Wall insulation in Bere Regis

The render comes first. Where hard cement render is cracked or has blown, water gets in behind it and cannot get out. No lining should go on the inside of that wall until the render is dealt with, because you would be sealing water into the masonry. Sometimes that means patching, sometimes taking it off and replacing it with a lime render that lets the wall breathe.

Breathable internal wall insulation. On a solid Bere Regis wall the safe build up is vapour open: wood fibre board bedded in lime, finished in lime plaster, no plastic sheet in it. Moisture can move through and leave. It is the right answer on a rubble, cob or soft brick wall and it is not slower to live with, only slower to build.

Where a rigid board is fine. Insulated plasterboard, or PIR board such as Celotex or Kingspan on battens or a timber stud, on a dry, hard, modern wall. It is thinner for the same performance and quicker to fit. On the wrong wall it is the thing that causes interstitial condensation behind the board.

Solid walls cannot be filled. A nine inch brick wall, or a rubble wall under render, has nothing inside it to inject, whatever it looks like next to a brick and block cavity house on the same street.

Cavity fill on the newer houses. Bonded polystyrene bead blown through a drilled pattern, or blown mineral wool on a sheltered wall with a sound outer leaf. A Bere Regis cavity must be clear, dry and wide enough or it does not get filled. A wet cavity, a bridged one, or a fill that has already failed and slumped is a different conversation.

The junctions. Reveals, the threshold, the floor junction, the eaves, the joist ends and any party wall. A shallow reveal takes a thin aerogel board. Leave any of them out and you have built a cold bridge, and a thermal bridge is where the dew point lands and black mould appears.

Ventilation. Trickle vents, a working extract in the kitchen and bathroom, and air bricks kept clear. Approved Document F sets the expectation, and on a wall that is already struggling to dry, the ventilation is doing half the work.

Before anything is quoted, Thomas works out which wall you have. A borescope through one small drilled hole shows whether there is a cavity, whether it is clear, and whether anything is already in it.

His quote prices the survey, the chosen system and how thick it is, the making good at every window and door, any ventilation, and the waste, all separately. If a cavity fill is priced, it names the registered installer and the CIGA certificate that comes with it.

Inside, the work goes a room at a time, with furniture moved and floors covered, and you have the room back at the end of the day. External work needs a scaffold, and on a house against the lane that has to leave the footway clear. Old plaster and offcuts leave with us. If a hidden problem shows up, such as damp in a solid wall or a lintel that needs attention, work on that part stops until you have seen a photograph and agreed a price.

Lining a wall inside is not development, as the Planning Portal confirms. External wall insulation changes the look of the house, and inside the Bere Regis Conservation Area, which takes in the old village centre, that needs checking with Dorset Council. The parish has forty three listed entries, and on those listed building consent reaches internal work too. Renovating a thermal element brings building control in under regulation 23, and Part L gives the U-value the wall has to meet.

Fresh damp or mould on an outside wall, soon after cavity fill or a new lining went in, means something in the detail is wrong. Keep the room aired, wipe the mould off and photograph it, above all if it runs along a window or the skirting.

Then phone rather than using the form. Scheduled visits are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If you ring about damp and nobody picks up, we return the call once we are free. On the visit, Thomas finds out whether rain is tracking across the cavity or indoor warmth is condensing on a cold patch, as each has its own cure.

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Think of an old solid wall as something that is always slightly wet and always drying. Driven rain, and the prevailing weather here comes from the south west, wets the outside. Cooking, washing and breathing put moisture into the inside. Both faces let it out again, and the wall stays in balance.

Hard cement render closes the outside face. It is strong, it does not move with the wall, and it cracks, so water gets in at the cracks and then cannot evaporate through the render the way it would through lime. Plenty of walls in Bere Regis have been in that state for decades and are coping, because they are still drying inwards into heated rooms.

Now line the inside with a sealed board. The heat no longer reaches the masonry, so the wall is colder and holds more water, and the last escape route has just been closed. What follows is salting and blown plaster at the bottom of the wall, damp behind the boards, and rot in any joist end built into it. It is why we look at the render before we quote a lining, and why on these houses the answer is often to repair the outside first, insulate breathably, and get the ventilation right at the same time.

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

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