Wall insulation in Boldre

Reading a partial fill comes first. 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. Blowing bead into the clear gap in front of an existing partial fill in a Boldre wall is generally not recommended, because that gap is the drainage channel the wall was built with. The narrow exception is a wide, clean, dry gap on a sheltered elevation with a sound outer leaf, and only the borescope and an exposure check can show that.

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 Boldre 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 in Boldre. 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.

Thomas starts by finding out what walls you have. Most eighties houses in Boldre have a cavity, and some were built with a partial fill board already in it. He drills one small hole and looks with a borescope to see what is in the cavity, whether it is clean, and whether there is room to fill.

The older cottages have solid walls with no cavity at all. You get a quote with separate lines for the survey and borescope look, which system and how thick, making good at the window and door reveals, ventilation, and disposal.

Cavity fill is injected from outside by a registered installer, who should give you a CIGA certificate, through holes drilled in the mortar joints, and the holes are then filled to match. Internal lining with insulated plasterboard is done room by room: we move furniture, sheet the floors and take off skirtings and sockets. Waste leaves with us. If we find something nobody could have known, like a cavity blocked with rubble, we send you photographs and a price and wait for your answer.

Before any outside work, look your address up on the Park Authority’s interactive map. Insulating inside is not development, as the Planning Portal confirms. Cladding the outside is a planning matter here, with a conservation area over a good share of Boldre. Building control applies under regulation 23, and Part L sets the U value.

If damp patches or black mould appear on an outside wall after cavity fill or dry lining, photograph the whole wall, not just the patch, and note when it gets worse. Damp that spreads after rain usually means water is crossing the cavity.

Mould in corners and round windows usually means warm air is reaching a cold spot. Keep the room aired. Give us a ring instead of using the form. A moisture meter and the borescope come out on the first visit, before anything is removed, because the fix depends on the cause. Scheduled work runs from Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Should the phone go unanswered, we return the call as soon as we can.

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A good many homes in Boldre 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 the batts have gaps, the drainage gap in front of them is generally left clear and the cold room is lined from inside instead. Where they do not, we say so, and the loft may be worth more; insulation in Boldre compares them.

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

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