Insulate Floor

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My new extension is nearly complete and has 100mm kingspan insulating the floor. However, the 'old' portion of my house has no under floor insulation - it's a suspended, floorboard construction with little crawl space.

:cry:

i'm having a new engineered oak floor fitted throughout and wanted to find a product to insulate the 'old' part of the house that would do the same job as the kingspan and possibly double as an underlay for the flooring??
The builder suggested thinsulex as a possible solution but I'm not sure.
Has anyone used this product in this way or can suggest a suitable solution that meets my needs / would do the job?

Thanks,
 
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You could use thinsulate if you wish however its really designed to be used in a floor inconjunction with additional insulation beneath it. As the boards have gotta come up anyway why don't you just get your builder to use some more 100mm Kingspan between the joists? Or you could just stick a load of fibreglass insulation in there instead hanging on chicken wire.
 
Thanks for taking the time to reply.....

i'm not intending to take up the existing floor boards but rather lay the oak flooring on top, which is why I wondered if thinsulate would act as a suitable underlay.

I'm going 'google-eyed' looking for a single product that has the thermal properties and sound proofing qualities that i'd like so I might be better looking at a combination.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received! :confused:
 
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Thanks again for taking the time to reply.....

Any thoughts on a suitable solution or combination of products?
 
Insulation requires depth, so laying anything on the current floor is going to give a very poor result compared with lifting floor and putting 100 mm between joists.
 
S0d lifting the boards and laying branded insulation sticks.

You could easily drill a few holes and then blast polyurethane foam into them.

It's the same stuff the sticks are made out of (like kingspan), and the resin / blowing agent is cheaper when bought and blown in than the preformed boards; kind of ironically. But you will need A LOT of it, not a few squirty cans. Enough googling and you will find the guys doing it in big cylinders. They're usually messing around with boat hulls or spraying entire barns.

You'll want gaps for the foam to come out of, or it'll bend the centre of the floor up a little. You may want to check it with a level before and after, as I've seen the cans do it with PVC frames and cause the window to catch as it closes / opens. A number of injection holes will help with that, so it has somewhere to expand out of. Metal casters do the same thing, they pour in through one gate and let it flow out another to be sure the cavity is full and has somewhere to expand to if it needs to (aluminium / zinc / iron shrinks as it cools though).

Using expanding foam also seals every single gap in the void. People will drop in sticks of predone foam, but then leave gaps where it's sawed to size for the timbers. Those gaps will let drafts through, and have massive impact on the effectiveness of the insulation. You NEED those sealed to match the lab results, which is what a blown foam will do. I have a roof done with preformed sticks and downlights in the plasterboard over it. If I take a light out, I can FEEL the air moving and see things moving around the hole. The expensive insulation is there, but the gaps are too. Foil insulations say "You HAVE to tape the edges of this" and that's the reason why, drafts destroying it's potential.

You'd need to work out where the timbers are, ROUGHLY how big the volume is under there (poke sticks down and measure then length, then work out the volumes) and then the foam guys will tell you how much resin / blowing agent it'll need to fill. Pick a cylinder set slightly larger, blown slightly more in and let it squirt out the holes, then chop it down and proceed as normal.

I bet the Germans guys are onto this! :p e.g. Saw a stick down, bang it up, then foam the last few mm to get a draft tight seal. The UK is MILES behind the darn Germans when it comes to building efficiencies, it's embarrassing. They're working on buildings that have essentially 0% loss from insulation / air con / heating / drafts, using the same things we are. The war is still on, and it's building efficiencies (a very positive war)! :D
 
@ johnheritage

Well, since you specifically mention your roof, why not get that foamed ?

There's no reason to stop at ruining just floors is there ? Be ambitious and go for it !!!
 
You could easily drill a few holes and then blast polyurethane foam into them.

That's the way to fix any ventilation problems. ;) Stop all ventilation. The wood might rot but the boards will just rest on the insulation. Might be a bit springy. Hey ho, turn it into a dance floor. A few extra dancers and it might turn into a swimming pool without the water. :eek:
 
If not, you realy down to using floating floor underlay which is either 4mm thicknes on a roll or 7mm thickness in a fibre board.

http://www.carpet-underlay-shop.co.uk/fibre-board-7mm-96sqm-pack-31-p.asp[/QUOTE]

Thanks, I think this is probably the best way to go. I've been looking at this.... http://www.underfloorheating-direct...tion-boards-pack-of-42-covers-30m2-2449-p.asp
I guess if it's good enough to go underneath a heated floor it should do the job I need it to do fairly well!
I could always add something like this... http://www.toppstiles.co.uk/tprod4403/section1164/Combilay-High-Performance-Underlay-10m².html to increase the sound deadening qualities, although I suspect this might be 'over kill' as it's the ground floor that i'm re-doing.

Thanks again for all the suggestions :p
 
@ johnheritage

Well, since you specifically mention your roof, why not get that foamed ?

There's no reason to stop at ruining just floors is there ? Be ambitious and go for it !!!

This is done commercially with polyurethane and isocyanurate. It's also used for cavity walls. Builders use boards / sticks because they don't want to rent the cylinders or don't know where to get them. You do need to be careful with the air gap and a timber roof however, since it's getting rained on at the other side.

That's the way to fix any ventilation problems. ;) Stop all ventilation. The wood might rot but the boards will just rest on the insulation. Might be a bit springy. Hey ho, turn it into a dance floor. A few extra dancers and it might turn into a swimming pool without the water. :eek:

The wood floors in my house have been sat on a concrete raft with varnish over them and bitumen under them for over 60 years. I can assure you they're not rotting, despite the lack of ventilation.
 

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