Wall insulation in Winfrith Newburgh

The borescope goes in before anything else. One small hole in a mortar joint, a camera in, and the argument is over. It shows whether there is a cavity, how wide it is, whether the leaves are bridged with mortar droppings and whether the inside face is wet. Nobody should write a quote for wall insulation without it.

Cavity fill, and the two materials. Bonded polystyrene bead is blown in with an adhesive, flows into a narrow or partly obstructed cavity and does not slump afterwards, which is why it suits older brick and block walls in Winfrith Newburgh. Blown mineral wool is fine in a clean, wide, sheltered cavity, but it holds water if driven rain crosses the gap, so not on an exposed south west elevation.

When we say leave it empty. A cavity under about 50mm, one full of rubble, one already wet, or a wall with no cavity trays over the openings. Bridging a wet cavity carries water to the inside face, and that is the commonest reason damp appears on a wall that was dry before.

Solid walls. A nine inch brick wall, a cob wall or a flint and rubble wall in Winfrith Newburgh has nothing to fill. It gets lined inside or insulated outside. Before either, the wall has to be able to dry: ground level down, gutters running, joints sound.

Internal wall insulation. Insulated plasterboard, a PIR board such as Celotex or Kingspan, fixed to a treated batten or a stud frame with taped joints and a continuous vapour control layer. On an old solid wall we more often use wood fibre finished in lime, so the wall keeps drying inwards. Rooms lose 60 to 100mm and every socket and skirting comes off and goes back. BS 8000-8 covers the drylining.

External wall insulation. Board fixed to the outside, a mesh reinforced basecoat, then a silicone topcoat or a render carrier and a finish to match. It keeps your room sizes and puts the whole wall on the warm side, giving the best U value of the three, but it changes how the house looks, so here it is a planning question first.

Junctions, where the money and the mould both are. Reveals at windows and doors, the floor junction, the eaves, the joist ends built into the wall and any party wall. Those are the cold bridge points, and an insulated wall with a bare reveal just moves the condensation to the reveal. Thin aerogel laminate gets insulation into a narrow reveal without losing the window.

Ventilation and failed fill. A tighter wall needs somewhere for moisture to go: trickle vents, a real extract fan in the kitchen and bathroom, air bricks kept clear rather than covered, to the rates in Approved Document F. And where old fill has slumped and left the top metre empty, it has to come out and the wall dry before refilling is worth discussing.

Thomas comes out and finds out which wall you have. He drills one small hole and looks in with a borescope to see if there is a cavity, if it is clear and dry, and if old fill is already there. His quote then separates that check, the insulation and its thickness, the work at window and door reveals, any vents, and clearing up. If a fill is right, a registered installer puts it in under a CIGA certificate.

A south west wall that takes driven rain is a poor choice for cavity fill, because water can track across. A solid wall of stone, flint or cob is lined inside with a breathable system, room by room, so one room at a time is out of use. Furniture is moved, floors sheeted and waste taken away. Damp found when we open up is photographed and priced for you, and we wait for your decision.

Insulating inside a wall is not development, which the Planning Portal's guidance on insulation confirms. External wall insulation changes the appearance, and the Winfrith Newburgh Conservation Area covers the village, so ask Dorset Council first; they also hold the record of what is designated if your house is listed. Building control do engage, because regulation 23 brings a wall up to current standard once more than half of it is renovated.

Call us; the form is slower. Damp or black mould on an outside wall after cavity fill or lining usually means rain is tracking across the cavity or warm air is meeting a cold spot at a junction.

Tell us if the damp came after the insulation or was always there, as that changes where we look. Keep the room aired and do not paint over it. On the first visit we check with a borescope and a moisture meter before anything is taken out. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. When it is pressing, phone, and a missed call is returned as soon as we are able.

Call now: 07435 839745

The Win runs through Winfrith Newburgh and the low ground either side sits in the higher flood zones, which you can check for any address on the government's flood risk service. For walls that matters in one specific way, and it is not about flooding.

Ground that stays wet keeps the base of a wall wet. In the older cottages the outside ground level has crept up, the floor inside sits low, and there is either no damp course or a slate one that has been bridged. Line a wall like that with a vapour tight board and you seal the moisture in. The wall stops drying inwards, the joist ends sit wet, and mould appears along the skirting within a winter. BS 5250 is the code of practice for it, and interstitial condensation behind a lining is far harder to see than the surface kind.

So on the wet side of Winfrith Newburgh the dull work comes first: ground away from the wall, gullies clear, a reading that has stopped moving. Then a breathable lining. Where the base of a wall will not dry at all, the honest answer is to leave it and put the money into the loft and the draughts, which will do more for the heat loss anyway.

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

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