Insulation above ceiling in attic room

MicktheMan wrote: »

Before you go tearing anything down, you could do worse than having a survey done to pinpoint what is at play in regards to the heat loss mechanisms. Nought worse than spending on insulation improvements and noticing no real improvement.

Thats great advice actually.. I was just going on how feckin cold it is up there...
But I do have guys coming round to power flush the heating system and they promised to bring a heat camera with them next trip.

So twill be interesting to see but I'd be pretty sure the heat is just flying out of the roof.

Calahonda52 wrote: »

While yes he/she can do that, its the wrong answer because, assuming the existing pb is skimmed, then the ceiling is vapour proof, on the cold side, which means moisture can't get through it, but it will condense out on the skim, which is a wonderful substrate for growing mould.

Yep, the pb is skimmed.. so its very deceptive.. the rooms look great... its only when you spend time in them you realise how cold they are and then when yeh go into the crawlspace to investigate you notice the lack of insulation...

Now it gets more complicated cos they (previous owners) put polystyrene directly on the roof.. between the timbers and against the slates...
But then also put some mulchy stuff on the flat .. above the ceilings...
So you'd think it'd be warm..

But the whole thing is done wrong anyway.. the mulchy stuff goes all the way to the eaves and is preventing air coming in to circulate at the timbers.

As in.. its not done either of these two ways:


The soffit vents are currently blocked...so I have to pull stuff outta there..
So the rooms are going to get even colder cos the verticals are not insulated..

I don't know why the bulletin board software has rotated these.. they were taken vertically...


Vertical walls no insulation:





The mulch..

Hi Paddy,
Have a look at the diagram I posted above.
I'm pretty new to this but what I'm reading says that you have to have some airflow over the roof timbers .. otherwise they'll rot.
Dry rot apparently...
So I'm a but suspicious of the whole idea of spraying.. how do the timbers breath then? Where is the air channel as per that diagram?

Though your situation might be easier sort than mine.
If there is nothing upstairs then shur just seal up the door with something like an old duvet in a plastic bag.. or tape or whatever... insulate and seal like..

I had a pulldown staighre in the last rented place, the hatch used to freeze the hall out of it... I put a cover like that (duvet in a bag) on top of the hatch and it made a huge difference.

In my case the second toilet is upstairs and I want to be able to get up and use it when necessary... the roof pitch doesn't allow for a door at the top of the stairs so I hung a curtain rail and a heavy curtain.. And that actually has improved things a good bit.. stops the cold air rolling down the stairs anyway..

But the rooms upstairs with ceilings and all already done.. well.. thats my problem.. cos they aren't insulated .. twill cost a lot to redo from scratch.. but I'll end up doing it eventually..

Water John wrote: »

Good morning to check if heat is going out through your roof. Where has it thawed?

Heh,
It would be if there was any snow over this direction.
We were very lucky, just a few icy roads the other day but no snow.

Nothing!!!

So far...

Honest to god, I was driven nuts with all sorts of cowboys saying what they would do. And while I still had misgivings about doing anything to make things even worse.. I just didn't do anything. We stuck a door at the top of the stairs and sealed the attic area off.. used it for storage and left it at that.

Little door at the top of the stairs made a huge difference to temp downstairs BTW. All the heat doesn't just fly up and out..

We had all sorts of suggestions about what to do with the attic then.. Foam sprayers wanted to just shove foam in there with long nozzles etc... and I now find out that they would have shagged me roof cos my felt is the older type and it would have ruined it..

So, yeah. I finally, (last week !) got a proper engineer in and paid him to examine the roof and tell me clearly what to do.

We had decided, to hell with it, lets rip it all out and down and get a proper job done.

First step tho is to get the engineer in to make sure we wouldn't pull the roof down by ripping out the walls etc

The report says we wont .. but .. we learned that we need to get the purlins reinforced cos the previous eejits appear to have taken out trusses ...

So, once we rip it all out we will fix the trussing of the purlins and then get the insulation done properly.

I have 12.5cm deep rafters so recommendation is to put 60mm of rigid insulation in between them. Leaving an 50mm airgap at the back for an air channel to allow timbers to breath.

Then we will go across the face of the rafters with 50mm insulated plasterboard. So we end up with roughly 100mm of insulation.

Basically, we waited this long, so we are determined to just bloody do it right. Tear it all out and do it right, from scratch.

Me?

I don't really have one.. the house has an open fire and a stove so...

I am more worried about damp downstairs so looking at retro-fitting window vents.

And thinkin about a door or an insert stove on the open fire.

Would only love a heat recovery ventilation system but have to get the attic sorted some way first.