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.
Ringwood is a town of two building ages, and a lot of individual houses are both. Nearly a fifth of the stock is pre 1919 solid wall with no cavity in it at all, and a similar share 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 calls 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.
The work
One house, two kinds of wall
Telling them apart. 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 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 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, gets bagged and leaves with us, and the wall dries before anything is refilled.
Solid walls, and internal lining. The pre 1919 half of 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 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. 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
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.
New Forest District Council is the planning authority. Internal lining needs no permission anywhere, which the Planning Portal page on insulation confirms, and external wall insulation is the one that can need an application, covered by the Planning Portal guidance on external walls. There are 61 listed entries in the town, most of them in and around the older central streets, and on any of those internal work needs consent as well as external, so check the address before ordering anything. Building control applies through regulation 23, which sets the Part L target in Approved Document L, and the work is zero rated for VAT.
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 Victorian brick house on a town centre street, a 1990s detached on the edge and a flat over a shop 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. Ringwood is ten miles from us and we are in the town most weeks. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Half your house may take a fill and half may not
Ringwood grew in two big pushes with a long quiet stretch between them. Nearly nineteen per cent of the housing here predates 1919 and is solid wall, and a bit under thirty per cent went up from the 1980s onwards with a cavity. In between sit 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. We have surveyed houses where the front and one flank are solid Victorian brick and the whole of the back is 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 local firm you can check
We cover Ringwood, Poulner, Hightown, Hangersley and the BH24 addresses around them, with New Forest District Council for planning and building control. 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
Ringwood questions we get asked
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. We fill the cavity built parts where the camera says they are sound, and treat the solid parts with a lining. 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.
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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.