Wall insulation in Canford Heath

Brick and block, or timber behind the brick. Houses on a Canford Heath close were often built in the same year to the same design, so one borescope check through a small hole in a mortar joint tells you a lot. It shows whether the cavity is empty, part filled with a thin batt, bridged with mortar droppings, or backed by a timber frame and breather membrane rather than block.

A moisture meter on the inside face, a look at the pointing on any gable that faces the open heath, and the sills, gutters and air bricks finish the survey. The findings go in the quote with photographs, so you can see why a wall is being filled, lined or left alone.

A fill on a brick and block wall. A clear, dry Canford Heath cavity in sound masonry can take a blown fill of bonded polystyrene bead or mineral wool through a drilled pattern of holes. A registered cavity wall installer does it and issues CIGA paperwork; keep that with the deeds, because a buyer's surveyor asks. On a terrace the installer puts a barrier in at the party wall line so the fill stops at your boundary. Open joints, leaking gutters and blocked air bricks are put right first, and we price those repairs.

The bedroom over the garage. A Canford Heath room above an integral garage loses heat through its outside walls and its floor, and it is usually the coldest bedroom in the house. Where the walls should not be filled, and on a timber framed house they never should, internal wall insulation does the work. Insulated plasterboard with a PIR backing such as Celotex or Kingspan suits a tight room. A mineral wool build-up between battens or a stud, with a vapour control layer, gives more depth. Reveals, the floor junction, the ceiling line and the joist ends are detailed so no cold bridge is left for condensation and black mould. A room is usually a few days, skim included.

Cladding the outside. With no conservation area here, the question with external wall insulation is mostly how it will sit beside the neighbours. EWI means board fixed to the outside, a render carrier with mesh and a thin coat finish, and it deals with the thermal bridge at every floor. On a terrace or a pair, the new face stands proud of next door's brick by the thickness of the board, so the edge at the party line needs a proper detail. Eaves, sills and pipes are extended from a scaffold.

A fill that has gone wrong. Some cavities in Canford Heath were filled decades ago. Where the fill has slumped, the borescope finds a cold band at the top of the wall. Where a wall facing the open heath has soaked through in a south westerly, the fill can carry that wet cavity across and show as penetrating damp inside. Failed fill is extracted by a specialist before anything else, and we tell you straight if that is what we see.

Keeping air moving. Canford Heath houses of this age were built tighter than older stock, often with no chimney pulling air through, so further insulation makes ventilation matter more. Trickle vents, kitchen and bathroom extract fans, and air bricks clear of the drive and the patio are all checked. The payback you notice first is the room over the garage holding its heat without the draught.

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 detached house with every wall reachable from its own garden, an end terrace with a gable along a footpath, and a flat in a small block where the walls are shared each raise a different question about access and consent. 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.

We work on walls across Canford Heath and the rest of BH17, from Gravel Hill to Mannings Heath and from Adastral Square to Culliford Crescent, from our base in Boscombe, about six miles away.

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. Before you book a visit in Canford Heath, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Canford Heath need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.