Wall insulation in Everton

The survey. One hole, a borescope, and a look at the width of the cavity, whether it is clear and whether the ties are bridged with mortar. It also shows an old fill that has failed and slumped, or an outer leaf cracking and letting water into a wet cavity. A narrow or bridged cavity is not a fill, and we would rather tell you that on the first visit than after the holes are drilled.

Bead fill. Bonded polystyrene bead flows into a narrow cavity better than anything else and sets into a mass that cannot slump later. It is blown through a drilled pattern, the holes are made good in a matched mortar, and a bungalow is normally a single day. Low eaves mean it comes off a tower rather than a scaffold, which keeps the access simple.

Blown mineral wool. Water repellent, quick and long established, and the sensible choice on a sheltered wall with a sound outer leaf. On the exposed side of a house this close to the water we would put bead in instead.

Solid walls. The older cottages along the lanes have no cavity at all. A nine inch brick wall cannot be filled, and neither can a rendered rubble one, so it is internal wall insulation or external wall insulation. On a bungalow the internal route is worked room by room and you notice the lost width, because there is no upstairs to spread it over.

What internal lining is made of. Either insulated plasterboard bonded and fixed straight to a flat wall, or PIR board, Celotex or Kingspan, between battens or a timber stud, then boarded and skimmed. Where a wall needs to stay breathable we use wood fibre and a lime plaster instead, so vapour can pass rather than stall inside the build up.

External wall insulation. Board, a render carrier with mesh, then a through coloured finish. On a bungalow it is easier than on most houses because the whole elevation is within reach, and it keeps the masonry warm so interstitial condensation has nowhere to form.

Reveals, eaves and the floor junction. These are most of the labour and all of the risk. A shallow reveal takes a thin aerogel board. The eaves on a bungalow sit low, so the wall head and the joist ends need care. Miss any of them and you have left 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 a tighter house with no way of losing moisture is how a draught becomes damp.

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.

New Forest District Council is the planning authority. Lining the inside of a wall is not development, which the Planning Portal confirms, so no planning application is needed. External wall insulation changes the outside face and is treated differently. There are 15 listed entries in the parish and no conservation area over the village itself. Building control is engaged under regulation 23 once a thermal element is renovated, and Part L sets the U value the finished wall has to reach.

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. Tell us which room and which wall when you ring, because in a single storey house the answer is usually the coldest corner rather than the whole elevation. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

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Put the same floor area on one level instead of two and you get roughly the same roof spread over more ground and a longer run of external wall around it. Every room sits on the outside of the building. There is no landing, no stairwell and no upstairs bedroom buffering anything, so heat loss through the walls is a bigger share of the total here than in the two storey houses on the same road.

That pushes two decisions. First, a cavity fill usually earns its keep faster in a bungalow than anywhere else, because there is simply more wall per household to treat and the work is all within reach off a tower. Second, an internal lining costs you more than it would elsewhere, because you feel the lost width in every single room rather than in half of them.

The vintage matters too. A great many of these bungalows went up in the late fifties and early sixties, when a cavity was often narrow and built with less care about mortar droppings than later work. Sometimes there is a good clear cavity waiting to be filled. Sometimes the borescope shows a gap half bridged with mortar, and the honest answer is to leave it alone and put the money into the loft, the draughts and the coldest room instead.

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