Loft insulation in Westbourne

Most homes in Westbourne are flats, and a lot of them sit inside big Victorian houses that were split up long ago. So the loft work here is about the top of the building. A top floor flat that is freezing by November because nobody has been into the roof above it for decades. An attic bedroom under the slates that bakes in July. Or a managing agent who wants to know what the loft over a block actually needs before the freeholder signs anything off.

We go up into the Westbourne loft and look before we price it. That means measuring what is really lying on the joists, seeing whether the roof has any felt under the slates at all, finding where the eaves breathe, and working out whose roof space it is. Then you get a written quote, line by line, that you can forward to the agent as it stands.

The void over a converted villa. Where a Westbourne top flat has a flat ceiling and a loft above it, the job is familiar. The old layer is usually thin, settled and patchy, compressed wherever someone has knelt on it and missing where cables were run.

Anything in a Westbourne loft that is contaminated or wet is bagged and taken away, the rest is evened out, then glass wool roll goes between the joists and a second layer is cross laid over the joists, two layers to about 270mm. That is what it takes to reach the 0.16 U value Approved Document L asks of a ceiling being upgraded. The hatch gets insulated on its back and draught stripped, the tank and pipework are lagged, wiring is lifted clear rather than buried, and downlighters in the flat below get covers so nothing sits on a hot fitting. Done properly, it takes the biggest single slice off the heat loss of a top floor flat, and it shows on the EPC and the heating bill. On a clear run it is a day. Plan for longer on an old roof that has lost its pipework to rodents and left droppings through the wool.

Slates with nothing under them. Plenty of Victorian roofs in Westbourne were laid with no felt at all, the slates or tiles hung straight on battens. A roof like that breathes through every lap, and it will take a full depth on the ceiling without much fuss. The one to watch is the roof that was re-slated later over a heavy bitumen felt, because that stops the air moving. Insulate the ceiling and the loft above it gets colder, the dew point moves up into the roof, and warm vapour from the flat condenses on the underside of the felt. A re-roof over a breathable membrane is kinder, and cross ventilation from eaves to eaves does the rest. We check which you have before anything goes down, and keep the eaves clear either way.

Attic rooms under the slope. A lot of villa top floors were made by building rooms into the roof, with sloping ceilings, dormers and a small flat void right at the top. There is no floor to lay rolls on, so a room in roof is insulated at rafter level: rigid board, PIR such as Celotex, cut tight between the rafters with an air gap kept under the underlay, a second layer under the rafters to break the thermal bridge, a vapour control layer with taped joints, then plasterboard and a skim. Skip the vapour control and you invite interstitial condensation inside the slope, where nobody sees it until the timber is soft. The aim is 0.18 at the rafters. The knee wall voids and the little flat ceiling at the top are where the heat really leaks, so they get opened up too. Where the room cannot spare the headroom, a thinner multi-foil earns its place, and rockwool batts or loose fill suit the odd shaped voids behind the knee walls. Several days a room, and Part L applies to it like any renovation.

Blocks, and the hatch on the stair. The newer blocks nearer the cliff have either a flat roof or a trussed loft reached from the top corridor. That hatch opens off a common stair, so it is part of the fire protection of the building. We insulate and seal it without making it any less fire resisting, and we say so on the quote for the agent.

When we would say leave it. If the loft over your Westbourne flat already carries a full, even depth and the cold comes through a tall sash and a bay, more wool will not fix it. We will tell you that, and point you at the windows or the walls instead.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. 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 in a Westbourne home 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.

Laying insulation in a loft or behind a sloping ceiling is not development, so it needs no planning application, as the Planning Portal guidance on insulation sets out. It does fall under building control with BCP Council, and regulation 23 brings the whole roof up to the current standard once more than half of it is renovated. Westbourne has a good number of listed buildings, the Church of St Ambrose and the Westbourne Arcade among them, and on a listed building even work inside needs consent, so we check the council's listed building records first.

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. In a Westbourne flat, look first for a bathroom fan that has been ducted into the loft and simply ends there, which turns up in converted houses, and remember that a damp patch from a slipped slate is a roof repair for the freeholder rather than a loft job. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Westbourne has its own conservation area, designated in 1993, and it takes in the shopping streets and many of the villas around them. The insulation itself is invisible, so it needs no application. Ventilation is where it can show.

Once a loft is properly insulated the roof above it runs colder, and on a roof that was re-felted with something that does not breathe, the fix is more air through the roof. That usually means vents, and a row of new vent tiles on a slope you can see from Poole Road or Seamoor Road changes the roof the conservation area exists to protect. A building of flats has no permitted development rights to fall back on either.

So we work from the inside out. First the eaves: clearing them, fitting vent trays and opening up the soffit, which barely shows from the pavement. Then the rear slope, where a slate vent or two in the back of the roof does the same job out of sight. Anything visible from the street gets checked with BCP before it is fitted, and the council's list of conservation areas. On the quote you get the ventilation priced as its own line, with a note of where each vent would sit and why, so the freeholder and the council can see it before anyone goes up a ladder.

Nearby places we also cover for loft insulation, with straight-line distances from Westbourne, and the other trades we offer in Westbourne itself.

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