Wall insulation in Bashley
Cavities checked with a camera before anyone injects them, because a 1990s wall here often already holds insulation boards and a gap that is meant to stay clear.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
A lot of Bashley was built in the 1990s, and a 1990s cavity is not an empty one. Houses of that age were often built with partial fill insulation boards already clipped to the inner leaf, with a deliberate clear gap in front of them. Blowing bead into that gap is at best money wasted and at worst a path for water across the wall.
So the first thing we do here is look. The calls we get are somebody quoted for a full fill who wants a second opinion, a cold bungalow where one end is worse than the other, and mould appearing on an outside wall in a room that never used to have it.
One small hole, a borescope, and you know what you have. Then it goes into a free written itemised quote with the survey, the system, the reveals and the making good on separate lines.
The work
What a 1990s cavity already has in it
The borescope, and what it finds. The camera shows the cavity width, whether there are boards clipped to the inner leaf, how wide the residual gap in front of them is and whether the outer leaf is wet. On a house built in the 1990s the cavity is often 75 or 100mm with 40 or 50mm of board already in it. That is a wall that is already performing, and the honest advice is usually to leave it alone and spend the money on the loft or the draughts.
Full fill, where the cavity is genuinely empty. Older houses in the area, and plenty of the 1960s and 1970s bungalows, do have a clear cavity. Bonded polystyrene bead or blown mineral wool, drilled on a pattern, injected under control, eaves and every reveal closed off first, holes made good in matching mortar. A fill is normally covered by an independent scheme run separately from the installer, so ask what paperwork you get.
Why filling a residual gap is a bad idea. That clear gap in front of a partial fill board is doing the same job as an empty cavity: it stops water that gets through the outer leaf from reaching the boards and the inner leaf. Fill it and you bridge it. The gain in U value is small because the board is already there, and the risk of penetrating damp on the weather side is real. We will tell you that even though it means not selling you a fill.
Failed and slumped fill. Where an older wall was filled decades ago the camera often shows an empty band at the top and a compacted mass below, or wet fibre. That is extracted with a vacuum through a drilled pattern, bagged and taken away, and refilled in bead once the wall is dry.
Solid walls. The pre 1919 properties scattered around here are nine inch solid brick with nothing to fill. Internal wall insulation means insulated plasterboard fixed back, or a stud and batten frame with mineral wool or PIR board, Celotex or Kingspan, between it, with an aerogel backed board where a threshold has no room. External wall insulation, boards and a render carrier under a thin coat finish, is the alternative.
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. On a bungalow the eaves are low and the cavity closer up there is the detail that stops bead ending up in the loft.
Ventilation. Extract in the kitchen and bathroom, trickle vents in the windows and air bricks clear. Approved Document F sets what it has to achieve 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.
Bashley is inside the New Forest National Park, which is its own planning authority, and you can check whether an address falls inside the boundary on the National Park property map. That matters only for the outside of a building: external wall insulation changes the appearance and design scrutiny is tighter here than in the district, as the Planning Portal guidance on external walls explains. There is no conservation area over the housing and only five listed entries, so most addresses have nothing to apply for, and internal work needs no permission at all under the Planning Portal page on insulation. Building control applies through regulation 23 and the Part L target in Approved Document L.
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 1990s detached, a 1960s bungalow with a clear cavity and an older brick cottage are three different jobs before anybody drills. 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. Bashley is around ten miles from us and we are on that side of the Forest most weeks. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Partial fill boards, and the gap in front of them
The single biggest share of Bashley's housing went up in the 1990s, and that decade is the awkward one for this trade. By then the building regulations wanted more insulation than a 50mm cavity could give, and the usual answer was a wider cavity with rigid boards clipped to the inner leaf and a deliberate 25 to 50mm clear gap left in front of them. Partial fill, in the trade. The wall looks identical from outside to a wall with nothing in it.
That gap is not a mistake and it is not spare space. It is the drainage cavity, and it is what keeps water that gets through the brickwork away from the boards and the inner leaf. A firm working from the outside, or from a database, cannot tell the difference between that wall and an empty one, which is how houses that were already insulated end up being sold a full fill.
It is why we borescope every wall before quoting, and why we often come back with a no. If the boards are there and the gap is clear, the wall is doing its job and the money belongs elsewhere. If the boards have slipped or were never clipped properly, which the camera does show, there is a real job to do.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Bashley, New Milton, Ashley, Sway and the BH25 addresses around them, with the New Forest National Park Authority for planning. 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
Bashley questions we get asked
What is partial fill cavity insulation?
Rigid boards clipped to the inner leaf with a clear gap left in front of them, which is how most 1990s houses were built. The gap drains water away from the boards and is supposed to stay empty.
Should the gap in front of the boards be filled?
Usually not. The extra improvement is small because the boards are already doing the work, and filling the drainage gap can carry water across to the inner leaf on the weather side.
How do we know which sort of cavity we have?
Only by looking. A borescope through one small hole shows the boards, the width of the gap and the condition of the outer leaf. Nothing on the outside of the wall tells you.
Our 1960s bungalow has never been done. Is it worth it?
Very likely. A genuinely empty cavity in a bungalow gives a large drop in heat loss for a day's work, and the payback is short. The camera confirms the cavity is clear and dry first.
Would you ever tell us not to bother?
Regularly, on the newer houses here. If the wall already performs, filling it is a cost with very little return, and we would rather say so than take the work.
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Check the cavity before anyone fills it
Thomas comes out, puts a camera in the wall and tells you whether there is already insulation in there. The visit and the written quote are both free.