UKC

Morning Campers,

I'm contemplating building a wall in my loft. I've got two questions for ya;

1. On account of the fact that the loft gets hot in summer, has anyone put loft insulation on the underside of the roof to insulate the attic itself, and if so, did it improve things?

2. My mum's an engineer and, when I mentioned to her about the idea of putting a wall up there and possibly adding extra insulation, she started explaining that 'the dew point' is something to watch out for and that I don't want to put anything against the inside of the roof itself that might lower it, therefore making things in the loft wet. Any experience or thoughts on this?


Ta muchly in advance.

Love from,
Joyce,
XXXX

In reply to Joyce:

Maybe useful
http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=7

Here's what I did, it's changed a little since then but you get the idea.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=406830&v=1#x5826896
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In reply to Joyce:

A lot depends on the construction of ceiling/floor. Most ceiling joists are half the size of floor joists meaning that lofts aren't really supposed to take a load of weight. When lofts are converted to make rooms the floors are usually strengthened (with steel these days it seems) to take the weight.

This is a real issue when you consider you are going to put a significant amount of timber up there and then jump around a lot. Without proper support your ceilings below won't last long.

I can't comment much about insulation but when I was having part of my roof replaced the builder recommended leaving at least an inch gap between the sheets of cellotex and the breathable roof membrane. ie. the roof timbers are 2X5 and to meet building regs I had to fit 4 inch cellotex between the timbers then and inch over the timbers before fitting the plasterboard over the lot.

In reply to Joyce:

Don't know about in a loft, but in a campervan you can get round it by using the thin fancy insulation (dew point is more to do with depth of insulation than performance, sounds like your mum knows more about it than me though). I'd have thought more imortant is making sure it's reasonably well ventilated, a fan would make a big difference.

As an aside/shameless plug we've got some climbing wall bits, including birch ply panels and volumes on our crowdfunding campaign which has been shamelessly advertised across the site... Go for it

In reply to gethin_allen:

Morning Campers,

My plan was to fix extra lengths of sturdy timber above each ceiling joist, not least because it'd then mean that the floor would sit above the insulation that is on top of the ceiling. Also, I was considering fixing one end of the climbing wall to the brick wall at one end of the attic, rather than the roof itself and then building a burly structure above a brick partition wall near the other end to take most of the weight of the wall itself.

The cellotex idea is interesting. I remember boarding out the loft at my old house (for storage, not to put a wall in) in July and it was ridiculously warm up there, which wouldn't be conducive to clambering. A fan sounds like a plan too.

Murd, that wall looks ace!

Thanks for the advice kids, any more greatly appreciated.

Love from,
Joyce,
XXXX