Wall insulation in Ashmore

What the wall is. A flint and rubble wall, a nine inch brick wall and a post-war brick and block cavity look less alike than they sound. The reveal depth is the first test and the borescope is the last one: cavity or not, how wide, clean or bridged, dry or a wet cavity, empty or already filled and slumped.

Cavity fill where the camera says yes. Bonded bead into a narrow, obstructed or exposed cavity; blown mineral wool only where the gap is wide, clean and sheltered. On an Ashmore house a registered installer drills it from outside on a grid, fills it and points the holes to match. One day, and the shortest payback of anything on this page, with Part L setting what the wall should reach.

Solid walls, which is what the older Ashmore cottages have. Nothing to fill, so the choice is internal wall insulation or external wall insulation. IWI is cheaper and invisible from the road. EWI gives the better U value and deals with the eaves and the joist ends, but it changes the appearance and needs consent here.

Doing the back and leaving the front. That is a legitimate way to run this job. External insulation on an Ashmore rear elevation that nothing overlooks, internal work on the frontage, or nothing at all on the frontage where the reveals are too shallow to take anything sensible.

The join. Wherever an insulated wall in Ashmore meets one that is not, you have made a thermal bridge. The lining is returned along the uninsulated wall for half a metre or so, carried down past the floor junction and taken tight into the reveal, so the cold strip has nowhere to form. That returning detail is the single thing most quotes leave out, and it is where the black mould turns up when it is missed.

Build ups. Insulated plasterboard or PIR such as Celotex or Kingspan on a batten or stud frame with taped joints and a continuous vapour control layer where the wall is sound and modern. Wood fibre and lime where it is old and needs to stay breathable, so the dew point sits somewhere that can dry. Shallow reveals take an aerogel laminate; an external system takes a mesh basecoat and a render carrier with a finish chosen to suit the street.

Ventilation. Trickle vents, extract fans that shift air, air bricks kept clear rather than covered over, to the rates in Approved Document F. Airtightness without ventilation swaps a cold house for a damp one.

Putting failures right. Fill that has slumped, a wet cavity, a lining that is cracking and black behind. Extraction is drilled from outside, the wall is dried and checked, and we say honestly whether it should be done again.

Old walls of flint, stone or brick are often solid, with no cavity, and they need to breathe. Thomas finds out which you have before anything is promised, using a borescope through a single drilled hole on a newer wall, or by reading the bond and thickness of an older one. He then prices it himself. The quote shows the survey and any borescope check, the chosen insulation and its thickness, making good at windows and doors, ventilation, and waste.

Internal lining is done a room at a time, furniture shifted and floors covered, and the room left clean at the end of the day. Anything outside is done from scaffold set so the lane stays open. Where there is a later cavity wall at the back, a fill needs a registered installer and a CIGA certificate. If a wall is already damp, or a timber lintel has rotted behind the plaster, we photograph it and price it, and only carry on with your agreement.

Changing the outside face of a wall becomes a planning matter inside the Ashmore Conservation Area, which covers the village, and a listed building needs consent for work inside as well as out; the council keeps the designation records. Lining the inside of an unlisted house is not development, as the Planning Portal insulation guidance explains, and once over half of a wall is renovated, regulation 23 brings in building control.

If damp or mould has appeared on an outside wall since it was lined or filled, call us rather than filling in the form. On a solid wall it usually means the lining has trapped moisture, or warm air is reaching a cold spot at a junction.

Tell us whether the mould sits in a corner, along the skirting or round a window, because each points at a different cold bridge. On the first visit we look before anything is taken out, since the fix depends on the cause. Our scheduled working week is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Should you not reach us, expect our call as soon as we are free.

Call now: 07435 839745

Ashmore sits inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape and the Ashmore Conservation Area, and both of those are about how things look. For wall insulation that has a very specific effect. Nobody is objecting to the insulation.

What gets scrutinised is a 100mm thicker wall, windows that end up sunk into deep reveals, an eaves overhang that no longer throws water clear of the wall, and a modern looking finish on a street of flint, brick and lime. Dorset Council publishes what is designated and where to apply.

So we survey elevation by elevation rather than pricing a house. A rear wall behind a garden, screened by outbuildings and not visible from any road, is often a straightforward external job. The frontage on the same house may be internal work or nothing at all. Splitting it that way is usually the difference between a scheme that gets consent and one that does not.

The trade off is honest and worth knowing before you start. Doing half a house properly gives you less on paper than doing all of it, and it puts a real premium on the junction detailing where the two halves meet. Done well you get a warm dry house. Done carelessly you get a warm house with one cold damp corner, and that corner is worse than the wall you started with.

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

Everything we do in Blandford Forum Wall insulation, all areas Every area we cover