Loft insulation in Wareham

In a terrace or a pair of semis the first look is sideways, at the party wall. It ought to carry on up to the underside of the roof and be closed off there.

In older Wareham houses it frequently stops at ceiling level, leaving one continuous roof space running over several homes, and that has to be dealt with before depth is added, since insulation laid across an open party wall simply hides it. Where closing it is the right answer we say so and price it as its own line.

Then what is already down. Hardly any of these Wareham lofts are bare and hardly any are near where they ought to be. The layer sinks, flattens along the route people walk to the tank, thins across the middle and disappears where the roof drops away, with a gap wherever a cable or a pipe comes through. Sound and dry, we leave it and build on it. Wet, blackened underneath or full of droppings, it is bagged and carted off, priced on a line of its own.

Depth arrives in two runs. Most of these Wareham houses stopped at one, sitting level with the joists, which leaves every timber running heat out through the ceiling. So one run goes in between the joists and a second goes over the top of them, turned square to the first. About 270mm together is what a modern Part L u value works out at once you express it as a depth. Mineral wool suits most lofts, either glass wool rolls or the denser rockwool batt. Where joists sit at odd centres, or the roof is too tight to open a roll out in, loose fill poured or blown does better. Rigid PIR board once the headroom has gone, multi-foil quilt in the shallowest corners, and sheep wool if you would rather.

At the edge of a Wareham loft the layer goes out over the wall plate and stops, with vent trays holding the gap open above it so air still crosses the top of the new depth. Push wool into the eaves and the vapour that used to leave has nothing but cold felt to land on. Interstitial condensation then forms inside the layer, out of anybody's sight, and by February you have wet material and black mould along the rafter feet. Approved Document F is the standard, and a breathable membrane changes the detail at the edge rather than the principle behind it.

Then the fittings. Recessed lights want a rated hood, never wool over the top of the fitting. Cables get lifted and re-clipped above the new depth, since cable buried in wool runs warm. A cold water tank and the pipework round it are colder than they have ever been and take lagging, with the patch under the tank deliberately left thin. The hatch takes a board on its back and a proper seal, and storage goes back on loft legs rather than flat on the joists. Where the roof is already a room it all moves up to rafter level and becomes a warm roof, with the sloping ceilings and the dormer cheeks carried through in the same layer.

Floor area is the easy bit. The awkward edges, and what has to happen before anything new goes down, are where the time goes.

Getting in. A town house with a hatch over the stairwell, an estate semi with a landing hatch you can put a ladder under, and a bungalow with a wide shallow roof call for three different set-ups on the day. A crawl space you can only move through on your knees, or boarding that has to come up and go back, adds time before any roll is unwrapped.

What is up there already. Thin old quilt from the sixties and seventies, often squashed flat, has to be lifted and bagged or topped up. A loft full of boxes has to be emptied and put back. Joists at close centres with a clear run are quicker than a trussed roof full of bracing.

The eaves and the edges. Insulation has to stop at the wall plate so air can still move in at the eaves. On a bungalow that is a long perimeter to get right. Depth into the corners, a cover over each downlighter and lagging on pipes and the tank take most of the labour. Approved Document L sets what the finished depth should reach.

Ask others what depth they are laying and in how many layers, whether the eaves stay clear, and whether the hatch is insulated and draughtproofed.

The walled town carries a great many listed entries, well over a hundred of them, and the houses that come with that are tall, narrow and short of landing. The loft is often reached through a small square hatch directly over a stairwell, with nowhere flat to stand a ladder and nowhere to swing a roll of anything.

That is not a reason to leave the loft alone. It is a reason to work out the access before the quote rather than on the morning.

Sometimes it means a scaffold tower inside the stairwell instead of a ladder. Sometimes it means cutting the material downstairs and passing it up in short lengths, or using loose fill where a roll simply will not turn the corner. What it does not mean is quietly enlarging the hatch: on a listed building that is internal work needing consent, and even where it is not, a hatch through an old lath and plaster ceiling is a job in its own right. We will set out on the quote how we intend to get up there, because on these houses that is where the hours are, not in the laying.

We insulate lofts in Wareham, Stoborough, Ridge, Sandford, Holton Heath and Wool, and the BH20 addresses around them, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. From our base in Boscombe, Wareham is 12.5 miles.

The business is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, which is registered in England and Wales as company 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns it and goes up into your loft to price the job himself. One verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Neither the visit nor the itemised written quote costs you anything. Before you book a visit in Wareham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Wareham 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.