Wall insulation in Boldre

Reading a partial fill. Rigid batts against the inner leaf with a residual gap in front were the standard build for years. Where they were butted tight and the ties kept clean they work well. Where they were cut short, left with gaps at the corners or pushed out of line, the wall has cold stripes through it and the mould inside follows them exactly.

Topping up the residual gap. Where a clear, dry gap remains in front of an existing partial fill, bonded polystyrene bead can be blown into it, filling around the batts and closing the gaps between them. It has to be genuinely clear and genuinely dry, and the borescope is what proves that rather than an assumption from the age of the house.

When we would leave it alone. A narrow residual gap, mortar bridging the ties, a wet cavity, or an outer leaf cracking or blown are all reasons not to blow anything in. Fill a wet cavity and you turn a drainage gap into a path for penetrating damp. Sometimes the honest answer is that the walls are fine and the heat is going out through the windows.

Full fill on an empty cavity. On the pre-1983 stock the cavity is often empty. Bonded polystyrene bead, or blown mineral wool where the wall is sheltered and the outer leaf sound, through a drilled pattern with the holes made good in a matched mortar. A house is normally a day.

Solid walls on the older properties. A nine inch brick wall has no cavity, whatever it looks like beside a brick and block house. It is internal wall insulation, wood fibre and lime on an old soft wall or insulated plasterboard, PIR, Celotex or Kingspan on battens or a stud where the wall is dry and hard, or external wall insulation with a render carrier over it. On an old wall the build up stays vapour open, so moisture leaves rather than gathering as interstitial condensation.

Junctions. Reveals, the threshold, the floor junction, the eaves, the joist ends and the party wall in a terrace, and there are plenty of terraces here. A shallow reveal takes a thin aerogel board. A cold bridge left at any of these is a thermal bridge, and that is where the dew point lands and black mould starts.

Ventilation. Trickle vents, a working extract in the kitchen and bathroom, and air bricks kept clear. Approved Document F sets the expectation, and a modern house that is already fairly airtight needs that ventilation working properly.

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.

The New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority here rather than the district council, so its interactive property map is the place to check what applies to an address before any external work is considered. Lining a wall on the inside is not development at all, which the Planning Portal confirms. There are 11 listed entries in the parish and no conservation area over the housing itself. Building control comes in under regulation 23 once a thermal element is renovated, and Part L sets the U value.

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. On a house of this age the pattern of the mould usually tells us where the fill is missing, so a photograph of the whole wall is more use than a close up. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Call now: 07435 839745

Something over four in ten homes in the parish were built from 1983 onwards, and the building regulations of that period brought insulation into the cavity as standard. Most owners either do not know it is there or assume that because it is there, the walls are finished. Neither is much help when one room stays cold.

The trouble with a partial fill is that it is only as good as the day it was laid. Batts are cut on site around ties, openings and corners, and a bricklayer under pressure leaves gaps. Boards slip down the cavity, mortar drops onto the ties and holds them off the wall, and a run of missing insulation over a lintel or beside a corner shows up years later as a cold stripe with mould on it. None of that is visible from either side of the wall.

The borescope is the whole answer. We look in several places rather than one, because the gaps are local rather than general, and we can usually match what is on the camera to what you are seeing inside the house. Where there is a clear dry gap in front of the batts, blowing bead into it closes the cold stripes for a fraction of what lining a room costs. Where there is not, we say so.

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