Wall insulation in Oakdale

Reading a thirties wall first. Pebbledash hides every clue you would normally read from the brick bond, so Thomas drills one small hole in a mortar joint and puts a borescope through it. That shows whether the cavity is narrow, choked with mortar droppings from the build, or already filled. A moisture meter on the plaster inside, and a tap along the dash for hollow panels, show whether the outer leaf still keeps the rain out.

When a fill is the right answer. A clean, dry Oakdale cavity behind sound pebbledash can take bonded bead or mineral wool, blown in through a drilled pattern that is made good to match. That job belongs to a registered cavity wall installer, and the CIGA paperwork they hand over is what a buyer's solicitor later asks for. Our part comes first: hollow dash patched, a cracked bay sill sealed, the shared gutter across the pair unblocked and the air bricks under the floor cleared, because a fill behind a wet wall carries the wet inside.

Lining the rooms that stay cold. The bay bedroom and the gable room on the end of a pair are the usual ones. Where the cavity is too narrow or too dirty to fill, that internal wall insulation goes on from inside. Insulated plasterboard backed with PIR, Kingspan or Celotex, costs only a few centimetres. Where the wall needs to dry, a stud or batten frame packed with mineral wool behind a vapour check does better. Bay reveals are fiddly and they are where a cold bridge turns into black mould, so they get a thin board of their own, and the joist ends at the floor junction are sealed. Allow a few days a room, skim included.

Cladding a house that needs new dash anyway. When Oakdale pebbledash has blown so badly it must come off, external wall insulation is worth pricing alongside it. EWI boards fixed to the brick, a render carrier with mesh bedded in, and a thin coat finish that can be dashed again. It deals with the thermal bridge at every floor and corner. On a semi, cladding only your half leaves a step at the party wall line, so talk to next door first. The eaves and sills need extending, and it goes up on a scaffold.

A fill that has gone wrong. Some Oakdale cavities were filled decades ago, when the only question asked was whether a gap existed. Where that old fill has slumped, the borescope finds a cold, empty band under the eaves. Where fibre has bridged the cavity and got wet, you see penetrating damp inside on the weather wall. Either way the failed material is extracted by a specialist before anything else, and the reason it got wet is fixed. We say so plainly rather than lining over it.

Air, once the draughts have gone. A thirties Oakdale house was built leaky, with open fireplaces and air bricks doing the drying. Many of those fireplaces are blocked up now, and the air bricks sit under a raised path or patio. Insulating the walls removes more of that air movement, so ventilation gets looked at: trickle vents where the windows lack them, the kitchen and bathroom extract, and any air brick that has been buried. The first payback you notice is a bay room that stays warm into the evening, and the EPC improves with it.

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 with every wall reachable from the ground, a two storey semi with a gable against next door's drive, and a first floor flat in a small block each start from a different set-up. 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.

We work on walls across Oakdale and Stanley Green, from Wimborne Road and Darby's Lane to the Canford Heath side, in BH15, from our base in Boscombe, about six miles east.

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. Before you book a visit in Oakdale, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Oakdale need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.