Wall insulation in Verwood
Bungalow cavities closed off at the eaves before anything is injected, old fill checked with a camera and solid walls lined from inside, across Verwood and BH31.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Nearly every house in Verwood has a cavity wall, and it can be filled once a borescope shows it clear, dry and not already full. The town is bungalow country, with something over four in ten homes single storey, and on a bungalow the detail that decides a cavity fill is the eaves. The top of the wall meets the loft only a few courses above the ceiling, and if the cavity is not closed off up there the bead goes straight into the roof space instead of staying in the wall.
The usual problems in Verwood are a cold room at one end of a bungalow, mould in the corner of a bedroom that shares the outside wall with the eaves, and people who found insulation in the loft that they never asked for.
We check the wall with a borescope and the loft with our own eyes before quoting. Then the work goes into a free written itemised quote, with the survey, the system and its thickness, the reveals and the making good on separate lines. For the loft, see insulation in Verwood.
The work
Low eaves, single storey walls and the fill that stays put
The borescope and the loft come first. One hole in a mortar joint tells us the cavity width, what is in it and whether the outer leaf is wet. Then we put a head into the loft and look at the wall plate, because on a bungalow that is where a fill either stops or does not. Most of Verwood is 1980s brick and block and the cavity is usually a decent width.
Closing the top of the wall. Before a bead goes in, the cavity is closed at the eaves with a sock or a physical closer, the reveals at every window and door are checked and any hole cut for a soil pipe or a flue is sleeved. Skip that on a bungalow and the first you know is a drift of bead across the loft insulation and a wall that is half empty at the top.
Cavity fill. A clear, dry Verwood cavity takes bonded polystyrene bead or blown mineral wool, drilled on a pattern and injected under control, holes made good in matching mortar. Bead flows better into a narrow or partly bridged cavity and does not slump. It roughly halves the U value of the wall and the payback is short. A fill is normally covered by an independent scheme run separately from the installer.
Failed and slumped fill. Where a Verwood bungalow was filled decades ago the camera often shows an empty band under the eaves and a compacted mass at the bottom, which is the worst possible arrangement because the cold band sits right at ceiling level where the warm air collects. Extraction through a drilled pattern with a vacuum, bagged and taken away, then a refill in bead once the wall is dry.
Solid walls. The older properties around the edges of Verwood are nine inch solid brick with nothing to fill. Internal wall insulation, IWI, means insulated plasterboard fixed back or a stud and batten frame with mineral wool or PIR board such as Celotex or Kingspan between it, with an aerogel backed board where a reveal or a threshold has no room to give. External wall insulation, boards and a render carrier under a thin coat finish, is the alternative and on a bungalow it is a cheap wall to reach.
Junctions and draughts. Reveals returned, the floor junction carried down, joist ends thought about and a breathable vapour control layer taped so the dew point cannot sit in the build up as interstitial condensation. The wall to ceiling junction gets particular attention on a single storey house, because that thermal bridge runs the whole way round.
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 achieve once airtightness improves.
How it runs
Insulating the walls of a Verwood house
Almost every house in Verwood was built after the war, most in the eighties and after, so the walls are nearly always cavity walls. The question is what is in the cavity now.
Thomas drills one small hole and uses a borescope to see whether it is empty, already filled, or bridged with dropped mortar, then writes an itemised quote: the survey and borescope check, the system and its thickness, making good around windows and doors, any ventilation works, and disposal. The fill itself goes in through a registered installer, with a CIGA certificate.
Where rooms are being lined, furniture is moved and covered and the dust stays in the room. Waste goes each day. If the cavity turns out wet or the old fill has slumped, you see photos and a price, and nothing more happens until you say.
Planning here is Dorset Council. With no conservation area in Verwood and few listed entries, listed building consent rarely comes up. Lining the inside of a wall needs no planning permission, according to the Planning Portal page on insulation, while external wall insulation can, as the Planning Portal guidance on external walls explains. Building control applies through regulation 23 and the standard in Approved Document L, and insulation in a home is currently zero rated for VAT until 31 March 2027.
Cost
What decides the price of wall insulation here
Metres of wall are the smallest part of the question. What the cavity holds and how the edges are finished decide the price.
The state of the cavity. An empty, dry cavity is filled from outside in a day. One filled years ago where the fill has slumped, or has soaked up rain, may have to be extracted before anything new goes in, and that is a far bigger job. Only a borescope look inside tells you which.
Height. A bungalow wall is drilled from the ground or a low tower. A two storey gable wants a scaffold, as the work at height rules require. Internal lining happens a room at a time.
Edges and openings. Heat and condensation both find the weak points: the reveals round windows and doors, the floor junction, the eaves and any party wall. Getting those right is slow and takes up most of the labour.
Which way the wall faces. A gable open to driven rain is not always suitable for cavity fill, and the survey checks that before anything is recommended.
Put these to any other installer: did you look inside the cavity, which system at what thickness, and how will the reveals and floor junction be finished?
If damp has appeared
Damp or mould on a wall after insulation
Ring rather than use the form. Damp patches or black mould on an outside wall after cavity fill or internal lining usually means water is crossing the cavity, or warm air is reaching a cold surface at a junction.
We inspect before removing anything, because the fix depends on which it is. If it is on the gable facing the weather, tell us, as that often points to driven rain through the fill. Wall insulation work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. A missed call gets returned as soon as we are able.
Worth knowing
On a bungalow the loft tells you if the fill went in properly
A bungalow is the easiest kind of house to fill and the easiest to fill badly, and the reason is the same in both cases: the top of the wall is only a few brick courses above head height inside the roof space.
On a two storey house the cavity has to be closed at the eaves as well, but it is a long way from anything anybody looks at. On a single storey house it is directly above the loft hatch.
Bead is small, light and free flowing. That is why it works in an awkward cavity and why it goes wherever it is allowed to. If nobody closes the cavity at the wall plate before injection, some of it spills over the top onto the loft insulation and the top of the wall is left empty. Nobody sees it, and the owner is left with a cold strip at ceiling level around the whole house.
The test is free and takes two minutes. Open the loft hatch and look along the wall plate on each elevation. Loose bead scattered on the loft insulation means the cavity was not closed off, so the heat loss at the top of the wall is much as it was, whatever the EPC says. It is the first thing we look at on a bungalow that has supposedly been done and is still cold at ceiling level.
Who you are dealing with
Who insulates your walls
We insulate walls in Verwood, Three Legged Cross, West Moors and Alderholt, working about ten miles out from our Boscombe base, and the council for all of them is Dorset. Company number 15471719 is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales. Before you book a visit in Verwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Thomas Hannen owns the firm and prices your walls himself after looking at them. On our Checkatrade page there is a 10 out of 10 from a verified customer. The survey visit is free, and so is the itemised quote you get in writing.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Verwood?
Most repairs in Verwood 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 Verwood |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Verwood. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Verwood, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Verwood. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Verwood. |
Questions
Questions about wall insulation in Verwood
There is loose bead in our loft. What does that mean?
Loose bead in the loft means the cavity was not closed off at the wall plate before it was filled. Some of the material has spilled over the top, so the wall is probably empty at the top. It is worth re-checking with a camera.
Why is the top of a bungalow wall the important bit?
Because warm air collects at ceiling level, so a cold strip there loses more than the same strip lower down. It is also where the wall meets the roof, which is a cold bridge in its own right.
Does a single storey wall cost less to get at?
The access is, since a tower reaches the whole wall and no scaffold is needed. The wall area per room is larger though, so it is not automatically a smaller job, and the draughts still need doing.
Can external wall insulation go on a bungalow?
It is one of the better candidates, because everything is reachable and there is no room lost inside. It changes the appearance, so it is a planning check first and the eaves detail has to be right.
Our bungalow was filled in the 1980s. Is it still working?
Sometimes. Loose fibre of that age often settles, leaving an empty band under the eaves. One hole and a borescope will tell you whether yours has, and whether it is worth extracting.
Nearby, and next door
Wall insulation near Verwood
Nearby places we also cover for wall insulation, with straight-line distances from Verwood, and the other trades we offer in Verwood itself.
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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 dabEverything we do in Verwood Wall insulation, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Check the eaves before the wall gets filled
Thomas comes out, looks in the wall and in the loft, and prices the job so the bead stays where it is meant to. The visit and the written quote are both free.