Removing loose loft insulation

[Roger R]

The loft insulation in a 1984 house is loose glass fibre scattered between the rafters. Its pretty horrible dusty stuff and I'd like to have it removed before installing new insulation. But how to get it done?

I imagine a van outside with a 4 inch diam hose running into the house with the stuff being sucked out through it into a receiver in the van...a variation of the specialised lorry that is used to suck out street drains. With such equipment it would not take very long to do. I'm sure I've seen this being done elsewhere.

Although I usually tackle most jobs I think this is a bridge too far, especially with the sort of equipment available to me - diy vaccuum cleaners, woodworking vac, etc - because the hose diams are too small and the quantities too large, though I don't say it couldn't be done.

My question is how or where to find such a service in the Birmingham area as the usual searches produce no results. Lots of results for installing loft insulation but none for removing it.

Any thoughts or advice on this. ...yes I do want to remove it.

Roger R

[OG]

Why not lay roll-type insulation on top of the loose stuff? The recommendation now seems to be to have 200mm depth in total, so assuming you've got something like 100mm up there already you should be able to halve the cost of the materials as well as trapping it under the new insulation.

My .5p worth

[TheOldFellow]

Find a woodworker with a workshop chipping vac and 4 inch (100mm) hose. The cheapest I've seen is this:

have something similar mounted in my workshop, and 'plumbed' with soil pipe. It has no problem with wood chips, and will lift them 2 meters straight up, so it should be way strong enough for glass-fibres lifted a just a few feet. The problem is the sack changing - you'll fill a lot of bags.

R.

[ransley]

Why remove it, because its dirty? Just go over it and add more. There is no reason to remove it.

[Roger R]

Thanks for that idea, I do have an old blower of the type illustrated...lacking suitable pipe connectors. A little job for me to make some up.

A snag may be that the stuff could clog the vanes of the centrifugal rotator, but perhaps by placing a large capture bag/box before the extractor/blower most of the material, especially any large lumps, may be intercepted before it gets into the blower.

Thanks also to the others who replied.

Roger R