Wall insulation in Southbourne

Finding the wall behind the render. A big Edwardian house back from the Overcliff and a thirties bungalow towards Tuckton can look alike under render. One small hole drilled in a mortar joint and a borescope settle it: solid brick, or a cavity, and if so how wide, whether rubble sits in it, and whether somebody filled it years ago. A moisture meter on the inside face and the compass bearing of each wall finish the picture.

The Edwardian houses and the flats inside them. Most of the older houses in Southbourne have a nine inch solid wall, so there is nothing to fill: the choice is internal wall insulation or an external system. Where a house has been split into flats, lining one flat is a job for that owner, but the outside face belongs to the freeholder. Inside, the coldest rooms come first, lined with wood fibre or mineral wool between battens or a stud, or insulated plasterboard with a PIR backing such as Celotex or Kingspan where the wall is dry. Deep bay reveals, the floor junction and joist ends are detailed so no cold bridge is left for condensation. A room is usually a few days, skim included.

Towards Tuckton and Wick. The inter-war houses and bungalows on the sheltered side were mostly built with a cavity, often a narrow one. If it is clear, dry and wide enough, bonded bead or mineral wool is blown in through a pattern of drilled holes, made good afterwards in matching mortar. A registered cavity wall installer does that and hands you CIGA paperwork. We say honestly whether the wall suits it, and look after the ventilation, the reveals and any making good inside.

A cliff-top wall filled years ago. Southbourne fill put in decades ago can slump and leave a cold band at the top of the wall. On a gable that takes the weather straight off Poole Bay, it can also carry rain across the cavity, and then penetrating damp and black mould turn up inside. The borescope shows which it is. Failed fill has to come out before anything new goes in, which is a specialist extraction job, and we will tell you straight.

External wall insulation. EWI suits a plain Southbourne wall, a rendered bungalow or a block being re-rendered anyway: board fixed to the outside, a render carrier and a thin coat finish. It wraps the building and stops the cold bridges at floors and corners. On the seaward side the fixings and beads want to be stainless.

Air in a divided house. An Edwardian Southbourne house cut into flats often ended up with bathrooms and kitchens in rooms that were never meant for them, and lining the walls removes the draughts that kept those rooms dry. Trickle vents, an extract fan that actually vents outside and any air brick that was blocked up all get checked, which keeps interstitial condensation out of the build-up. The payback you feel first is the room staying warm, and the EPC moves with it.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. 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.

Lining a wall inside needs no planning application, as Planning Portal guidance on insulation confirms, but it is building control work under regulation 23 and has to meet Approved Document L. Cladding the outside can need planning, and part of Southbourne Grove is a conservation area, so a change to the look of a building there wants checking; the council keeps the list.

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. If it is the sea-facing wall and it gets worse after a stormy week, write down the dates and photograph the patch, because that pattern points at the cavity rather than the room. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Southbourne runs up to a cliff top that faces straight out over the bay, and the wind-driven rain comes off the water with nothing to stop it. How much rain a wall takes is judged under BS 8104, and a wall facing the sea on the cliff top sits at the wet end of that scale.

Up there a fill can do harm. Rain soaking the outer brick of a seaward wall is meant to run down inside the cavity and out at the bottom; fill that gap with the wrong material and it can bridge the wet straight to your plaster, which is the damp and mould this page keeps returning to.

So in Southbourne the question is not only whether you have a cavity, it is which way it faces. A sheltered back wall inland from the Overcliff may be fine for a fill. The seaward wall of a cliff-top house or block needs the installer to assess its exposure properly, the brickwork and pointing to be sound first, and a material rated for that exposure, or it is better lined inside instead. Ask any installer how they assessed your wall's exposure, and if the answer is vague, get another view. We will tell you at the visit which of your walls we would fill and which we would not.

Nearby places we also cover for wall insulation, with straight-line distances from Southbourne, and the other trades we offer in Southbourne itself.

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