Need attic advice urgently,please.

Hi all. I live in the attic of a house in Birmingham,England.It's not a purpose built living space,but is the roof of a normal terraced house converted into a loft-room.I think maybe that's where my problems arise. You see, in summer the room gets UNBEARABLY hot, i'm quite sure it has gotten over 50 Degress Centigrade. I would just move to another property,but to be completely frank,I am a poor,ill person, and can't even work full time, so can't afford to move.What i want to know is there any way i can make the coming summer more bearable, by modifying the room? The room is roughly 20 metres by 25, although this is not an exact figure, with one small window.The window is about 1 metres by 2 metres.Other than the window there does not appear to be any other ventilation at all. When it comes to DIY I am a total novice, and I will probably have to get a builder to do the work,I know it might appear out of place to ask this question then in a DIY room, but right now I'm just looking for advice,especially from people who might have been in a similar situation to mine and figured a way to cool the room down. Here are some possible solutions I have thought of,please comment on them:1) At present the tiles are black slate,which get burning hot in summer,when i touched them I almost burned my hand.Maybe i can change to other tiles, i read the least heat absorbent roof is either white terracota or metal roof. Although given my limited budget I don't know if i can afford changing the whole roof, maybe just one side.Can somone give me a figure of the typical cost of changing the roof tiles?

2)Add some extra windows. Once again don't know the cost, and how effective this will be in cooling the room down. 3)Add some ventilation vents, but i don't think this will have much effect in cooling the room down, unless the vents have fans attached to them I am already ill, and the past summers in this room have been very hard,I am looking to the coming summer with foreboding, and so I really would appreciate any tips/advice from anyone as to how I can keep the attic cool. Thanks for reading this and bye friends.
Reply to
zaman_2756
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Well, despite thinking this is probably a troll...

Yes I agree loft rooms get very hot in the summer. I find it hard to believe that your room is 25 meters by 20 meters as that's huge and I suspect you mean feet.

As for your ideas:

Changing the tiles to cool the room is quite frankly ridiculous. If you can afford to retile the roof you can afford to move somewhere cooler

Adding another window is a possibility but it's fairly expensive - probably cheaper to just move. Even so the loft will still get very hot.

Ventilation will work. Add some forced air ventilation (eg fans) forcing air into the room from the cooler side of the building and out the hot side. With a good air flow you will get down to near ambient temperature. If you want it cooler you need to use air conditioning but that will cost a fortune to run in a loft.

In other words - you basically have no choice but to move.

Reply to
doozer

Post to this newsgroup:

UK.D-I-Y

Cheers, Jim

Reply to
Speedy Jim

I can see you're not the brightest spark around, firstly the idiot already has posted it to uk.diy group and secondly you should tell trolls to post to alt.troll...

[ FU's set ]
Reply to
:::Jerry::::

Properly converted according to current Building Regulations? Are you a tenant or an owner?

If you are a tenant, and your accommodation is causing or exacerbating illness, speak to your doctor and then your local council about rehousing.

Especially in a terraced house, any change of roof different from your neighbours will make your house stand out (in a bad way), adversely affect its value, and possibly contravene planning law.

Velux-style windows that do not need the structure of the roof altering will be comparatively affordable. If you can get one low down on one side, and one high up on the other side, you can try to get a through draft. This will help stop the temperature rising above ambient, although you may get more solar gain through the glass.

Extractor fans can be fitted through the roof and will help to provide an airflow. Disadvantage: noisy, especially at night.

4) Add insulation, either between the outer roof (slates) and the inner ceiling, or as a new ceiling (which will reduce the roof size and especially headroom). Lack of insulation is the main reason why your loft room is getting so hot.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Especially since he refers to his "small window" as 1 x 2 meters.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

Reply to
Doug Miller

I guess you mean feet - 500 sq meters (or nearly 5400 sq feet) would be a warehouse not a loft!

OK so that is one problem.

Your best bet is to stop it getting so hot in the first place.

Ignore the current roofing material, what you need is insulation under it. You don't say how much or what type of insulation you have between you and the backs of the tiles, but by the sounds of it - not much. Does the inner roof surface feel warm to the touch in the summer?

You may be able to add another window. Costs will vary on the type and location. If you DIY a roof window then 400 quid would cover it.

This is one option - get a flow of air through the place.

One of the high efficency foam insulations like Celotex or Kingspan for example could be fitted onto the existing ceilings/wall etc. 100mm of this (4") followed by a layer of foil backed plasterboard would make a massive difference to the insulation level. It would also make the place much simpler to heat in the winter.

Reply to
John Rumm

If the room is rented, you're not allowed to do anything to it unless you get the owner's permission. Even if you did, I wouldn't recommend spending your money on someone else's property.

If it gets that hot due to solar gain, is there sufficient/any insulation under the slates? Does it also get very cold in winter & cost a fortune to keep warm? Are there storage spaces at low level where you can check the thermal insulation? If it's not properly constructed, should it be rented? What are the fire precautions & escape routes like?

Reply to
Aidan

A 'normal' terraced house with an attic space of the size of a football pitch? ;-)

I'm assuming you mean feet rather than metres.

However, makes no difference.

The cheapest way - if you can lose some ceiling height - would be to remove the plasterboard ceiling, or whatever, and add 4 inches of polystyrene and then replace the plasterboard. Then provide decent through ventilation via fans or whatever. But in any case, not cheap.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I would have thought that an air conditioning unit would be cheaper than a lot of what has been suggested. We recently had one fitted in our server room and it was only about £1.5k fully installed and it has made the room much more bearable in the summer, and it's almost silent in operation, unlike some older units. It costs money to run, but you would only run it when you were in and when it's very hot.

Reply to
Adrian Boliston

another

modifying

Absolutely the biggest difference you can make is fit a 2nd window so theres a direct through draft. If money is problematic its quite poss to make something yourself for very little. Just be very thorough on preserving the wood, and dont overlook flashing. Looking at a few pics on the web will show you how to do it.

Re tiles, insulation under them is the usual approach, but if you can afford it then whitewashing the slates helps quite a lot too. It will weather off, and look tatty when its at that half on half off stage, and isnt permitted on all houses. But it costs =A31 and will help a bundle.

Ceiling fan is the next move: low install cost, low run cost, and you'll have tons of headroom in anything that big.

Fitting ac is just plain stupid unless youve done all the other things first. Run costs in a room like that will give you a heart attack.

I had a room just like that once, it was a nightmare in summer, totally uninhabitable, and needed immediate action. The instant solution was a

1=2E4kW industrial fan. Very nice! But only practical very short term while the problem is getting fixed.

NT

Reply to
bigcat

Considering the ongoing "Superquilt" thread I can't believe nobody has suggested a multi-foil insulation material - I'd have thought this was an ideal application for it.

Reply to
Rob Morley

Thanks for all the replies, and I am definetely not a troll.I have far too many problems in my life to waste time trolling Google groups. Yes, i meant 20 by 25 feet,not metres,i'm not good at guessing distances. Can someone please elaborate on the idea of ventilating the attic, as that sounds the most cost effective.Roughly how many fans will be needed? The rough cost? In the meantime i had the idea of,instead of re-tiling the entire roof,which i admit is too expensive, what about applying a coat of reflective paint to it? I have seen adverts online for the special reflective paints which reflect the sun's heat. These paints are normally meant for places like Florida, but i want to know if anyone here knows of any UK companies selling them? Failing the reflective paints, i suppose I will have to pay a roofer to whitwwash the entire roof.Although what has stopped me from doing this in previous summers is the fact that my house would stand out,not from just my road, but from the entire neighbourhood,where everyone else has black tiles.But I suppose I might be forced to do this,as i have no other options. I really don't want to go into opening the attic ceiling and inserting insulation there.Wheras I would consider an option whereby i could just add some meterial on TOP of the ceiling,however quite how effective this will be i have no idea. I have seen those Kingspan boards,the ones in which one side has a kind of silver lining, and I belive I can even buy them at a substantial discount, however once again i really don't want to rip open the atic ceiling.Even though my landlord has given me permission to do whatever i want to cool the room down. I do own a air conditioning unit, but the reason I did not use it last summer was because i would have had to vent the hose out of the attic window, which is inconvenient and unsightly.I wonder if i could pay a builder to drill a hole into the attic celing to vent the air conditioning hose. Any other ideas are welcome. It's odd, most ppl look forward to summer, to get over the darkness of winter, but for someone in my situation I am not looking forward to baking in this attic/oven. Thanks again and bye.

Reply to
zaman_2756

I'm reading and researching the use of a radiant barrier. I am also trying to reduce the onslaught of heat from the roof. I don't know if that sort of material might help. I've also posted a question in this forum.

Reply to
DGoodPub

So, taking the corrections into acount, you have a 20' x 25' room with a 2' x 1' window and the roof slates are exposed on the inside?

How the f*ck did this get past a BCO? This is not a habitable space and should not be rented out to anyone!

Stop being a victim - tell your landlord to get it sorted or get down to your local housing department.

Dave

Reply to
David Lang

I would not assume that it did.

soon will be if its sorted. In many cases thats not hard, so I wouldnt rule it out.

maybe the OP isnt renting.

Who will provide accomodation whose rent isnt fully paid any more, probably on the 1st floor to an OP thats too ill to get out. Who knows.

If the OP stays, its fixable. If the OP rents, a room like that can probably not be rented legally.

NT

Reply to
bigcat

If it were a flat roof (or indeed if you have a flat roof section) then you can get special reflective coatings for these that help. For a pitched tiled roof then that sounds like a non starter. It would look awful into the bargain.

You could do that with the suggestions already made. The rigid foam insulation could be stuck/screwed to the underside of the existing ceiling, and then new plasterboard put on. Still not a trivial job (plasterboarding a ceiling requires a certain level of physical effort) but less messy than taking down the existing plasterboard. Much depends on how much head height you can afford to loose. You would need to refix light fittings in the process etc.

Yup that is the stuff. There are places that will do that (or a similar product) at big discounts if you look around. When I was converting my loft A local builders merchant quoted me 27+VAT a sheet for 50mm panels. Managed to find a local discount supplier who did "seconds" at 12 quid and new ones at 14.

I bet he has ;-) The only advantage of taking down the existing ceiling is that you could put some insulation between the rafters which would save loosing so much head height in the room. If you can't/don't want to do that then you might find that even as little as 2" of insulation on the underside of the existing ceiling could make a big difference.

Compared to painting the roof white it sounds good to me!

You could - not a big job.

Reply to
John Rumm

For ventilation an 18" 'air circulator' on one side of the window would do quite well. Probably best to have it blowing out, then have a large piece of thick card or thin ply as a baffle between it and the other half of the window to stop incoming air getting sucked straight out. A large pedestal or desk fan on the other side directing some of the incoming air where you want it would also help.

Also getting a load of catering foil and stapling it to the ceiling would help a hell of a lot. It would look ugly to say the least, so stapling some light colour fabric up so it hangs loosely away from the foil leaving an air gap would make things look better.

cheers, Pete.

Reply to
Pete C

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