Loft insulation lighting wire help

[Jamiedee90]

Hi All,

We bought a Victorian terraced last summer and instantly had to get the house rewired due to it being so old. Anyway, I'm finally getting round to sorting out the loft insulation as the bedrooms upstairs get so damn hot in the summer and the insulation up there looks more like carpet than something to trap heat. It looks like when the upstairs lights were rewired, the sparky ran the cables through the joists (100mm), thus near on impossible to run above any insulation. I reckon I have enough slack to run the cables above the 100mm base layer, but definitely not above the top up. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated (see photos attached)

 

[Adam_151]

If its just lighting, don't worry about covering them up, the loading is so low that it'll still be compliant totally surrounded by insualtion. Other cirucits are likely to be more of a concern.

But roofing joints like that shouldn't be drilled, the saving grace is that your victorian cut roof is likely over engineered compared to moden trusses, but I don't understand why hes done that

 

[sparkwright]

I was brought up to never drill the joists in a roof space.

Granted they are not the modern A framed roof trusses new houses tend to have - but I still wouldn't have drilled.

I would have kept all the cables where they 'cross' the joists near the eaves, to avoid them being trod on, and also to allow for any floorboards that may go down (which I don't recommend personally).

Agreed, you will be fine with regular 'wool' kind of insulation touching and surrounding the lighting cables - but avoid on socket and shower cables.