Wall insulation in Ferndown
With no conservation area and nothing listed, insulating the outside face of a house here is a technical decision rather than a planning one.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Nothing in this town is listed and no conservation area boundary crosses it, which puts the place among the very few on our patch where the outer face of a house can be insulated on technical grounds alone. Better than four homes in ten here are bungalows. On a bungalow, that combination is worth knowing about before you spend anything.
Three calls come in more than any others. A bungalow with one flank that never warms up. A house filled years back, now showing damp on the elevation that takes the weather. An owner about to re-render, wanting to know whether board should go on first.
Specification follows evidence, never the other way about. One small hole drilled in a mortar joint takes a borescope, moisture readings go on the inside face, and a walk round tells us what each elevation gets from the weather. What follows is a free written itemised quote keeping survey, system, junctions and making good on separate lines.
The work
Cavity, lining, or a coat on the outside
Step zero, and it costs nothing. Behind render, a nine inch solid wall and an early brick and block cavity are the same object. So we drill, and a borescope answers it: gap or no gap, what width, clean or fouled, dry or wet, empty or already filled. Everything underneath is priced off that reading. On a fair number of walls the reading says spend the money elsewhere.
Cheapest real work: cavity fill. Given a gap that is clear, dry and wide enough, material goes in from outside through a drilled pattern that is made good in matching mortar afterwards. Bonded polystyrene bead travels to the corners and holds position, which is what a weather elevation wants. Blown mineral wool, the older answer, is still sound behind shelter. Single storey work, so a tower does it. A day, usually.
Next rung up: lining rooms from inside. Internal wall insulation, IWI on a quote, covers a solid wall and covers any cavity we have refused to fill. Insulated plasterboard goes on adhesive; batten and stud carry mineral wool or PIR; board and skim finish it. Celotex and Kingspan buy more performance per millimetre, and aerogel earns its keep in a room with no depth to surrender. Reveals, threshold, floor junction and joist ends all get wrapped. Skip those and the heat walks out at the edges of the room you have just paid to line.
Top of the ladder. External wall insulation means board fixed and bonded across the outer face, then a render carrier, then a thin coat finish. One pass wraps the building. The cold bridge at corners and eaves that no internal job can ever reach simply stops existing, and no room loses a millimetre of floor. The most complete answer there is. Also the biggest, by a distance.
The line that cheap external quotes leave off. Push the wall face out by a hundred millimetres and everything attached to it has to follow. Eaves overhang extended, or rainwater lands on your new render. Sills replaced or lengthened. Meter box, outside tap, vents and rainwater goods reset. Every window reveal detailed with an insulated return so the openings do not turn cold. Then boundaries: a wall sitting on the line cannot grow sideways onto next door, which quietly takes an elevation or two off the table on a tight plot.
Air, at every level of spend. Fill that has slumped leaves a cold band across the head of the wall. A wet cavity brings penetrating damp through, with black mould behind it. Both read off the borescope and extraction comes before anything else. Then ventilation: trickle vents, an extract fan that genuinely shifts air, air bricks kept clear. Insulation moves the dew point and removes the draughts that were doing the drying, so a taped vapour control layer keeps interstitial condensation out of the build up.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
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.
Lining the inside of a wall is not development and needs no application, which Planning Portal guidance on insulation confirms. Cladding or insulating the outside face usually is permitted development on a house here, because there is no conservation area and no listed entry to complicate it, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out the conditions that still apply; Dorset Council's listed building pages is where an address can be checked. It stays notifiable work: regulation 23 means a renovated thermal element has to reach the Part L standard in Approved Document L, and building control take the U value and the ventilation together.
Cost
What decides the price of a wall insulation job
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 bungalow on a wide plot, a purpose built flat in a low block and a 1980s house on a corner are three different jobs before a hole is drilled. 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. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.
If damp has appeared
Damp or mould after a wall was insulated
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. It is six miles from us, so a BH22 address is normally looked at within a day or two. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Among the few places where the outside of the wall is your call
Ring the towns around here and almost every one carries something that governs appearance: a conservation area boundary, a listed entry, an article 4 direction. This one carries none of it. For wall insulation that is a working fact rather than trivia. External work is the only route that wraps a building completely, and nearly everywhere else on our patch it opens with an application and an argument about how the street will look. Here it opens with a tape measure.
Standing in place of the planning question is a practical one, and on a bungalow the practical question is the eaves. Overhangs on this stock run shallow. Add board to the wall face and either the roof edge gets extended or the rain comes off the tiles onto your new render. Behind that sits the list of things travelling outwards with the wall: sills, meter box, vents, pipework, the boiler flue, every reveal. None of it is difficult. All of it is time. Which is why an honest external quote here reads longer than a quote for a fill, not shorter, and why one that does not itemise the list is a quote for half a job.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Ferndown, Stapehill, the Wimborne Road East side and the BH22 addresses around them, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. 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.
Questions
Ferndown questions we get asked
Do I need planning permission for external wall insulation?
Usually not, on an ordinary house here. With no conservation area boundary and no listed entry over the town, it falls under permitted development, although the conditions attached to that still have to be satisfied.
What has to change on the house when EWI goes on?
Anything fixed to the face of the wall travels out with it: the eaves overhang, the sills, the meter box, vents, outside taps and the rainwater goods. Each window reveal then takes an insulated return.
Can external insulation go right up to my boundary?
Not where the wall stands on the line itself. That face moves outwards by roughly a hundred millimetres, so the elevation needs either an agreement with the neighbour or a different treatment altogether.
Is external better than filling the cavity?
More thorough, and a great deal more work. Where the cavity is clear, dry and wide enough, filling it is quicker and lighter on the pocket, and frequently the sensible call.
How long does an external system take on a bungalow?
Reckon on a fortnight. Preparation, the detailing round openings and the drying time between render coats set that, not the area of wall being covered.
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Get all three options priced against your wall
Thomas comes out, scopes the cavity, measures the eaves and prices the inside and outside routes in writing. The visit and the quote are free.