What Is the Minimum Requirement for Loft Insulation

Attach a square section of insulation above the attic door. Alternatively, you can buy a pre-insulated attic door to replace the original one. Use drafts around the attic hatch – as less heat rises in the attic, drafts that pass through the ceiling are colder. Drafty exclusions prevent this cold air from entering the house. Of course, if it is a new building, you will need to install 270 mm of insulation to meet the building rules, but basically the answer to the question is: 270 mm is the recommended thickness of attic insulation! The insulation should match the depth of the beam, so if the beam is 100mm deep, your first layer of insulation should also be. The top layers should be placed perpendicular to the bottom layer to completely cover the beam. First of all, you need to go to your attic, check the condition of the insulation and calculate the current level of insulation. Your attic should have some insulation, and the recommended level of insulation for your attic depends on where you live. Cold floor insulation essentially prevents heat from entering the attic. All pipes and tanks must be insulated with pipe linings and cylinder casings to prevent freezing.

Unintended air spaces reduce performance, so make sure the rollers collide, the friction against the beams is mounted and pushed down around the roof perimeter to hit the insulation in the wall head. The attic insulation rollers you can buy are available in many seemingly random thicknesses, for example, 100mm, 120mm, 150mm and 170mm. The reason for this is that insulation manufacturers are trying to make it easier to reach the 270 mm thick sweet spot. When insulating a blank attic, it is easier to roll 100 mm thick insulation between the beams. Once this layer is laid, place 170 mm of insulation on top of the beams at 90 degrees relative to the beams. You can see from the table that the recommended thickness of attic insulation is currently 270 mm. However, the amount of insulation has not changed in the last 14 years, so it seems that an increase in the recommended amount will most likely come soon. The age of your home – If your home is more than 10 years old, you will probably need more insulation. There are many ways to renovate a home with fiberglass and mineral wool insulation. Building codes include requirements for the renovation or replacement of thermal elements – a thermal element is a wall, floor or roof that separates a heated or cooled area from the outside, an unheated part of the same building, or a structure exempt from building regulations, such as a porch or porch. (More details here.) If there is currently no insulation in the roof space, you must provide thermal insulation to achieve a U* value of at least 0.16 W/m2K. This is usually 250 mm of a mineral wool loft insulation roller, for example.

This map shows recommended thermal insulation levels for different climates, based on recommendations from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). The IECC is the model building code for the United States. We compress our glass mineral wool so that there is more product per pack. But that means that when you unpack it, our Loft Roll insulation expands to 10 times its original thickness. So, unpack where you are going to install it. In response to Clare`s attic insulation (not verified) Warm lofts have insulation at the bottom of the roof, between and under the sloping rafters. Installation takes longer and the ceiling height can be lowered for better insulation. If you plan to renovate your loft, you will need permission from Building Control. In 1995, the recommended depth was 200 mm; before that, it was less than 100 mm. Chances are, even if the insulation is already in place, you`d benefit from filling it up to more than 270 mm.

As bills rise, energy efficiency will be a priority for homeowners. Installing attic insulation at ceiling level is a quick and convenient way to prevent heat loss, which is why Bradley Hirst, Technical Services Manager at Knauf Insulation, explains what you need to know to successfully insulate in this application.