Wall insulation in Parkstone

Which wall you have. The age of the house is a clue and no more. A nine inch solid brick wall and a narrow early cavity can look the same once the outside is pebbledashed, and a lot of Upper Parkstone is.

So we drill one small hole in a Parkstone mortar joint and look inside with a borescope: is there a gap, how wide, is it clean, is it dry, and is anything in it already. The hole is filled when we are done.

Cavity fill. Where the cavity is clear and dry, cavity wall insulation is blown in from outside through a pattern of holes drilled in the mortar joints, then the holes are made good to match. Bonded polystyrene bead flows into corners and suits a wall that takes the weather; blown mineral wool is the older option and is fine on a sheltered one. Air bricks that feed a suspended floor or a boiler are sleeved so the fill does not block them. It is specialist work and should be done by a registered installer who issues CIGA paperwork for the fill, which is worth keeping with the deeds. Our part is the survey before it and the repairs it depends on, because a cavity should not be filled behind open joints or cracked render.

Fill that has already failed. Older fill in Parkstone can slump, leaving a cold band at the top of the wall, and a wet cavity lets rain cross on the fill instead of running down the back of the outer leaf. The borescope shows which. A failed fill has to be extracted by specialists before anything new goes in, and the cause, often a leaking gutter or failed pointing, fixed first.

Internal wall insulation on solid brick. On the older Parkstone houses IWI is the usual route: insulated plasterboard bonded to the wall, or battens or a stud frame with PIR or mineral wool between, then boarded and skimmed. Celotex and Kingspan type boards give the most for the depth, and an aerogel lining suits a narrow room or a bay. Most heat loss in a lined room is at the edges, so the window reveals, the floor junction, the joist ends and the party wall return are all wrapped. A back bedroom is a two or three day job with plastering behind it.

External wall insulation. EWI is board fixed to the outside with a render carrier and a thin coat finish. On a pebbledashed Parkstone semi it wraps the whole house at once, keeps every room the size it is, and deals with the thermal bridge at the eaves and corners. It also pushes the wall out, so sills, eaves and downpipes are extended with it, and on a pair of semis the line where it stops at your neighbour's wall is detailed so it does not become a cold bridge.

Ventilation and moisture. Insulating a Parkstone wall moves the dew point and takes away the draughts that were drying the house. So trickle vents, an extract fan that genuinely clears the air, and unblocked air bricks are part of the job, and a taped vapour control layer keeps interstitial condensation out of an internal lining. The heat loss falls and the EPC moves, though you feel the payback in the rooms before it shows on paper.

When we would talk you out of it. If the walls are wet from a leak, fix the leak. If the house faces the full weather and the cavity is narrow, filling it can bring the damp in, and we will tell you that rather than book 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 Victorian terrace near Ashley Cross with the front on a shallow garden, a pebbledashed 1930s semi off Ashley Road with a side path, and a flat in a converted house are three different problems, and on the flat the freeholder has a say in anything touching the outer wall. 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 cover the whole of Parkstone, from Heatherlands and Ashley Road down through Ashley Cross to Penn Hill and Whitecliff, across BH12 and BH14, with BCP Council for planning and building control. Our Boscombe base is 4.6 miles away.

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 Parkstone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Parkstone 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.