Wall insulation in Canford Cliffs

Finding out what you have. Rendered walls all look the same from the pavement. An inter-war house may have a narrow early cavity, a much older one may be solid, and a house or block built since the eighties was almost certainly built with insulation in the cavity.

We drill a small hole in a Canford Cliffs mortar joint and look in with a borescope: is there a gap, how wide, is it clean and dry, and is anything in it already. If the cavity is already full, we will tell you so, and that drilling it again would do nothing.

Cavity fill. Where a clear, dry Canford Cliffs cavity is empty, it can be filled from the outside through a pattern of small holes, then made good in matching mortar or render. Bonded polystyrene bead flows into the corners and suits an elevation that takes the weather; blown mineral wool suits a sheltered one. This has to be done by a registered installer, and you should get CIGA paperwork at the end of it. We do the survey, sort out cracked render and failed pointing first, and make good afterwards, and we will point you to the right people for the fill itself.

Internal wall insulation. On a solid wall, or a room that needs more than a fill can give, IWI goes on the inside face: insulated plasterboard bonded to the wall, or a batten or stud frame with PIR boards such as Celotex or Kingspan between, then boarded and skimmed. An aerogel board is thin and suits a room with nothing to spare. The reveals, the floor junction and the joist ends are where heat escapes and where condensation forms if the detail is wrong, so they are wrapped rather than left.

External wall insulation. EWI is board fixed to the outside with a render carrier and a thin coat finish. It keeps the rooms their size and deals with the thermal bridge at the corners and the eaves in one go. It also thickens every window reveal and moves the rainwater goods. In Canford Cliffs it is the option that most often needs permission, which is the subject further down.

Ventilation and moisture. Insulating a wall moves the dew point and cuts the draughts that were quietly drying a Canford Cliffs house. Trickle vents, an extract fan that really moves air and any blocked air brick are part of the job, and a taped vapour control layer keeps interstitial condensation out of an internal build up. The heat loss comes down, the U value improves and the EPC moves, but you will feel it in the rooms long before the payback shows on a bill.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. 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.

Lining a wall from inside or filling a cavity does not change how the house looks, as the Planning Portal insulation guidance explains. Either way it is building control work: regulation 23 makes a renovated wall a thermal element that has to meet the standard in Approved Document L, and part L is checked on the U value and ventilation together.

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. Less than half a mile from the sea, driven rain on the most exposed elevation is the first thing we rule in or out. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Parts of Canford Cliffs sit in two conservation areas: Canford Cliffs Village, around Haven Road and the shops, and Branksome Park and Chine Gardens towards the chines. Inside a conservation area, cladding the outside of a house in render, board or anything else is not permitted development under the householder rules, so external wall insulation needs a planning application.

The council looks at what it does to the look of the house: deeper window reveals, a new render face, the eaves overhang shrinking, rainwater pipes standing off the wall. On a house that matters to the street, those details decide whether it is approved.

That points most owners in Canford Cliffs in one direction. Check whether your house is inside a boundary on the council's conservation area pages before anyone designs an outside system. If it is, a cavity fill where there is a cavity, or internal lining room by room, needs no application at all and can start once building control is notified. If you still want EWI, apply first and let the drawings show the reveals and the eaves, rather than finding out after the boards are on. In a flat, the outside walls belong to the freeholder, so any of this goes through them and the managing agent.

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

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