Draughtproofing a Loft Hatch

[george [dicegeorge]]

If I make a loft hatch out of 3inch wide kingspan sandwiched between plywood, how can I do the hinges and edges such that it is draughtproof?

[g]

[Bob Minchin]

How about 'with a draftproof seal'?

[newshound]

Instead of hinges, just let it sit on a batten "ledge" inside the frame. Then you can put ordinary sticky backed foam draught strip on the top face of the ledge. You don't need plywood both sides (unless you are planning to put it down and walk on it). Hatches on hinges always get in the way of something which you want to put in or take out. With a free hatch you just lift and slide it sideways. That's assuming you use steps for access, not a built-in loft ladder. With a loft ladder it's usually easier to hinge it to "drop", held up with a "push to lock, push to release" catch. Not so easy to draught-proof.

[Tim Streater]

When they did our cavity wall insulation, they nailed up some draught excluder strip under the loft hatches. It was done in a bit of a hurry, so I took it all down and re-did it. The strip is quite good, but I've not been able to find any like it anywhere. It's a plastic strip, and you use escutcheon pins to fix it up. Those were damned hard to find, too, and damned hard to figure out what the pins actually were.

The strip is hardish plastic (to nail though), say 15mm wide. Then one edge has about a 10mm flexible compressible edge to it (so total width about 25mm), maybe foam inside but with a tough flexible covering. If you nail it up just right, then the weight of the loft hatch compresses the edge enough to form a firm seal.

I think this stuff is better than putting ordinary B&Q rubber foam window insulation strip on the ledge, but its much more fiddley to install.

[Geo]

After making the opening and hinging the hatch I climbed into the loft and got may wife to remove the ladder and close the hatch (having picked a day when not in doghouse). Then fitted 1/2" batten all round the frame perimeter with cardboard spacer just touching the top of the hatch. With the hatch open, glued 'P' shaped plastic draught excluder (B&Q) to bottom of battens. Alternative method would have been to cut battens to size and glue excluder strip then glue/screw battens to frame above hatch. Obviously lost 1" of opening in length and width.

[tony sayer]

In article , Geo scribeth thus

We've got to change a useless Wavin plastics (OSMA) type door hatch bloody thing has warped and the piss poor effort they made at sealing is useless you can see the pound notes whizzing up there!...