loft insultation

[Matthew Ames]

I own an victorian house, that is always pretty difficult to heat (and to keep warm) in the forthcoming winter months. The house has two "attic" style rooms, which just have hardboard walls, so nothing very substantial. There is a little door through which I can crawl and to into soom of the roof space at the front of the house. In there there is already some insultation (between the joists), but not a great deal. There is nothing under the rafters as such, apart from the roof felt.

Due to the construction of these upstairs rooms, there is no easy way of getting insultation up near to the roofing felt (well I don't think there is, but it has been a while since i have been in there!).

Therefore what should be best plan? Just to increase the thickness of what is already there? It does not actually go under the floors of the two upstairs bedrooms or landing, and maybe to add some roof where where I can? Finally what stuff should I use for the roof? I have seem some metal sided stuff and wondered if that would be appropiate?

Any ideas appreciated!

Cheers, Matt

[Lobster]

You wouldn't want to insulate *under* the landing or bedrooms as that would make those rooms cold.

I don't think there's any easy solution. One issue you need to remember is that your house won't have been built with 21st-century insulation requirements in mind, and it's all to easy for attempts to bring an old house up to modern standards to end in tears, for example due to blocking off designed-in ventilation and bringing about dry or wet rot. It's quite likely that anything you tried to stuff between the bedroom ceiling and the roof would take you down that route.

You might want to consider attaching insulation of some sort to the underside of the ceiling/walls *inside* the rooms - eg polystyrene-backed plasterboard, however that would reduce the dimensions of the rooms and may not be desirable/feasible.

Best solution would probably involve ripping out all the existing walls/ceiling in said rooms (lath and plaster?) to expose the underside of the roof, and then rebuilding from scratch incorporating adequate insulation/ventilation. I've done that to one upstairs room in my house and it was a fairly major undertaking (but did make a big difference to the comfort of the room.)

David

[Matthew Ames]

I did have that thought in mind..... but I don't think that I'll be able to do that before it gets cold this year.... Maybe I'll just beef up the existing inslting in there as a temporary measure From what I can recall from crawling around in the roof space the sides of the rooms are just hardboard nailed to some wood up-rights, so I easily remove them and replace with a plasterboard....

[Stuart Noble]

If you're going to rip out walls and ceilings, do it and get rid of it in a day, no matter how many helpers you have to get in i.e. clear up just the once :-)

[mail]

I endorse what has been said I did this in my house some 27 years ago and have never regretted it Were I to do it now it would be as follows

Get rid of ceiling and sloping wall plaster till you have access to the vertical walls

Put in 2or3" battens under the rafters and lose the room dimesion (just accept it!)

Consider removing wall plaster (depending on height andcost ) at the same time

~Apply Kingspan ~TP10 75mm thick to all but 25 mm of the roof rafters IF and ASSUMING they are 4" deep Apply similar second layer to the 3" battens apply plaster board foil backed ensure eaves ventilation when you next get a chance

If walls are done you can either follow the Kingspan instructions and loose 4" or use 2" Kingspan TP10 USING both Plaster board adhesive as a continuous (not dabs) tile-glue like support supplemented with THE EXTERNAL stainless steel pins with plastic "washers" to hold the insulation in place (get the pins from the External insualtion fixing method and use it inside!)

Put plasteboard on with glue and same pins

Skim it

There you have a tasty job but take photos and show it to the HIPS silly man when he comes round should you sell it

chris