning application and no permitted development question arises, which Planning Portal guidance on insulation confirms. Building control is Dorset Council and the standard is set by Approved Document L. If the house is listed, and there are thirteen entries in and around the parish, listed building consent reaches internal work as well. HMRC VAT Notice 708/6 covers VAT on insulation.
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 cottage with a small trap over a cupboard, a farmhouse roof you can walk about in, and a modern house with a shallow trussed loft are three 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. We are out this way regularly, so a loft that has gone damp gets a look quickly rather than waiting for a run of jobs in the area. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Two different projects
Insulating a loft and converting one are not the same decision
People often ask about both in the same phone call, and it is worth separating them. Laying insulation over a ceiling is inside work on an existing element. It needs nobody's permission, it changes nothing anyone can see, and it is done in a day or so. Turning the space into a room is a building project: floor structure, stairs, escape, fire separation, headroom and the whole roof rebuilt thermally at rafter level, all of it under building control, with regulation 23 pulling the element up to current standard once you renovate enough of it.
There is one more difference that catches people out locally. This parish drains to Poole Harbour, which is a protected catchment, and schemes that add overnight accommodation there have to deal with nutrient neutrality before they get consent. That reaches a conversion which adds a bedroom. It does not reach insulation laid over your existing ceiling, or a re-covering of the roof, because neither adds a place for anybody to sleep. So if the loft is cold and a conversion is a someday idea, the two are not in a queue behind each other: insulate now, and none of it is wasted when the bigger job eventually comes round.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Owermoigne, Crossways, Winfrith Newburgh, West Lulworth, Wool and the DT2 addresses around them, with Dorset 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 asked in Owermoigne
Is loose fill worse than rolls?
No, just different. It suits a loft where bracing or awkward joist spacing means a roll cannot be opened out flat, and it fills round obstructions better than anything else. What it does not do well is stay put where the roof is draughty, and it is a nuisance to lift if a cable ever has to be chased. Plenty of lofts here end up with both, roll across the open floor and loose fill in the corners.
We want a conversion in a couple of years. Should we wait?
No. Insulating the ceiling now costs a fraction of the conversion and stops you paying to heat the roof in the meantime. When the conversion happens the insulation moves up to the rafters, and wool off the floor can often be reused in the walls or the flat areas behind the knee walls. Nothing about doing it now makes the later job harder.
Our loft smells musty when we open the hatch. Is that serious?
It is worth looking at quickly. A musty smell means moisture is sitting in the space, and left alone it ends up in the timbers rather than in the wool. Nine times in ten the cause is a blocked eaves, a fan discharging into the roof, or a hatch with no seal on it, and all three are fixable. What you should not do is add depth on top and hope.
Do you take the old material away?
Yes, on the same day. It is bagged inside the loft rather than dropped through the hatch, carried down through sheeted rooms and loaded onto the van before we leave. Nothing is left in the garden and nothing goes in your bin.
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Get the loft priced in writing
Thomas comes out, gets into the roof space and itemises what it needs. The visit and the quote are both free.