Even birds know they need to trap air to keep warm. Whether this means ruffling feathers (if you’re feathered), putting on an extra layer (if you’re human) or insulating your loft (if you’re a house), the principle remains the same; air is a bad conductor of heat, so it limits heat transfer.
The previous owners of our house didn’t know this, which meant going upstairs in winter meant putting on an extra layer (or ruffling your feathers if you’re a bird).
I set to fix the mistakes of the past.
Removing the old ceiling
* Soft board (huge fire hazard!), and
* 5 mm of polystyrene (another huge fire hazard!)
Inspecting the roof
The roof was extended in the 70’s to make space for the attic room, so it’s constructed in 2 parts; the old and the ‘new’. The old part has horizontal wooden beams supporting vertically aligned planks, on which are the roof tiles. The new part is the other way around; vertical wooden beams with horizontally mounted planks with the roof tiles on top.
In short, the woodwork was a mess, and it was also clear why we were having so many leaks – there was no sheeting to catch drips blown between the tiles, and these drips ran along and through the vertical seams in the old part of the roof.
What a mess.
Builders were going to sort out the sheeting and new tiles (I don’t have the equipment to work safely at height); I just needed to work on the inside and get it ready for the (14 cm) insulation.
Rebuilding the woodwork
The insulation comes in rolls 60 cm wide, so I was looking to attach beams of wood with 59 cm spacing for the insulation to fit snugly between. Existing wooden beams were laid at different orientations, and were much thinner than the required 14 cm. I didn’t want to remove the existing supporting structure for obvious reasons, so I needed to work around it.
My first strategy was ‘ignoring’ the existing beams and make new ones at the right spacing. Then I figured it would be simpler to attach strips of wood to act like braces for the insulation, and hollows could be made in the insulation to accommodate any protruding wood.
Laying the insulation
This should have been easy, but making carving the hollows was awkward. And I was working above my head. I used windproof tape to close gaps.
Eye Troubles
Even though I wore safety glasses, glass fibre got into my eyes and gave me a lot of problems. The optometrist told me I have “dry eye” brought on by old age. A natural process – tears evaporate quickly, so the eyes produce an oil to reduce the evaporation. Because I’m ‘old’, my oil is too thick to work properly. Result; my tears evaporate too quickly, my eyes dry out and become irritated each time I blink. I now need eye drops every couple of hours or so 🙁
The glass fibres gave me an allergic reaction which caused my eyes to initially swell, and that triggered the old age stuff above. I’m not happy about it because it was avoidable. I was careful, but apparently not careful enough (*growl*).
Covering with plasterboard
Also a dreadful job. Using fewer boards meant less seam plastering later, but fewer boards meant using bigger ones – they’re heavy and difficult to manhandle into position. I found a comprise at 2 m; I could hold this in place and screw them in at the same time. Just about; I’d inadvertently bought plastic screws instead of metal ones which meant my magnetic screwdriver couldn’t hang onto the screws as I was screwing. I dropped a lot of screws (and bits of plasterboard…)
Lining the boards on my woodwork was really tough because I was an idiot. The board are 60 cm wide, so my braces are also spaced 60 cm so I could screw the boards along the edges in the same direction.
But my woodwork wasn’t 100% accurate with the 60 cm spacing, and some of the braces weren’t straight of it was not straight because I was reusing old wood which I suppose had warped over time.
In hindsight I should have attached the plasterboard at 90 degrees to the braces.
Plastering the Seams
To fill the gaps between the boards. This was a lot of work, and to some extent pointless – the roof works and flexes breaking my plaster! In hindsight I should have used some sort of flexible filler.
(Ironic I have all this hindsight with my dry eyes…)
Painting
Last stage! Not much to say about it really, other than we chose this green to match the walls (“match” means “the same colour as”) because we still had a load of paint left over from the lounge. And I really like the darker green which I used on the (now exposed) horizontal beams.
Windows
I’m proud of these! These skylight windows were an early addition to the roof when we moved in, but I needed to box them up with the thicker ceiling. The first one has sills at 90 degrees all round. I later realised it would be better to keep the top sill horizontal to allow more lateral light inside, as well, I think, to make it more aesthetically pleasing. So 2 different windows, but it shows lessons learnt and improvement!
Perspex Apex
There used to be a flat ceiling cutting off the apex of the roof (like the horizontal bit of an “A”). I didn’t replace this, choosing to keep the extra space above. But the dividing wall between the 2 rooms we haves only goes up to the height of the old horizontal, leaving an open gap between the top of the wall and the ceiling.
My wife wanted a perspex ‘window’ there to let light travel between the 2 rooms.
Job Done! 🙂
So the attic ceiling is at least 14 cm lower than it was, but it’s a lot warmer in the winter, and cooler in the summer. Actually, I think it looks pretty cool all year round!
