Roof Insulation

[gpinckney]

Help please!
I am living in a 19th century cottage. The roofs are all slanting and interconnecting with next door. The roof is understandably old and we have no insulation. The insulation guy said that he could not lay more than 3m square because of the slanting roofs and him not being able to get access beyond a few feet. What can we do the bills are astronomical!
Thanks

 

[erty445]

I'm no expert, but you could try asking these guys

http://www.markgroup.co.uk/loft_insulation.htm

OR I have noticed a product advertised on the net where they spray foam underside of the roof which strengthens tiles & insulates - but no idea on how good it is one such link is

http://www.foam-insulation.co.uk/?O...ay&OVKEY=insulation roof spray&OVMTC=standard

(Although there are numerous to be found on the web)
good luck

 

[breezer]

http://www.foam-insulation.co.uk/?O...ay&OVKEY=insulation roof spray&OVMTC=standard

(Although there are numerous to be found on the web)
good luck

the foam idea is not liked on these forums, no free air flow in loft

 

[sprayseal]

i know this is an old post but wanted to see what you ended up doing. Seems like a pretty awkward space to work with. Owning my own roof insulation company means i have come across a few of these situations before. In fact its for this reason that we started using spray foam. It is so flexible that it can work in these tight spaces. We have also worked on lots of old buildings before, you can see some of the old buildings we have worked on in our case studies.

Mod 3 - Website removed

 

[giltech]

Help please!
I am living in a 19th century cottage. The roofs are all slanting and interconnecting with next door. The roof is understandably old and we have no insulation. The insulation guy said that he could not lay more than 3m square because of the slanting roofs and him not being able to get access beyond a few feet. What can we do the bills are astronomical!
Thanks [/quot

I had a similar problem although the house is not as old but it does have a number of sloping roof areas typical of chalet house construction. The central section of the house is two storey with conventional loft area in which the under tile sarking paper had rotted over fifty years and exposed lots of tiles so that in winter it allowed wind to sweep through carrying dust, dirt, grit from the ageing tiles and occasionally snow. I obtained some rolls of paper/bitumen/paper (my description) which I stapled to the underside of the rafters, starting at the top to allow ingress of water dust etc to run down to the outer edge. The paper stops just short of the loft floor to allow air ventilation of the upper side of the "paper".

The main advantage of this is the reduction of draughts and dirt entering the loft space and a definite reduction of heat loss The difficult part was (and still is) the sloping roof areas where access is very difficult. Some of these are accessible by crawling and here I have placed fibreglass loft insulation blanket cut to the width between rafters and placed direct under the tiles (or any existing roofing felt) then supported with "breathable membrane" or aluminium faced thermal foil, stapled to the underside of the rafters. I have yet to learn how effective this will be against winter cold or summer heat.

As with you, the man from the govt, sponsored specialist didn't really want to know, although he was sympathetic and thought the 100mm loft insulation between loft floor joists plus loft boarding was probably as good as I could expect. The problem I have not yet solved is where the sloping roof matches the sloping ceiling inside leaving about 75mm of space which may or may not have fibreglass blanket in it. I tried filling from above with expanded polythene beads but they gradually find their way out at the bottom and through the soffits!

Any other ideas

giltech

 

[Rob1s]

Hi there, new to the forum so forgive me if i'm asking in the wrong place.

I have a similar problem to the chap above with having a sloping roof that is only visible from inside the house (not in the loft) the most you would see from in the loft is a small gap between slate and plasterboard visible only if you crawl deep into the corners of the loft. I had a quote last week from a spray foam company who swear by it and was brimming with confidence that he could sort out our heat loss and stop mortar falling off from underside of tiles, but then he would for £2k

Is there anything out there to solve this problem as at present I could have insulation that was 6ft high and not solve our problem because heat just flies through this side of the house. I had toyed with the idea of buying a spray foam kit and doing it myself at a fraction of the cost but I'm beginning to wonder if this is a good idea.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[foxhole]

Foam will hold everything together but hide all the problem till the roof collapses, [prospective purchaser of your home may well think you are trying to hide serious roof problems by covering with foam, I know I would]for 2k you could get the roof replaced and lay conventional insulation at the same time.
I have laid loose lay insulation in tight spot, used a home made push [looked something like the croupier would use on a roulette table to move the chips around]laid a small amount and then pushed it out to the eaves and then repeated until it covered the entire roof space, used drain rods to allow me to extend and reduce length of push rod.Also used the same method to insulate under a floor only lifted two floor board in centre of room and then pushed insulation out to edges.

 

[Rob1s]

Thanks for that quick and informative reply, may have to look into doing that, even if it just gets me through this winter until I maybe have a bit of spare cash to do the job properly. If I start to push insulation into this gap should I worry about leaving a small space above the insulation for ventilation?

Also anyone any ideas of how much it would cost to re-tile with putting insulation in place at the same time? it's a standard 3 bed semi

 

[foxhole]

You are unlikely to be able to fill the void with loose lay rock wool so as to block all air movement, the insulation will also settle slightly over time.