Loft insulation in West Moors
Full depth right into the corners, your storage kept, 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.
On a West Moors bungalow the loft is the whole roof over the house, and most of them are hipped, so there is edge on all four sides. Two layers of mineral wool to a finished 270mm, with the corners done properly, is the job.
People ring here for three reasons. The whole bungalow is cold rather than one room. The loft is boarded and nobody has seen what is under the boards for years. Or damp, spotted as mould on the underside of the roof when something is fetched down. Around half the homes in West Moors are bungalows and a great many went up within a few years of each other, so the roofs are much of a type and the same faults come up again and again. We still open the hatch on yours before quoting. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
The work
Getting into the corners of a hipped roof
The corners of a hipped roof. A hipped bungalow roof drops to the wall plate on all four sides, and the four corners are the worst place in the building to work. The roof is inches deep, the trusses are braced across it and you cannot get a knee in. That is exactly where depth is quietly given up, so we lay those corners by hand and from the right direction, working outward from the middle rather than trying to reach in from the hatch.
What the boards are hiding. Most of these lofts have been boarded for storage, and the boards sit straight on the ceiling joists. The wool underneath is compressed to a fraction of its depth, which is not insulation any more, just a filled gap. Elsewhere it has settled, gone patchy, been pulled back to leave a gap round a cable, or is missing altogether at the edges. Anything wet or contaminated with droppings is bagged and taken away. We lift the boards, see what is actually there, and get full depth back before anything is put down again.
Two layers, and the material. Mineral wool in a roll, glass wool or rockwool, goes between the joists first, cut to a friction fit. The second layer is cross laid across them to a finished 270mm, which is the layer that takes the timber out of the heat path. Batts suit trussed centres, loose fill goes where nobody can crawl, and rigid board such as PIR or Celotex earns its place at a low eaves run where a roll simply will not fit.
The eaves have to stay open. Insulation stops at the wall plate. On a shallow bungalow roof that plate is close and the temptation to pack the last bit in is strong. Vent trays hold the air gap under the felt so cross ventilation still works all the way round, and a ridge vent helps where the eaves cannot be opened up. Block them and you have bought condensation, black mould on the timbers and a wet roof.
Chalets and rooms in the roof. Plenty of bungalows here have had part of the roof space taken in, so half the ceiling is flat and half of it slopes. On the sloping part the work follows the rafters instead: rigid board cut between them with a clear air gap kept above to the underlay, a second layer under, and the joints taped. A dormer cheek is small and loses a lot, and where the covering is coming off anyway a warm roof build up over the top costs less again.
Storage put back properly. The boards go back on loft legs as a raised floor, above the second layer rather than on it, with a platform by the hatch so the loft ladder stays usable. The hatch itself gets insulated on the back and draught sealed. A cold water tank and its pipework want lagging once the loft is cold, cables are lifted and clipped over rather than buried, and recessed lights and downlighters get fire rated covers.
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.
There is no conservation area over West Moors and effectively nothing listed, so nothing here is controlled for appearance. Insulation inside a loft is not development in any case, which Planning Portal guidance on insulation confirms. Approved Document L sets the standard the work reaches, building control is Dorset Council, and HMRC VAT Notice 708/6 covers how insulation is treated for VAT.
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 bungalow with a landing hatch and a boarded loft, a chalet with rooms already in the roof, and a two storey house with a hatch over the stairs are three different jobs. 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. A shallow bungalow roof goes damp faster than a deep two storey one, so droplets under the felt here are worth acting on quickly. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
A hipped roof has four times the edge and four awkward corners
About half the homes in West Moors are bungalows, and a bungalow roof is usually hipped rather than gabled. That single fact changes where the work is. A gabled roof has two long eaves runs and two solid brick ends. A hipped roof has eaves the whole way round, so the perimeter, the shallowest and most awkward part of any loft, is far longer for the same floor area, and it meets in four corners where nobody can comfortably reach.
That is where a cheap job shows itself. Material is thrown in from the hatch, the middle of the loft is at full depth and the last stretch to the wall plate, right round the building, is thin or bare. You feel it as cold running down the outside walls of every room, because on a bungalow every room has an outside wall meeting that ceiling. So we work the perimeter deliberately, corner by corner, and it is the reason a bungalow loft can take longer than a bigger house.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover West Moors, Ferndown, Three Legged Cross, Ashley Heath, West Parley and Longham in the BH22 postcodes, 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
West Moors questions we get asked
How long does a bungalow loft take?
A day where the loft is clear. Where it is boarded and full, allow two: the storage comes down, the boards come up, the depth goes in and the raised floor goes back. You are told which at the visit.
We have boards down. Is the insulation under them ruined?
Usually it is crushed rather than ruined. Compressed wool does a fraction of what it should, so we lift the boards, straighten or replace what is underneath, get full depth in and put the boards back on loft legs above it.
Why do the corners matter so much?
Because on a hipped roof there are four of them and the roof is only inches deep there. It is the hardest place to reach and the easiest to skip, and it runs along the outside wall of every room. Thin corners are felt as cold walls, not as a cold loft.
Will insulating cause damp up there?
Only where the eaves get packed out. A hipped bungalow roof is shallow the whole way round, so there is little air up there to carry moisture off. The trays go in, the hatch gets sealed, and the bathroom fan wants to discharge through the roof rather than into it.
Is it worth it on the heating bill?
On a bungalow more than anywhere. All of your floor area sits under one ceiling, so heat loss upwards is a bigger share of the total than in a two storey house, and the thermal gain is felt in every room. It lifts the fabric score on an EPC as well.
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See what is under your loft boards
Thomas lifts a board, measures the real depth and prices the loft line by line. The visit and the quote are free.