To clarify the following prices it is recommended that you read the article in the BLUE BOX below

Cost to Fit Loft Ventilation

Prices

These prices are based on a tradesman’s rate of £150 per day and a labourer if required at £100 per day. They include the cost of buying and collecting any materials, dumping any waste if necessary and any incidental materials they will need.

(The minimum price will usually be for a half day)


Job 1
Fit an air brick into each gable. This will take one man a morning from a ladder but he may charge for the day for saving you the price of scaffolding. (Gables are quite high).

Labour ………£150, materials …….£15, …………….£165.00


Job 2
Fit 6 / 7 low roof vents. This will take 1 man an easy day.

Labour ………£150, materials ……….£180, …………..£330.00


Job 3
Fit soffit and ridge vents to a semi detached house. This will take two men a day.

Labour ………..£250, materials ………..£250.00, ………….£500.00

100 years ago it wasn’t necessary, no one had central heating so lofts didn’t get full of warm water vapour and they weren’t felted, so there was loads of natural ventilation under the slates or tiles.

Nowadays, in some houses (and to be honest it’s not that many), if there’s not much insulation in the loft and felt under the tiles and whoever built it didn’t allow for air to get in at the eaves, condensation can occur.

It also happens if some pillock has shoved the insulation right into the eaves and covered the gaps the builder left there. So have a look at that first.

If it’s not the insulation, you need to fit roof vents. Sometimes, in a “normal” house, three vents on each side of the roof (and one on the hip slope) as low down as possible will do the trick. They can be bought off the shelf and fitted in a morning. Some are even reasonable unobtrusive.

A better job is to fit soffit vents, providing you have soffits of course. Soffits are the horizontal surfaces that fill the gap between the fascia board and the house wall. Fascia boards are what your guttering is fixed to. That’s it, I’m not explaining anything else!

To really do a proper job, if you fit soffit vents or low roof vents, you should allow the air which they let in, to get out again once it’s warmed up. This is done by fitting ridge vents or more roof vents, very near the top.

Ridge vents replace two or three existing ridge copings and hardly show. So, if you don’t want dirty great vents all over your roof get soffit and ridge vents fitted.

If you happen to live in a house with two gable ends, you needn’t trouble the roof at all. A large air brick can be fitted into each gable…….job done.

The other day I was shown some plastic, sprung loaded devices that are pushed between the felt overlaps from inside the loft when a national loft insulation company need to insulate a loft as part of the job. They cost about £8 apiece and I suppose an average loft might need about 16 of them, (though I doubt if that was how many they fitted). So for £130 you can do it yourself!

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