Attic insulation

Heat rises, and in most Irish houses built before the 2000s the attic has somewhere between nothing and 100 mm of old quilt that has slumped and gone patchy. Bringing it up to around 300 mm is one of the cheapest energy improvements you can make to a house, and it is usually done in a day. The laying is easy. Doing it without creating a new problem is the part that matters. Insulation goes down in two layers, the first between the joists and the second across them, so the timbers stop acting as cold bridges. It stops short of the eaves, and we fit eaves vents or trays so air can still move from the soffit into the roof space, because a well insulated attic is a colder attic, and a cold attic with no air movement collects condensation on the underside of the felt and the roof timbers. The area under the water tank is left clear so heat from the room below keeps it from freezing, and then the tank and every pipe in the cold space are lagged. Downlights in the ceiling below get covers so the insulation does not sit on them. The loft hatch is insulated and draught stripped, since an unsealed hatch is a chimney for warm damp air. If you want to keep storing things up there, raised boarding goes in above the new depth so the insulation is not crushed, because squashed insulation loses most of what it was put there to do.

Grants, and what we check first

SEAI grants have been available for attic insulation, and the amounts and conditions change, so we check what currently applies to your house before you commit. Before anything goes down we look at the roof from inside: signs of leaks, damp timber or old condensation staining are dealt with first, because insulating over a wet problem only hides it.