Wall insulation in Ashley
Rendered elevations tapped and repaired before a cavity is ever filled, old fill checked by camera, and solid walls lined from inside, across Ashley and BH25.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
A great many of the bungalows around Ashley have a rendered outer leaf, and render changes the cavity fill question completely. Sound render keeps water off the brickwork behind it. Cracked or blown render funnels water into the wall and holds it there, and no cavity behind a wall like that should be filled until the outside has been put right.
So we tap the render before we drill anything. The calls we get here are a cold room in a single storey house, damp showing on an inside wall under a cracked patch of render, and owners who have been quoted for a fill and want somebody to look at the outside first.
The survey covers the render, the pointing, the sills and the cavity, and it goes into a free written itemised quote with each part on its own line. The site visit and the quote are both free.
The work
Rendered walls, and what has to happen before a fill
Tapping the render. A hollow note means the render has parted from the brick behind it, and water is getting into that void and staying. We tap the whole elevation, look at the cracking, the sills and the bellcast at the bottom, and only then drill. Most of Ashley is late 1950s and early 1960s brick and block with a nominal 50mm cavity, and a good deal of it was rendered either at build or since.
The borescope. One hole in a joint tells us the cavity width, what is already in it and whether the inner face of the outer leaf is wet with penetrating damp. On a rendered wall that reading matters more than usual, because the render hides everything the eye would otherwise pick up.
Cavity fill. Clear cavity, sound render and a dry outer leaf, and it takes bonded polystyrene bead or blown mineral wool, drilled on a pattern and injected under control, eaves and every reveal closed off first. On a rendered wall the drilled holes are made good in render rather than mortar and knocked back to match the texture. A fill is normally covered by an independent scheme run separately from the installer, so ask what paperwork you get.
Failed and slumped fill. An older fill under render often finds the worst of both: an empty band at the top of the wall and wet fibre lower down where the render has been letting water in for years. It comes out with a vacuum through a drilled pattern, is bagged and taken away, and the wall dries before a refill is even discussed.
Solid walls. The older properties here are nine inch solid brick, sometimes rendered over. Internal wall insulation means insulated plasterboard fixed back, or a stud and batten frame with mineral wool or PIR board such as Celotex or Kingspan between it, with an aerogel backed board where a reveal or a threshold has no room. External wall insulation, boards on a render carrier under a thin coat finish, replaces the render altogether and cures the cold bridging at the same time, which on a rendered bungalow is often the tidiest answer of the lot.
Junctions. Reveals returned, the floor junction carried down, joist ends thought about, the eaves closed and a breathable vapour control layer taped so the dew point cannot sit in the build up as interstitial condensation. Miss the edges and you leave a thermal bridge where the black mould will come back.
Ventilation. Extract in the kitchen and bathroom, trickle vents in the windows and air bricks kept clear at the base of the wall. Approved Document F sets what the ventilation has to do once airtightness improves.
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 and any borescope check, the system and its thickness, making good around windows and doors, ventilation works, 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.
New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Ashley, which sits outside the National Park boundary. There is no conservation area over the housing and only five listed entries nearby, so almost no address here needs consent. Internal lining needs no planning permission, which the Planning Portal page on insulation confirms, and external wall insulation is the one that can, under the Planning Portal guidance on external walls. Building control applies through regulation 23, which sets the Part L target in Approved Document L, and the work in a home is currently zero rated for VAT.
Cost
What decides the price of a wall insulation job
No rate per square metre, because the wall area is the easy part; what happens at every window, door and floor junction is not.
Getting to it. A rendered bungalow, a fair faced brick semi and an older solid walled cottage are three different jobs before anybody drills a hole. Cavity fill is drilled from outside and a bungalow comes off a tower where a three storey gable wants a scaffold. Internal lining is worked room by room from inside, so it is your rooms rather than a platform that gets disrupted. The work at height rules still set the platform.
Which wall you actually have. A cavity that is clear and dry can be filled in a day. A solid wall cannot be filled at all, and has to be lined inside or insulated outside, which is a different job at a different price. A borescope through one drilled hole settles it, and no honest quote is written before that.
The junctions, not the field of the wall. Reveals at windows and doors, the floor junction, the eaves and any party wall are where heat escapes and where condensation shows up if the detailing is wrong. That work is slow, it is most of the labour, and it is the first thing a cheap quote leaves out.
Comparing quotes? Ask whether the wall has actually been checked with a borescope or just assumed, what system and what thickness is specified, how the reveals and floor junction are being detailed, whether ventilation is being addressed, and who makes good the plaster and decoration afterwards. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.
If damp has appeared
Damp or mould after a wall was insulated
Ring rather than use the form. Damp patches or black mould appearing on an outside wall after cavity fill or internal lining usually means water is tracking across the cavity, or warm air is reaching a cold surface at a junction. We look before we take anything out, because the fix depends on which of those it is. Ashley is around eleven miles from us and we are through New Milton most weeks. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Render hides the wall, and it hides the fault
On a fair faced brick wall you can read a lot from the pavement. Washed out joints, a spalled face, a stain under a sill, all of it is visible. Render takes that away. A rendered elevation in Ashley can look perfectly sound and be holding water in a void behind it, and the only way to find out is to go along it with a knuckle or a small hammer and listen.
This matters for wall insulation because a rendered outer leaf that has blown is a permanent supply of water into the wall. Rain runs down the face, finds a crack, gets behind the render and cannot get out. Fill the cavity behind that and you have connected a wet outer leaf to the inner one, and the damp patch that turns up in the bedroom afterwards gets blamed on the insulation when the cause was on the outside all along.
So on a rendered house the order is fixed. Cut out and repair what is hollow, deal with the cracking, sort the sills and let it dry. Then fill the cavity, and the U value improves the way it should. Where the render is far gone across a whole elevation, we will usually say that insulating externally is worth pricing, because you are paying to re-render anyway and the boards and the finish go on together.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Ashley, New Milton, Bashley, Bransgore and the BH25 addresses around them, with New Forest District 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
Ashley questions we get asked
Can a rendered house have cavity insulation?
Yes, provided the render is sound. Hollow or cracked render lets water behind it and holds it, and filling the cavity behind that gives the water a path to the inner leaf.
How do you check render before quoting?
By tapping the whole elevation and listening. A hollow note means the render has parted from the brick. We also look at the cracking, the sills and the bellcast at the base.
What happens to the drill holes in render?
They are made good in render rather than mortar and textured back to match what is there. On a painted elevation the patch will want painting in, which we will say up front.
Our render is failing across the whole front. What then?
That is the case where external wall insulation is worth pricing. You are paying to re-render anyway, so the boards and the new finish go on together and the wall gets warm at the same time.
Would damp under a cracked render show up inside?
Often, as a patch that comes and goes with the weather rather than a steady stain. That pattern points at the outside of the wall, not at condensation, and it needs fixing before any insulation goes in.
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Have the render checked before the cavity is filled
Thomas comes out, taps the elevation, looks in the cavity and prices the outside and the insulation separately. The visit and the written quote are both free.