Wall insulation in Furzehill, starting with the coldest room
Lining a solid wall is done room by room, so the sensible start is the room you sit in, finished properly to its edges.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Ten years is the honest timescale for a solid walled house, not a fortnight. Many of the older detached properties around Furzehill went up without a cavity, and a wall like that can only be lined from inside, one room at a time, with the room cleared out while it happens. Nobody sensible tackles the lot in one go. So the question here is not what the house needs. It is what to buy first, and what to leave until the first finished room has taught you something.
Two calls come in over and over. One is a cold sitting room in an older house, mould creeping into a corner behind the furniture. The other is a post-war house on one of the closes: cavity pumped decades back, a wall gone damp after a run of wet westerlies. Different houses. Different first move.
Nothing gets specified until the wall has been read. A borescope down one drilled hole settles whether a cavity exists, how wide it runs, and what somebody blew in there years ago. Solid walls get measured instead, plaster, reveals and joist ends looked over while we are stood in the room. No charge for that visit. None for the itemised quote either.
The order of it
First room, second room, and the wall you leave until last
Before anything is bought at all. Read the wall. A 12mm hole, a borescope, five minutes. That look gives the clear cavity width, mortar snots perched on the ties, an old fill slumped down the gap, anything wet. Every line below hangs off that answer, which is why no honest specification arrives over the telephone.
Purchase one, if the camera finds a cavity. Fill it. Clear, dry and wide enough means drilled on a pattern, pumped, made good, done inside a day. Bonded polystyrene bead travels round the ties and stays where it lands. Blown mineral wool is older and behaves well in a clean, sheltered gap. Holes close with mortar mixed to match.
Purchase one on a solid wall: the coldest room, edges included. Internal wall insulation, IWI, is either insulated plasterboard bonded straight onto the masonry or a batten and stud frame packed out with mineral wool. PIR laminate, Celotex or Kingspan, reaches the target in the shallowest build up. Old solid brick gets breathable layers instead, wood fibre under a lime skim, so the masonry keeps drying inwards and the dew point never parks inside the brick.
Bought in the same fortnight, not later. Returns, every window and door reveal, the threshold, the floor junction. Skip them and the room is not done. Vapour control layers are taped and sealed edge to edge as BS 8000-8 asks, and sockets and radiator brackets come forward onto the new face rather than being boxed round.
Bought alongside, never afterwards. Ventilation. Warmer walls lift the airtightness of a house, and the water already in the air wants another way out. Trickle vents that open. An extract fan shifting kitchen and bathroom air for real. Air bricks nobody has rendered across. Approved Document F sets the expectation, and draught sealing in the same visit turns a better u value into a room that feels different.
Purchase two, a winter or three later. The next room, priced off a room you have lived in rather than a brochure. By then you know what depth you can stand. A small bedroom takes a thinner high performance board with aerogel at the reveals. Heat loss is never spread evenly round a house, so the order is coldest first, not clockwise.
Jumping the queue: fill that has failed. Wool pumped in decades back settles, leaving a cold band under the eaves that reads inside as black mould along the top of a bedroom wall. A wet cavity, water crossing on a bridge, throws damp patches that follow the weather. Neither waits its turn. Both begin with extraction.
Last, and only sometimes. External wall insulation, EWI: boards, a render carrier and a render finish across a whole elevation. Not an inch of floor space goes, the masonry warms right through, and the joist ends and floor junction settle in one pass. It also changes the face of the building permanently. Where a re-render is due anyway, that is the moment to raise it.
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.
Furzehill is under Dorset Council. There is no conservation area over the settlement, and there are listed farmhouses and cottages around Furzehill, Wilksworth Farmhouse among them, where even internal work can need listed building consent. For everything else this is a building control question, and where an existing wall is upgraded regulation 23 sets what the finished element has to reach under Part L.
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. An older detached house in its own grounds, a 1960s house on one of the closes and a bungalow on a lane with no hardstanding 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. We are eight miles away just the other side of Wimborne, so an address around Furzehill 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
Money spread thin moves the cold spot rather than removing it
Board the outside face of four rooms and the job reads thorough on paper. In use it disappoints. Heat does not stream out through the middle of a wall so much as through everything crowded round the edge of it: the return, the reveal, the frame, the skirting line, the joist ends buried in the brickwork. Leave that lot alone and no cold surface has been removed. It has simply shifted onto the frame around the window, and condensation finds it there inside one winter.
One room. Finished. Wall, returns, reveals, threshold, skirting line, and the ventilation serving that room, all inside the same fortnight. Three things then follow. The room is warmer to sit in rather than warmer on a certificate. You learn what the depth actually feels like before the rest of the house is committed to it. And room two gets priced against something you have lived with. There is a household argument too. A room being lined is a room emptied, worked, plastered and redecorated, so running four of them together buys months of building site and no extra comfort at the end of it.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Furzehill, Colehill, Holt Road and the lanes north of Wimborne, broadly BH21, under Dorset Council. 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
Furzehill questions we get asked
Is it sensible to do a single room to start with?
Yes. On a solid walled house it is usually the right way in. One condition attaches: the room goes to its edges, returns, reveals and floor junction included, or you have bought half a job.
How much floor space does a lined wall cost me?
Whatever depth the build up needs on each wall you line, near enough a skirting board's thickness. Where a room is tight, a thinner high performance board with aerogel at the reveals keeps the loss to a minimum.
How long does one room take, and what mess is involved?
Reckon on a few days for an ordinary room, more if the plastering is awkward. It has to be emptied, and sockets and the radiator get moved. More disruptive than a cavity fill, and we would rather say so up front.
What if I have no idea what my walls are built of?
Then we look instead of guessing from the age of the house. One drilled hole, a borescope, and you have the wall type, the width, and whatever somebody blew in there years ago.
Will a lined wall deal with damp in a cold corner?
Depends what is causing it. Condensation landing on a cold surface goes once that surface is warmed and the ventilation is sorted alongside. Water getting in from outside does not, and lining over it merely hides it.
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Start with one room and price the rest from it
Thomas comes out, reads the wall, says what one room would take and prices it in writing. The visit and the quote are free.