Wall insulation in Stourpaine

The survey that has to come first. A borescope through a single hole in a mortar joint tells us whether there is a cavity, how wide it is, whether it is clean, dry and clear, and whether anything has already gone into it. Everything after that follows from what the camera shows, and no quote should be written without it.

Cavity fill. Where a Stourpaine cavity is sound the wall is drilled on a pattern, the material blown in and the holes made good. Bonded bead is the safer choice on an older brick and block wall or a narrow gap, because it flows and it stays put. Blown mineral wool is fine in a clean, wide, sheltered cavity. Most houses are one day, all from outside, and it is the shortest payback of anything on this page. Part L sets what the finished wall is expected to reach.

Walls that should stay empty. If the camera finds a wet Stourpaine cavity, mortar bridging the gap, rubble in the bottom or no cavity trays over the windows, filling it is the wrong move. The fill carries water across to the inner leaf and you buy a damp problem in exchange for a small saving on heat loss.

Solid walls, which is most of the older part of Stourpaine. A nine inch brick wall or a flint and rubble wall has nothing to fill and has to be insulated on one face or the other. It also has to be dry first, so gutters, ground levels and open joints get sorted before any insulation goes anywhere near it.

Internal wall insulation. Either insulated plasterboard on dabs where a Stourpaine wall is flat and modern, or boards on a treated batten and stud frame where it is not. PIR gives the most thermal performance per millimetre; wood fibre finished in lime gives less but lets an old wall keep drying. Joints taped, the vapour control layer continuous, the electrics brought forward.

External wall insulation. Insulation fixed to the outside, mesh and basecoat over it, then a silicone topcoat or a render carrier and a finish chosen to sit right on the building. It deals with the cold bridge at the joist ends and the eaves in a way an internal lining cannot, which is why it is worth asking about even where the answer turns out to be no.

The awkward edges. On a Stourpaine house, reveals, thresholds, the floor junction and any party wall are where the labour goes and where a cheap quote goes quiet. A reveal too narrow for a normal board takes a thin aerogel laminate instead. Get those wrong and the condensation simply moves to the coldest strip you left behind.

Air, and old fill. A tighter Stourpaine house needs trickle vents, working extract fans and air bricks that are not blocked, to the rates in Approved Document F. Where a previous fill has slumped, or the cavity is wet, it comes out and the wall dries before anyone decides on refilling.

Thomas comes out and prices it himself, and the first question is what the walls are made of. An older solid wall of flint, brick or cob cannot take cavity fill, and a later cavity wall may already be filled. A borescope through one small drilled hole settles it.

The written quote for a Stourpaine house then sets out that survey, the insulation system and how thick it is, making good at windows and doors, any extra ventilation, and the clear-up, each on its own line. Any cavity fill needs a registered installer and a CIGA certificate.

Internal lining goes one room at a time. Furniture is moved, floors are covered, and skirtings, sockets and sills come off and go back. Each room is swept and cleared at the end of the day. Opening a wall sometimes shows damp or a failed lintel; if it does, you get a picture and a price and the choice is yours.

Insulation on the inside of a wall is not development, as the Planning Portal's insulation guidance sets out. Cladding or rendering the outside is a different question, especially inside a conservation area, and on a listed building Dorset Council's record of what is designated matters for inside work too. Regulation 23 brings the whole wall up to the current U-value once you renovate more than half of it, so building control has a say even where planning does not.

Ring rather than use the form. Damp or black mould on an outside wall after cavity fill or an internal lining usually means rain is crossing a filled cavity, or warm air is meeting a cold spot at a junction. Do not paint over it.

Note when it first showed and what was done to the wall in the year before, and photograph it after rain. On the first visit we test and look before anything is removed, because the fix depends on the cause. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If you cannot get through, we return your call as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Stourpaine has its own conservation area, and it changes one wall decision in particular. Inside the boundary, appearance is controlled: replacing render like for like is maintenance, but adding 70 or 100mm of insulation and a new finish over the front of a house is a change of material and of proportion, and it needs an application. Dorset Council holds the designation records and will tell you whether your address is in it.

It is not a blanket no. External wall insulation on a rear elevation that nobody sees from the lane is a very different application from one on a flint frontage, and a conservation officer is usually far more interested in what the finish looks like and how deep the reveals end up than in the insulation itself. The killers are usually the eaves overhang, the window reveals going from crisp to clumsy, and a plastic looking topcoat on a village street of lime and flint.

Where the outside is off the table, the work goes inside, and then breathability matters more than it would on a modern house. That points at wood fibre and lime rather than a foil faced board, and at doing the coldest rooms properly instead of every room thinly.

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

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