Wall insulation in Ringwood
Every elevation measured and checked before anything is quoted, because a Ringwood house is often solid brick at the front and cavity at the back, across BH24.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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A Ringwood house may have a solid wall, a cavity or both, and a borescope on each part shows what can be filled and what has to be lined. The town has housing of every age, and some individual houses are more than one. Nearly a fifth of the stock is pre 1919 solid wall with no cavity in it at all, a third is post-war, and over a quarter went up since the 1980s with a proper cavity. Put an extension on the back of an old house and you have one address that needs two different answers.
That is why we survey wall by wall rather than house by house. The usual problems are a cold front room in an old brick house on one of the town centre streets, damp on an inside wall after a spell of driven rain, or somebody who has been told the whole house can be filled and wants a second opinion.
We measure the wall thickness at each elevation, borescope anything that might be a cavity, and give you a free written itemised quote that treats the old part and the new part separately. Insulation in Ringwood covers the loft too.
The work
One house, two kinds of wall
Telling them apart takes a tape. A nine inch solid wall measures around 230mm plus plaster at a reveal and shows headers in the brickwork. A brick and block cavity wall measures 280mm or more and shows stretchers all along. Where there is doubt we drill one hole and borescope it, which also shows whether anything is already in the cavity and whether the outer leaf is wet with penetrating damp.
Cavity fill on the newer half. Clear and dry, a Ringwood cavity takes bonded polystyrene bead or blown mineral wool, drilled on a pattern and injected under control, with the eaves and every reveal closed off first. Bead flows better into a narrow or partly bridged cavity and does not slump. A fill is normally covered by an independent scheme run separately from the installer, so ask what paperwork you get.
Failed and slumped fill. Where an older Ringwood cavity was filled decades ago the camera often shows an empty band at the top and a compacted mass below, or wet fibre on the weather side. That comes out with a vacuum through a drilled pattern, is bagged and taken off site, and the wall dries before anything is refilled.
Solid walls, and internal lining. The pre 1919 houses in the town cannot be filled. Internal wall insulation, IWI, means insulated plasterboard fixed back to the masonry, or a stud and batten frame with mineral wool or PIR board such as Celotex or Kingspan between it. On old brick we favour a breathable build up rather than a foil faced board sealed onto the wall, so it can still dry inwards. Where a reveal or a threshold has no room to give, an aerogel backed board gets a useful U value into 20 or 30mm.
External wall insulation. Boards, a render carrier and a thin coat finish outside. EWI takes the most heat loss out of an old solid Ringwood wall of anything available and loses no room, but it changes the appearance, so on a town centre frontage it is a planning conversation before it is a thermal one. On a rear elevation nobody can see it is often the sensible answer.
Where the old meets the new. On a Ringwood house, the junction between a solid original wall and a cavity built extension is a thermal bridge in its own right, and it is where mould turns up once one half is insulated and the other is not. We carry the lining round the corner rather than stopping at the change of construction.
Junctions and vapour. Reveals returned, the floor junction carried down, joist ends thought about before anything is sealed, and the vapour control layer taped continuously so the dew point cannot end up inside the build up as interstitial condensation.
Ventilation. Extract in the kitchen and bathroom, trickle vents in the windows and air bricks kept clear. Approved Document F sets what the ventilation has to do, and it matters more the moment airtightness improves.
How it runs
Cavity fill or lining: how a wall job runs
Thomas comes out, works out which walls you have, and prices it himself. On newer houses he drills a small hole and looks into the cavity with a borescope to see whether it is empty, part filled or bridged with rubble.
On the older solid brick houses in the centre there is no cavity, so the choice is internal lining or external insulation. The quote itemises the survey and borescope check, the system and its thickness, making good at windows and doors, any ventilation work and disposal.
Any fill should come from a registered installer with a CIGA certificate. Rooms being lined are emptied and sheeted, the house is cleaned daily, and waste leaves with us. If we open a wall and find damp or a failed lintel, we show you a photograph of what we found and add a priced line before going further.
New Forest District Council is the authority. Internal lining needs no permission, as the Planning Portal page on insulation says. External insulation can need an application, especially inside the Ringwood Conservation Area, and the guidance on external walls explains why. On a listed building, internal work needs consent too. Regulation 23 sets the Approved Document L standard for the finished wall.
Cost
Which wall you have decides the price
No rate per square metre, because every window, door and junction takes time that open wall does not. The wall. If the borescope shows an empty, dry cavity, as it often is on the post-war semis, filling it is a short job. A solid wall on a Victorian house in the centre cannot be filled at all and must be lined inside or clad outside, which is a much bigger job.
Access. Cavity fill is drilled from outside, so a bungalow works off a ladder or tower while a three storey block needs a scaffold, under the work at height rules. Internal lining is done room by room, so the disruption is indoors.
Junctions. Window and door reveals, the floor junction, the eaves and party walls are where heat escapes and condensation forms. Getting them right is most of the labour, and a cheap quote leaves them out.
Flats. In a block, the walls are shared structure, so the freeholder and the other owners are part of the decision.
Ask any quote whether the wall was checked with a borescope, what system and thickness is proposed, how the reveals and floor junction will be detailed, and who makes good afterwards.
If damp has appeared
Damp or mould appearing after insulation
If damp patches or black mould appear on an outside wall after cavity fill or internal lining, water is probably tracking across the cavity or warm air is hitting a cold spot at a junction. Keep the room aired and wipe the mould, but do not paint over it.
Give us a ring rather than using the form. Booked jobs run Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm; if we are unable to answer, we return the call when we can. The first visit works out which of the two it is before anything comes out, because the fix is different for each.
Worth knowing
Half your house may take a fill and half may not
Ringwood has housing from every period rather than one. Nearly nineteen per cent of it predates 1919 and is solid wall, about a third is post-war, and a bit under thirty per cent went up from the 1980s onwards with a cavity. Add extensions, rear additions and infill, and the result is that plenty of houses in the town are genuinely two buildings joined together.
That is a problem for the way cavity insulation is usually sold. A quotation written from the front elevation, or from the year the house appears in a database, gets half a Ringwood address wrong. A house here can have a front and one flank in solid Victorian brick and the whole of the back in 1990s brick and block. The only honest quote treats those as two jobs.
It also changes the order. If the extension performs reasonably and the old front room is the cold one, filling the extension cavity is the cheap job that changes nothing you can feel and has a poor payback. The heat loss is in the solid wall, usually the one facing south west, which takes the driven rain and stays cold longest. Ask any firm quoting which elevations they measured and what each is built of.
Who you are dealing with
A company you can check before we drill
Ringwood is 8 miles from us in Boscombe. We cover the town, Poulner, Hightown, Hangersley and the BH24 addresses around them. The town's planning and building control sit with New Forest District Council. The company number, 15471719, belongs to Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales. Before you book a visit in Ringwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
It is Thomas Hannen's firm, and Thomas does the survey and sets the price in person. A verified Checkatrade customer scored the work 10 out of 10. Both the site visit and the itemised quote on paper are free.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ringwood?
Most repairs in Ringwood 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.
| Question | In Ringwood |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Ringwood. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Ringwood Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Ringwood. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Ringwood. |
Questions
Questions about wall insulation in Ringwood
How do I know if my Ringwood house has a cavity?
Measure the wall at a window reveal. Around 230mm plus plaster is solid; 280mm or more usually means a cavity. Headers showing in the brick bond point to solid too, and a borescope removes the doubt.
Can part of a house be filled and part left?
Yes, and here it is common. The cavity built parts are filled where the camera says they are sound, and the solid parts are lined. Two specifications on one address is normal in this town.
Which wall should we do first?
Whichever one is solid, faces south west and belongs to a room you actually sit in. That is where the cold is felt and where the driven rain keeps the masonry cool longest.
Is external insulation possible on an old town house?
On a rear elevation out of public view, often. On a frontage in the older streets it is much harder, and on a listed building it needs consent. Worth asking the council before you commit.
Do you insulate flats above shops?
Yes, where the freeholder or managing agent instructs it. Those walls are usually solid brick and the route is an internal lining on the outside facing elevations, which normally lifts an EPC band as well.
Nearby, and next door
Wall insulation near Ringwood
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Wall insulation guides
Damp at the bottom of a wall: what it is PIR board vs mineral wool: which insulation? Hollow-sounding wall: blown plaster or dot and dabBuilders in Ringwood: all our building work Everything we do in Ringwood Wall insulation, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Have every elevation checked, not just the front
Thomas comes out, measures each wall, opens one hole where it matters and prices the old part and the new part separately. The visit and the quote are both free.