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.- posted
18 years ago