Weir & Weatherall, Home Performance · Osmington Vale · teaching since 2009
Heat is a fluid. It leaves through holes, not through walls — and a house sealed on purpose and ventilated on purpose beats a house that is merely thick.
The method behind the vow
Why we teach before we quote
June spent nine years teaching building science at the further-education college before she picked up a blower door for wages, and the classroom never entirely left. Every job starts the same way the lessons did: a smoke pencil at the drafty door, an infrared image of your own top plates on the screen, and twenty minutes of physics with your house as the textbook. Households who understand the work buy the right work — which is why the vow above is also the sales method.
Services & rates
The card, taught first
The same card every household gets, written before we teach, repeated on the invoice after. The lesson fee comes off any work booked within the year — the teaching is the selling, and the card is the proof of both.
The house lesson$210, credited
Ninety minutes — blower door, infrared, both readings and the images in your file
Air sealingfrom $940
Top plates, chases, the chimney gap, rim joists — the holes before the thickness
Dense-pack walls$4.55 / sq ft
3.5 lb/ft³ cellulose through 2-inch holes, plugged and patched same day
Attic to R-60$2.35 / sq ft
Dams, baffles, hatch seal — blown and settled over whatever is there
HRV installed$2,900–4,300
Heat-recovery ventilator, ducted, commissioned and balanced with a flow hood
ERV for humid summers$3,150–4,700
The moisture-aware core — for cottages that swing from clammy to crackle
Stale air out
Kitchen, bath and utility extracts draw off the air that carries moisture, odour and yesterday’s cooking — the streams leave through their own ducts.
Fresh air in
Filtered outside air arrives through a second set of ducts to the bedrooms and the living rooms, on a schedule the rooms set.
Heat handed over
The two streams cross in the core and part company — up to ninety percent of the warmth stays behind with you, and the bill notices.
Ventilation without the mystery
The lungs, taught plainly
A tight Vale cottage needs to breathe on purpose the way it used to breathe by accident — except that planned breathing keeps the heat and dries the windows. We size the unit to the rooms rather than the catalogue, balance every grille with a flow hood, and leave the commissioning sheet where the service book can find it.
How it goes
Lesson to balanced house, twelve working days
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 1
The lesson
Blower door and infrared with the household watching, then the readings and images go in the file. Twenty minutes of physics first — the scope makes sense afterwards or it does not get signed.
Day 2
The seal
Every hole the camera named, foamed and caulked, with spillage tests on any combustion appliance before we pack up the guns.
Days 3–8
The fill
Dense-pack in the walls, cellulose over the ceiling, foam on the rim — one crew, dust sheets everywhere, holes plugged as the day advances.
Days 9–10
The lungs
Where the scope called for ventilation: HRV or ERV set and ducted, core and filters logged for the service book that ships with it.
Day 12
The balance
Flow hood on every grille, blower door out for the test-out, and both CFM50 readings printed on the commissioning sheet beside the card.
Osmington Vale, 2025 — 2026
The winter file
The classroom ledger
The Vale, with the bills to prove it
Every figure on this page is off a finished job with a fuel bill behind it. The teaching method survives on results the household can check — which is the only way a teacher keeps a contracting licence with her conscience.
June taught the physics at our kitchen table for twenty minutes before she would quote a thing — smoke pencil at the drafty door, the infrared image of our own cold top plates up on the screen. The work did what the lesson said it would: two readings, 3,400 down to 1,600, and the first winter bill arrived forty percent lighter. I have not needed slippers since, and I understand my own house for the first time.
She talked us out of the windows and into the walls, with arithmetic, at the table, twice — once for me and once for my husband the sceptic. The cellulose went in on a Thursday and the drafts were gone by the weekend. The card said exactly what it cost and the invoice agreed.
The ERV was the part no other firm could explain. June drew it on a napkin — two streams, one core, ninety percent stays — and then balanced it with a hood and showed us the numbers per room. The windows that streamed for thirty years are dry.
I took her building-science evening class in 2014 and rang her in 2025 when the cottage finally lost the argument with January. Same voice, same physics, same refusal to sell what the images did not show. The second reading beat the first by miles and the scope by four points.
Before you ring
Questions the lesson usually answers
The five every Vale household asks by the second cup of tea. If yours is not here, the desk line runs seven to five and answers like a seminar.
Why seal before you insulate?
Because insulation is a blanket and a blanket over a hole is a tent. Two-thirds of the saving on a typical Vale cottage is in the holes — top plates, chases, the gap where an old flue passes — and thickness on top of them mostly hides them from the next person with a camera. Seal first, then thicken; the readings decide the split.
Will the house be stuffy once it is tight?
It will be tight and ventilated on purpose, which is the whole point of the lungs in the card. The HRV changes the air on a schedule the rooms set, recovers up to ninety percent of the heat doing it, and dries the windows that used to stream. Tight by accident is a defect; tight by design has a service book.
What does the lesson cost if we do not book work?
$210, and the file is yours regardless — both readings, the infrared set, the scope with prices. About one household in five keeps the file and acts on it themselves; the teaching method considers that a success too.
Cellulose or fibreglass?
Cellulose, and the lesson explains why with a demonstration: packed at 3.5 lb/ft³ it fills around wiring and blocking the way a liquid would, holds its R-value in the cold that makes fibreglass droop, and is mostly recycled newspaper. It is also what the Vale’s walls were waiting for.
Do you still teach the evening class?
Twice a year at the college, autumn and spring, and alumni get the lesson rate on the house call. Half the firm’s work comes from former students — which tells you the physics holds up outside the classroom.
House lessons book within the fortnight, Vale-wide · (555) 075-2278 · desk@weirandweatherall.example
Book the house lesson
Tell us the house — decade, walls, and which room loses January. Ninety minutes, two readings, the infrared set and twenty minutes of physics with your house as the textbook; the fee credits against any work within the year. desk@weirandweatherall.example