Loft insulation in West Parley

The call tends to come after a cold snap. The heating runs longer than it used to, the rooms cool off quickly once it stops, and somebody has been up through the hatch and seen the tops of the joists standing clear of a mat of old wool that has gone flat and grey.

What that tells you is worth knowing before anyone quotes. A layer level with the joist tops was normal when these houses were built, and it was never meant to be the finished job by today's standards. So we survey rather than price on the phone: real depth taken at several points, the wall plate checked for a clear air path, a look at what has been laid over the lights and the cables, photographs of all of it. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.

Why the direction matters. Wool sitting between the joists insulates the gaps and leaves the timber alone, and timber conducts. Run your hand across a ceiling like that on a cold morning and you can feel the joists through the plaster. The second layer is cross laid over the joists at right angles to the first, so the timber disappears under it and stops bridging. That single change is where most of the improvement in the U value comes from, and about 270mm all in is what a renovated ceiling is expected to reach under Part L in Approved Document L.

What goes down. Mineral wool roll where there is a clear run to work along, rockwool batts where trussed bracing chops the floor into short bays, glass wool, loose fill poured and levelled into corners a roll will never sit flat in, sheep wool if you would rather have a natural fibre. Where the headroom has run out altogether, PIR rigid board such as Celotex earns its place because it does more per millimetre, and multi-foil quilt fills the last shallow strip. The old layer is not automatically waste: if it is dry and in one piece it gets teased apart, straightened between the joists and kept as the first of the two. If it is damp, compressed to nothing, patchy, or contaminated with droppings, it is bagged and carried out.

The perimeter, on a roof that comes down low. The material is carried out over the wall plate and stopped, with a vent tray at every rafter holding an air gap open above it so cross ventilation runs from one eaves to the other. On a shallow roof there is very little room to do that in, which is exactly why it gets skipped: it is far quicker to push the wool on into the corner and leave. Do that and the roof cannot dry itself. Water forms on the underside of the felt, the dew point moves into the layer, interstitial condensation builds where nobody sees it and black mould works along the rafters. BS 5250 is the code that covers moisture in a roof, and a ridge vent or tile vents are the answer where the eaves are boxed in and cannot be opened.

Lights, tank, hatch, storage. Recessed lights and downlighters take fire rated covers so they keep their air. Cable and wiring come up on top of the new layer instead of being buried, because buried wiring runs hot. The cold water tank and its pipework get lagging now the space around them is properly cold. The hatch gets rigid board on its back and a draught seal round the lining, which you notice on the landing more than anything else on this list. Boarding goes back on loft legs so the raised floor clears full depth and your storage platform does not flatten what you have just paid for, and the loft ladder is set to the new height. Where a bungalow has already had rooms put into the roof, the job changes to a warm roof at rafter level, taped and sealed, following the sloping ceiling and the dormer cheeks.

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 roof space is not development, so there is nothing to apply for and no permitted development right is spent, as Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets out. Building control is what applies, since regulation 23 brings a whole element up to current standard once more than half of it is renovated. No conservation area covers West Parley and there are only a few listed entries nearby, so listed building consent is worth a look only if yours is one. The VAT rules for energy saving materials are worth reading before you order.

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. West Parley is only a few miles from us, so a loft that has gone wet is usually same day or next. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Call now: 07435 839745

More than a third of the homes here are bungalows, which is a much higher share than anywhere else we work. That changes the arithmetic of this particular job. In a two storey house only the upper floor sits under the loft. In a bungalow the whole of the house does, so the ceiling losing heat to the roof is roughly double the area for the same amount of living space.

The practical consequence is that loft insulation pays back faster on this street than almost anywhere, and that a poor job costs more too. The other consequence is the shape of the roof. A bungalow roof usually has a shallow pitch and comes down close to the ceiling at the edges, so the last stretch out to the wall plate is a crawl on your front with a board and a pole, in the one place where the air gap must not be blocked. That corner is where a rushed job cuts its time, and it is where we spend ours.

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