Wall insulation in Sixpenny Handley
On an exposed chalk site the wall is not always the weak point, so the survey settles what is worth doing before anything is quoted.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Not every cold room is a wall problem, and on the open chalk up here a fair number are not. A house standing on its own on high ground loses heat to draughts and to the roof before it loses it through the middle of a wall, so the honest first question is whether the wall is the thing worth spending on at all.
People ring about a room that will not hold heat, mould in a corner of a bedroom, or a cavity somebody once offered to fill and nobody ever explained.
The visit is a survey rather than a pitch. Where the wall is genuinely the weak point we say so and price it; where the draughts, the loft or a wet outer leaf come first, we say that instead and put them in the right order on the quote. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
The work
The order things should be done in
Draughts first, because nothing else is as cheap. On an exposed site the air moving through a house does more than the fabric does. Gaps at floor edges, unsealed loft hatches, letterboxes, old sash boxes, service holes behind kitchen units. Sealing those costs very little and the payback is immediate. It also has to be done with the ventilation, not instead of it, or the moisture has nowhere to go.
Then whatever is letting water in. Open joints, cracked or blown render, a gutter overflowing down one elevation. A wall carrying penetrating damp conducts heat far better than a dry one and no insulation cures that. Repairing the outer leaf is often the cheapest thermal improvement on the house, and it is the one nobody sells you.
Then the cavity, if there is one. One hole in a mortar joint and a borescope gives the width, whether it is clear and dry, whether the wall ties are bridged and whether a failed or slumped fill is in there already. A sound cavity takes bonded bead or blown mineral wool, drilled from outside and made good in matched mortar. We do not offer a guarantee scheme of our own; a cavity fill is normally installed under an independent one, so ask whoever drills your wall which scheme covers it.
Solid walls. Nine inch brick, flint and rubble 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 but changes the look of the building from every direction, and up here there is nothing to hide behind.
The junctions, whichever route you take. Reveals take a thin board or aerogel. The threshold and the floor junction get returned rather than stopped short. Joist ends built into a solid wall keep air around them. A lining that stops dead at a party wall leaves a cold strip that grows mould. Every thermal bridge you leave takes back a share of the heat loss you paid to stop.
Ventilation, which is not optional. Insulating raises the inside surface above the dew point, which is what actually stops condensation, but the moisture still has to leave the house. Trickle vents, a working extract fan in the kitchen and bathroom, air bricks kept clear. Approved Document F sets the ventilation and BS 5250 covers the interstitial moisture a sealed wall can trap.
What we would talk you out of. Filling a wet cavity. Sealing a solid wall that is taking water. Lining one room and leaving the ventilation as it was. And spending on a wall while the loft is thin, because on a house like these the roof is usually still the better buy.
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.
Dorset Council is the planning authority and building control. Lining a wall inside is not development, which the guidance on insulation confirms, while cladding or rendering the outside is covered by what the rules say about cladding a wall. There is no conservation area over the village itself, but the parish sits inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape, where anything visible gets design scrutiny, and a handful of buildings are listed, on which internal lining needs listed building consent as well. regulation 23 brings a whole wall up to the Part L standard once more than half of it is renovated.
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 farmhouse on its own at the end of a track, a pair of cottages on the street and a post-war house on the edge of the village 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. We are about seventeen miles away, so a wall that has gone damp here gets photographed and reported back within a couple of days. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Sometimes the wall is not the answer
The downland here is open, the ground is high and there is very little shelter, so wind does more to these houses than it does to a house in a village bottom. Wind drives air through every gap in a building, and air moving through a house carries heat out with it far faster than heat conducts through nine inches of masonry. That is why a draughty, well insulated house can still feel cold and an ordinary house that has been properly sealed can feel warm.
So the honest order on a lot of these properties is draughtproofing, then the loft, then the wall. It is not the order that sells the biggest job, and it is the order we will put on the quote. Where the wall is genuinely the weak point, an end wall taking the weather or a solid wall with a cold, wet inside face, we will say that too and price it properly.
The one thing that is never optional is ventilation. Seal a house up on an exposed site without giving the moisture a way out and you swap a cold house for a damp one, and damp costs more to put right than heat does.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Sixpenny Handley, Woodcutts, Deanland and the lanes towards Cranborne, broadly SP5, under Dorset 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
Sixpenny Handley questions we get asked
How do I know whether to spend on the walls or the roof?
By what the house is actually losing and what it costs to stop. On most detached houses out here the loft and the draughts come first. We will tell you if that is your case rather than quote you for the wall anyway.
Is draughtproofing something you do as well?
It goes on the same quote as its own line, because it is usually the cheapest part and the quickest to show. It has to be done alongside proper ventilation rather than instead of it.
Will filling the cavity make the house feel less draughty?
A little, because a filled cavity slows air moving inside the wall, but it is not a draughtproofing measure. If the draught comes under a door or round a hatch, the cavity will not touch it.
The house is exposed on all four sides. Does that change the fill?
It can. On a badly exposed elevation a full fill can carry driven rain across, so bonded bead or leaving that one wall clear may be the better answer. It is a per elevation decision.
Does insulating a wall improve the EPC much?
Usually yes, but an EPC is a model rather than a measurement. It will not notice a cold bridge at every reveal, and your bedroom corner will.
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Find out whether the wall is worth doing first
Thomas comes out, works out where the heat is actually going and prices the jobs in the order they should be done. The visit and the quote are free.