Wall insulation in Norton
Salt air corrodes the ties that hold a cavity wall together, so here the borescope is looking at the wall before it looks at the gap.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Norton sits a couple of kilometres from open water, and salt air changes what a borescope is looking for. In a coastal cavity the wall ties are the thing: they corrode, they swell, and swollen ties crack the bed joints and hold water where insulation would then sit. Ties get checked before anything is injected, not afterwards.
People ring about a bungalow that never feels warm on the seaward side, a corner of a bedroom with black mould coming back every winter, or a cavity that was filled years ago and now shows damp on the inside face.
The visit is a wall survey rather than a sales call. Thickness at the reveal, the state of the pointing, what the ties look like through the borescope and whether the cavity is dry. The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote, and a wall that should be left alone gets said so in writing.
The work
What salt air does inside a cavity wall
The ties, first. Older cavity walls were tied with mild steel. Near the coast those ties rust, and rust takes up more room than steel, so the tie lifts the bed joint above it. The tell from outside is horizontal cracking at regular courses. Inside the cavity a rusted tie also carries mortar and debris, and a bridged tie is a path for water. The borescope shows both, and it decides whether a fill is sensible at all.
Cavity fill where the wall is sound. A clear, dry cavity of decent width takes bonded bead or blown mineral wool, drilled in a pattern from outside and made good in matched mortar. Bead sheds water better than a wool does, which matters more here than inland. We do not offer a guarantee scheme of our own; a cavity fill is normally installed under an independent one, so ask whoever drills the wall which scheme covers it.
Failed and slumped fills. A fill that has dropped leaves the top of the wall empty and a packed, wet mass at the bottom. That is worse than nothing, because it bridges. It comes out through the lowest course, the cavity is cleaned and the ties are looked at while the wall is open.
Solid walls. Plenty of the older houses here are nine inch brick or stone with nothing to fill. Internal wall insulation means insulated plasterboard on a continuous adhesive bed, or PIR such as Celotex or Kingspan on battens or a stud, taped and skimmed to BS 8000-8. External wall insulation means boards and a fresh render over a render carrier, which gives the better U value and leaves your rooms alone.
The outer leaf comes first. Salt keeps a wall damp between showers, so open joints, blown render and cracked pebbledash let penetrating damp through long before any insulation is in the argument. Repointing or patching the exposed elevation often does more for a cold room than the insulation would, and it costs less.
Junctions. Reveals, the threshold, the floor junction, the eaves and any party wall are where the heat leaves and where condensation shows up. Reveals take a thin board or aerogel, joist ends built into a solid wall keep air around them, and every cold bridge left in place is a future patch of mould.
Air and moisture. Insulation raises the inside surface above the dew point, which is what actually stops condensation, but only if the moisture can still leave. Trickle vents, a working extract fan in the kitchen and bathroom and clear air bricks go in with the work. Approved Document F sets the ventilation and BS 5250 covers interstitial moisture in the fabric. Draughtproofing first, because the payback is immediate.
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.
Isle of Wight Council is the planning authority and building control. Lining a wall inside is not development, which the guidance on insulation confirms, and cladding or rendering the outside is covered by what the rules say about cladding a wall. No conservation area covers the housing here, though there are listed entries in the parish and those need consent for internal work as well. regulation 23 is the one that catches people: renovate more than half of a wall and the whole of it is expected to reach the Part L standard in Approved Document 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. A bungalow with clear access all round, a semi with a narrow side path and a house with a conservatory across the back elevation are three different jobs. 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. Cracking along the bed joints on a seaward elevation is worth reporting the same week, because that is usually the ties rather than the insulation. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Rusting wall ties, and why they decide the fill
A cavity wall is two leaves held together by ties. Near the sea, salt gets into the outer leaf and finds the ties, and mild steel ties corrode. The rust occupies several times the volume of the metal it came from, so each tie slowly jacks the joint it sits in. Fine horizontal cracks at every fifth or sixth course, all along one elevation, is what that looks like from the garden.
It matters for insulation for two reasons. A wall with failing ties is a structural job before it is a thermal one, and filling the cavity makes replacing the ties messier and dearer. And a corroded tie is usually a dirty tie, loaded with mortar, which is exactly the bridge that lets water cross a filled cavity to the inner leaf.
So the borescope here is not only measuring the gap. It is looking at what is holding the wall together. Where the ties are sound, a bead fill on a sheltered elevation is straightforward. Where they are not, the honest sequence is ties, then pointing, then insulation, and we will put it in that order on the quote.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Norton, Norton Green, Halletts Shute and the roads towards Yarmouth, broadly PO41, under Isle of Wight 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
Norton questions we get asked
How do I know if my wall ties are going?
Look along the elevation in a low sun for fine horizontal cracks repeating at regular courses, and for a window frame that has been pushed. Inside the cavity the borescope shows the tie and what is sitting on it.
Should we fill the cavity if the ties need replacing?
No. Do the ties first. Filling around failing ties means paying twice, because the fill has to come out again to get at them.
Is bead better than mineral wool near the coast?
Usually, yes. Bonded bead sheds water rather than holding it, which matters on an elevation that takes salt-laden rain. It is still no answer on a wall that is already wet.
Our bungalow is cold on one side only. Is that the wall?
Often it is the wall plus the eaves junction above it, and on a bungalow that junction is a large share of the heat loss. We look at both before pricing either.
Will insulating the wall raise our EPC?
It generally will, but that is not the point of doing it. A lining that leaves a thermal bridge at the reveals can improve a rating and still leave the cold corner you rang about.
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Have the ties checked before the cavity is filled
Thomas comes out, looks in the cavity, reports what the ties are doing and prices the work in writing. The visit and the quote are free.