
DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation
So why bother doing DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation?
- Save Money On Energy Bills
- De-clutter your home
- Create extra storage space in the loft
- Make it Safer
- Re-locate your boiler to save space in your home
Firstly make sure it’s safe to get up there for example having a loft ladder which you can easily get from in place B&Q Loft Boarding & Insulation etc., and some lighting. You can put up a temporary lighting extension until you have safely board-up and then get a proper light fitted.
]Loft Boarding-Insulation is good for Storage, not just insulation, and today The first thing that strikes you about our loft hatch is a very thick watch. The layer of polystyrene on the back of the hatch door.
The door itself is a hard plastic and around the edge. If you look very closely the seal that seals operate closely against the rim of the door itself of the actual hatch in the ceiling. Now that will seal completely like that and that’s, a tremendous improvement from where we were three years ago.
The original loft hatch for a house in 1980s would have been about a three or four millimeter piece of ply board and it wouldn’t fit around the edges at all, but you could have seen daylight through it that’s.
How bad it was now keeping in mind the various home improvements previous DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation has not or done or poor job. As you see in a minute, we actually have further blessed be easy access to the loft I only put on the ladder and extend it to the floor access.
So here we are in the Attic. You can see it’s for a dunk like many homes. Attics are full of junk, but this one’s a little bit special. I should point your attention now to the hatch area where I’m standing, and you can see the exposed insulation here, and I can touch this quite freely because there’s.
In this DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation sheep’s; wool insulation you can get from Loft Boarding and Insulation is good. Now that level, where my hand is, is the original ceiling joists? Okay, so that’s, the load-bearing structure of the house? Okay, so above it you see a secondary joist here.
Okay, now that’s running at right angles to the original load-bearing joists, it is not load-bearing other than that. It’s. Holding up this floor inside the Attic okay, some top of that you see other one.
We laid it crisscross like this running across the joists in 90 degrees and another layer across the new choice and 90 degrees as well, so that gave us a lattice. Now, of course, you just can’t lay pieces of wood across your attic expects to be base stable.
Of course, it has we floored on top of it, it will just fall over, so everything has to be bolted down. So how do we do that, when the DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation section of Loft Boarding & Insulation we bought roofing brackets? They are steel like this.
Most of you, cheap to buy were bought a bucket full of them from Loft Boarding-Insulation and what they do is when you fix the first layer of wood like here across the joisting. You basically fixed the two to go like that drill. Two holes in there drew unscrew some screws into there just for information according to the information sheet on this.
This is a forty seven millimeter x, 100 millimeter joist. It is 2.4 meters, long, of course, with the secondary, where it ‘ S been secured is to the a-frame. This is the a-frame in the Attic of most non flat.
When doing this DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation Roofs like this and here’s, not a frame behind me and look closely here. There’s, another fixing bracket, it’s. Much like these things, but it’s, not l-shaped. It’s. Just basically long and flat, and so we have a line up the over joisting with the a-frame and basically put three holes and three screws there: three holes and three screws along there.
That makes it’s very rigid. It’s very much attached to the a-frame and little joists in the Attic. So whilst we were fixing the new joists, we laid the insulation between the joists. It comes as most of this.
Some rolled insulation is a big role in plastic bags. We simply lay the joists secured them the brackets and then rolled out the insulation between them. We did the first layer of the sandwich, and then we applied the new joisting on top of that and employed the second layer, the original layer of insulation.
We look very closely a this DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation actually is still there and that’s. Mineral wool insulation that’s, stuff that often makes your skin itch the yellow stuff. So what we have now are two layers, and these are meant to be about a hundred millimeter-thick layers of the insulation, two layers, that on top of mineral water, so that’s, three hundred millimeters of insulation in total.
Okay, you can see also recline over boarding should give us a good, solid load, bearing top flat top for us to do, perform storage on, and we have lots of storage on there. Now I make this insulation sound, relatively simple.
In fact, it took three months to do this job this space here is a 5 meter x, 8 meter space. Ok, so we have here what 40 square meters and, of course we did everything twice, because there’s, two layers, insulation, even more complicated than that we also had to seal in the lights in the ceiling above there are inset lights here, and this Box here just about see it is unboxing in in the attic space, those inset lights in the ceiling.
Basically, it makes it airtight, because all what’s happening was all the hot air from downstairs was escaping into the Attic around the light fittings. There was nothing to seal them in so we did basic DIY again, went to a local retailer and building merchants bought these sections of wood chopped them up and then applied them with basic PVA wood glue and managed to seal them with a basic pieces of them.
This is going to furniture board on top with a small slot cut for the wiring. This raises it above the level of the joist and above the level of the rear, the electronics of the lighting system. So it’s all self-contained inside there, and this is a screw down.
So in this DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation, we want to maintain the lights change the wiring. We can just lift this top off here and it can all be changed. All the flooring here is just screwed down. So everything can be lifted up for maintenance purposes.
Part thing to mention here is pipe work. All the pipe work here has been thoroughly insulated. When we moved in in 2008, there was no pipe insulation anywhere in the attic. This one, a pipe from my hand, is on now goes basically from the shower pumps behind me all the way down to a bedroom as over the garage to a bathroom that’s in that area to pump the water down there.
Okay, so it’s of a long run of pipe of no insulation whatsoever. Now I have a funny story about it for the insulation, when we first came here, I’ve heard of insulation and the piping behind me just snapped in half it was plastic, it actually been applied of plastic, push-fit fittings and someone at some point To fitted them onto copper piping and then they’d, used a blowtorch on the piping it ‘
This made the piping very hot. This made the plastic very weak. So since I didn’t maintenance, it is snapped. There was water everywhere, it was a near disaster. I don’t, look forward to telling you the story again.
It was not enjoyable. I had to call an emergency plumber and an enormous expense. We managed to isolate the water switch it off. We managed to save the Attic, see the Attic of the ceiling Lo and because, thankfully, those plastic boxes in the attic and I’m, actually catch.
The water was leaking in a plastic box. Long enough. The emergency plumber plumber to come out and rescue us. It was not a happy sight. Thankfully, we drive the Attic out. We had to get rid of some of the insulation that was soaked and we’re, going to replace most of it anyway, so that’s.
Fine so be aware in old houses with DIY plumbing that you don’t break it. We have now successfully replaced all the plumbing, and if you look just behind me here, we have quite solid flexi piping now fitted, and that is bulletproof.
I could probably kick it: it. Wouldn’t break that’s. What we have here is the hot-water tank was just ahead of tank for the arm, the water that we use for washing and showers and baths. Okay, there would have been a head of tank here for the heating system, but that’s now gone because actually we have a pressurized system and that specialized via these valves that you see behind me here – relatively maintenance free and really have to do Anything with that, as you can see tank, he was well insulated when we write him 2008.
There was no installation on this tank whatsoever. It wasn’t even a lid, and there was stuff floating it. Wasn’t very nice, so we put a lid on. We insert it away around. That could be quite important when you will insulate a loft space like this.
It’s, going to be more exposed to the ambient temperature outside the house. If it’s freezing out there, it could be freezing in here some of the things you have to do as recommendation as you. Don’t put too much insulation down here and I’ll.
Show you what I mean so down here, move that suspense elation is actually much less insulation down here. So a little bit of heat will trickle up here to try and stop the water pipes from freezing another important thing.
An attic is to make sure you fit some lighting. This is not the writing of the Attic. In fact, this attic had no original lighting system. I had to install all this myself if you’re, not confident that sort of work then do get an electrician to fit it.
It’s relatively simple DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation I just use an extension cable around the Attic and actually run that cable through a hole in the ceiling down into we’re messing. What Hogwarts under is in the airing cupboard and I plug it into a main, socket down there relatively simple DIY task to do there’s.
One two three four light bulbs in here more than enough for an average-sized attic, but good light is very important when we came here in 2008. The only thing I found here was a basic lamp that was stood right here and nothing in it.
No light bulb. It was actually a while later I found a light bulb had exploded. I was lying a purple glass, all over top of insulation. It was a bit of a nightmare. One aspect worth pointing out to you is the fact that we have labeled, on top of the flooring itself, the location of all the wiring and all of the light fittings, including down to where the screws are okay and they’re.
During this DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation project, it’s important to make everything accessible and get all the materials you need before you start from Loft Boarding & Insulation, etc., That’s, exactly what they are so anytime, maintenance is required and electricians can come up here and they can have a look around like see exactly how everything is laid out. That includes any piping.
I don’t think there is much piping here other than down to domestic hot water cylinder, but even that’s. Labelled off this has been a super home 59 video all about the attic, insulation, loft installation, and so DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation is get done up there an old 1980s house,
If you want to learn more about DIY Loft Boarding-Insulation, please send us a message on our contact page, and also consider subscribing to our newsletter at the bottom of this page for more home improvement and DIY money saving and information.
Get Money Saving Offers & Discounts on DIY B&Q Loft Boarding-Insulation
You may also be interested in Below article if you find any rodents in the loft