Loft insulation: board it over?

You are dumb at times. He is doing the insulation anyway. he just needs to put thicker stuff in. Which is not that much more expensive. TRVs? Something el;se to go wrong. Life span is 5 to 8 years on average. The fuel they save can be outweighed by the replacement cost. In many case they do improve comfort conditions.

It is not case of either or. It is a case of thicker insulation in a ceiling that is air tight.

What a wandering mind. He is putting in insulation. It is a matter of putting thicker stuff in.

If oil prices rise, which they will, then spending on insulation is very wise.

In the book EcoHouse - A Design Guide, they gave a study that calculated in

1987 200mm was the optimum in walls at the then current fuel prices.

As fuel prices rise and the insulation manufacturing costs too, the whole payback calcs were scewed somewhat. So they calculated insulation levels on energy to make insulation. They came to the thickness of 650mm. The conclusion was that what constrains you is the detailing of the structure to hold as much insulation as possible.

The book says (written by three people) put in as much insulation as possible in the structure you have, or design a structure to suit.

That means if you can get 300-400mm in the loft, which is the easiest part of the house to add insulation then do it.

Reply to
Doctor Evil
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In a suitable amount, in a suitable place and at a suitable time.

This could be tricky in a seventies bungalow, although I suppose one could always build a wall inside the existing one and put the insulation in there. Presumably, since you say that about 400mm is needed, most people should have no problem in reducing their room sizes by 400 or 800mm on each dimension.

I see. So now we are talking about size reductions of 700 to 1400mm on room dimensions. Actually, to optimise further, I think that it would be more sensible to fill the rooms entirely and not go in them. That way, there would be no need to heat the rooms anyway and nobody would care of course. Sounds like a great outcome.

Well of course, since there are three authors, it must be the right thing to do.

... and of course it doesn't really matter if 20 times the amount of heat is going out through the walls.

How are Pilkington shares doing at present?

Reply to
Andy Hall

Possibly - though I don't actually think global warming comes into quite the same degree of irrelevance as part P.

Reply to
Mike

I would have thought a typical house of that size with that much heat loss would be paying nearer £500 in heating per annum and so saving would be £20-25.

Where are you buying it ? More like £2.25/m^2 in the sheds -> £121

So if you're DIY or get a grant to cover the labour, ROI is about 15% which isn't huge but is worthwhile.

Reply to
Mike

I thought that was what they did do in schools nowadays :-)

or possibly :-(

Reply to
Mike

Quite well. I like the yield, which went up this year, but I did buy them at somewhat lower prices. The outlook seems quite good and pretty recession proof.

Regards Capitol

Reply to
Capitol

No but again the concept of context comes into play and the more significant should be dealt with first. This is just more window dressing.

Reply to
Andy Hall

What would you suggest as more significant and have you made your views known to the ODPM during their consultation processes ?

Reply to
Mike

Even in the context of a house, increasing insulation from 200 to

400mm is a drop in the bucket.

One could pick virtually anything else and make more of a difference.

I made my views known to the ODPM during the part P consultation process and it is clear that form is much more important than substance.

I really don't have the time and inclination to educate them about what is and isn't important when they are more interested in a game of soggy biscuit.

Reply to
Andy Hall

A few extra mm of loft insulation in the UK is not going to compensate for the disproportionate use of oil in the USA (20% of greenhouse gas for 5% of the world's population, or something like that?)

Anyway, we originated in the African savannah. We should be able to cope, as a species, with a bit of climate change. And if we can't, some other species can have a go at being top banana and see if it does any better.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Reply to
Doctor Evil

And will get betters as oil oprices rise.

Reply to
Doctor Evil

That's not really the point, is it. Just because one country is run by a bunch of selfish overbearing morons doesn't mean we should all behave as such. HC has already committed to signing Kyoto if she's elected nect time so if we've got our act together they will have to follow.

Possibly - but bear in mind most of the UK will be sub-zero for half of the year. Global warming doesn't mean that everywhere gets hotter.

see if it does any better.

I thought the dolphins already had :-)

Reply to
Mike

We did re-elect them last month....

That's extrapolation. An even more dangerous concept than not considering context.

So the answer for the government is simple. Encourage everybody to buy airconditioners now. Then if the situation that you describe does arise, they can claim a victory because of the energy saved from people no longer needign to use them.

The mice were involved as well.

Reply to
Andy Hall

So we will need 600mm of insulation then.

Reply to
Doctor Evil

Sonebody's being cynical :-)

DA never did explain why so many of them got eaten by cats though.

Reply to
Mike

The new (2006) Part L consultation does understand the arguments: "[Roofs] It is therefore possible to justify U-values better than those for walls ? in the range 0.13 to 0.18 (290 mm to 210 mm thicknesses respectively) for carbon costs of £140 and £70 per tonne pa respectively.". Not 400mm, even 300mm is just outside what is deemed justifiable.

Under the new rules there will be no real hard U-value limits save that the roofs in a dwelling must have an average area-weighted U-value of no more than 0.25 with no individual roof area having a U-value worse than 0.35. "All" the designer has to do is to show that the CO2 output from the dwelling is no more than a target figure and how he achieves this (with some loose thresholds as just cited) is up to him.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

The figures I quoted were for a house built to current building regulations standards. Lots of houses have external walls with U-values of 1.0 or worse (v. 0.35) and uninsulated ground floors.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

Some people have a strange mentality - twisted logic. If a house is poorly insulated in its walls and floor, then installing 400mm of Rockwool in the loft, which is easy and cheap, is not worth it because all the other house surfaces leak heat like crazy. Retograde thinking. Duh!

Reply to
Doctor Evil

This would seem to be the case...

Yes when you put it like that it makes so much more sense. Given the choice of reducing losses through the surfaces that "leak heat like crazy" or adding extra insulation to an already well insulated loft so you can make next to no difference to the overall picture, *you* would obviously choose the second option.

Shame we can't all have appreciate the advanced level of thinking required where that would all make sense.

Reply to
John Rumm

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