Wall insulation in Lymington

Cavity fill on the newer stock. Bonded polystyrene bead blown through a drilled pattern, or blown mineral wool where the wall is sheltered and the outer leaf sound. The cavity has to be clear, dry and wide enough, and this close to the water we would rather put bead into an exposed elevation than a fibrous fill. Holes are made good in a matched mortar and a house is normally a day.

What the borescope is looking for. In a Lymington wall it checks width, mortar bridging the ties, whether the cavity is wet, and whether an old fill has failed and slumped down it leaving the top of the wall bare. An outer leaf that is cracking or has blown render is a repair before it is an insulation job.

Solid walls behind the quay and on the hill. A nine inch brick wall in Lymington has nothing to fill and cannot be injected, whatever anybody says at the door. It is internal wall insulation or external wall insulation, and on a listed or a street facing building the external route is usually closed.

Internal wall insulation on an old building. Where consent allows it on a Lymington house, the build up is chosen for the wall, not the catalogue. Wood fibre bedded in lime and finished in lime plaster on a soft or damp wall, so it stays breathable and vapour can pass. Insulated plasterboard, or PIR board such as Celotex or Kingspan on battens or a stud, only where the wall is dry, hard and modern enough to take a sealed face.

The joinery and the reveals. Old Lymington sash boxes and panelled shutters leave very little depth at a window reveal, and a standard board simply will not fit without butchering the joinery. A thin aerogel board goes in instead. That one detail decides more of these jobs than the wall itself.

The rest of the junctions. The threshold, the floor junction, the eaves, the joist ends and the party wall in a Lymington terrace. Each is a place where a cold bridge can be left behind, and a thermal bridge is where the dew point lands and black mould appears first.

Ventilation. Trickle vents, a working extract in the kitchen and bathroom, and air bricks kept clear. Approved Document F sets the expectation. On sash windows that cannot take a trickle vent we look at what else can be done rather than pretend the question does not arise.

Before recommending anything, Thomas finds out what your walls actually are. The bulk of Lymington's housing dates from after the war and has cavity walls, some filled already, some half filled and some empty. Older houses in the town centre tend to be solid brick, with no cavity to fill.

He drills one small hole and looks through a borescope to see what is in the cavity and whether it is clear. The quote prices that survey, the system and its thickness, making good at windows and doors, ventilation, and disposal.

For cavity fill a registered installer drills the wall from outside, with a CIGA certificate to follow, the insulation blown in, and each hole pointed up to match. Internal lining goes one room at a time: furniture is moved and covered, skirtings and sockets come off, insulated board goes up, then it is plastered and put back. Rooms are cleaned daily. Nothing is closed up until you have seen a photograph and agreed a price for any damp or bridged cavity we find.

Planning here sits with New Forest District Council. Insulating inside an ordinary house is not development, which the Planning Portal confirms, but external wall insulation alters the outside and is treated differently, especially within the conservation area that covers Lymington's historic centre. The parish church of St Thomas the Apostle is one of the town's many listed buildings, and under the listed buildings act consent is needed for works affecting character, inside included. Regulation 23 brings building control in when a thermal element is renovated, with Part L setting the U value to reach.

Mould or damp patches on an outside wall that were not there before the insulation went in usually come down to rain crossing the filled cavity, or warm room air meeting a cold patch at a junction.

Air the room well, clean the mould off with a household product and pull furniture away from that wall. Ring, not the form, and the first visit will find which it is, with a borescope and a look at the pointing, render and gutters outside, before anything is taken out. Tell us if the house is listed, because that limits what we can open up. Scheduled wall work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and a call we miss is returned as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Around 160 entries in this town are listed, and listing protects the whole building, not the facade. Original lath and lime plaster, panelling, shutters, cornices, fireplaces and the wall surfaces themselves are all part of what is protected. Taking any of that off to fit insulation is work affecting the character of the building, and doing it without consent is an offence rather than an oversight.

In practice that has three consequences. Internal wall insulation on a listed house needs an application and a conversation with the conservation officer before it is priced, not after. The build up is likely to be a breathable one, in wood fibre and lime, because that is what the officer will expect and what the wall needs anyway. And the reveals, the shutters and the joinery usually have to be worked around rather than removed, which is where the thin insulation materials earn their keep.

None of that means nothing can be done. Heat loss through the walls of an old town house is a big number and the payback is real. It means the job is planned properly, the paperwork is done first, and the parts of the building that make it worth living in survive the process.

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

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