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Insulation query with old house


nectarine

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Well it looks like winter is just a few months away and Mr. N. and I are looking to insulate our roof. We have an old house with a large walk in loft from which one can see the ininsulated beams and canal tiles. However, the floor of the loft is a false floor, there's about 14 inches of space between it and the ceiling of our living space below ... ideal for some insulation.

We're going to get some quotes - makes more sense to insulate in that space - and have some information about ouaot de cellulose. Is that rockwool?

But before going forward does anybody have any advice about insulation - what questions to ask (longevity of product?), what products are recommended and what is avoided? I understand there's some relief on your income tax as well.

All advice, tips, experiences welcomed. It may cost a lot (it's a big house) so we'd like to get it right. Thanks all.
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  • 10 months later...
There is a new scheme, announced by Mad Royale which is due t come in sometime soon, but as it has to be carried out be registered artisans, I also suggest it would be cheaper to do it yourself.

Shop around for the materials as there can be quite good offers, though it may still be cheaper to get it in UK. Ask Chancer about this.
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Ouaté de cellulose is finely shredded reclaimed paper. It is an extremely effective insulator. You can buy it with or without added borax, Google for information/arguments on this subject. The standard thickness for France is now 30cm.

I chose without borax, as I wasn't keen on borax powder getting into the house, and although it will eventually kill some insect pests I simply don't believe the claims made by some suppliers that it repels rodents.

There are plenty of contractors who will install it, but I decided to do

it myself, and shopped around online to get the material at the best price. It

is usually supplied in compressed bales of 15kg.

It is normally blown in with air by a machine. I tried doing it by hand, and don't recommend it. Apart from taking forever, it does not achieve the same aeration as the machine, and uses up to 50% more material.

After doing about 10% of the loft by hand over some days, I hired a machine for a weekend. The machine stays on the ground, preferably outside the house, and the bales are cut open and fed into a hopper at the top. The aerated material is blown via a 10cm diameter plastic tube to the loft. I used two 25 mtre lengths to reach the work area. This is the machine I hired [url]http://www.boisecomateriaude.com/souffleuse-cardeuse-ouate-c0-197-C80.html[/url] , and I persuaded a friend to load the hopper for me, as the bales are a bit heavy for my wife to handle.

The machine is stopped and started by a remote control by the person at the business end of the tube. It takes a bit of trial and error to get a suitable mixture and flow rate, and with hindsight, some sort of intercom would have been handy, but we managed after a bit of shouting back and forth.

It is a very dusty process! Both in the loft and by the machine. Breathing masks with replaceable filters, not the silly paper things, and goggles are essential. We finished the job, about 150 square metres, in two days.

30cm of insulation between suspended ceilings and loft floor:

[URL=http://s857.photobucket.com/user/nomoss/media/Posted%20on%20Forums/PA100010_zps474febf3.jpg.html][IMG]http://i857.photobucket.com/albums/ab131/nomoss/Posted%20on%20Forums/PA100010_zps474febf3.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Edit: I left the insulation as blown in, and laid an OSB floor on the beams, but the insulation can be left as is, and sprayed with a water mist to form a light crust to reduce dust from the surface.

The machine can also be used to mix water with the blown product for insulating vertical surfaces. There is plenty of information on line, in English and French showing how this is done.

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Hi

I would think 14 inches of still air was a good insulator

Why fill it, at the end of the day heat only moves via convection, conduction and radiation all insulating materials for the first two just stop air movement

crakpot
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