Keeping your home warm / heating / energy crisis / insulation etc

I just bought a LoftZone kit (raised legs and metal channels) and OSB T&G boards - for 3.6*3.6m worth, came to about £400 (plus another £100 or so for insulated loft hatch and a ladder).

The outlay for the boards and legs could arguably be double that if you want to board the whole thing - but could always insulate it all and only board some of it.

We got lucky with respect to the extra 170mm insulation having been added about ten years back via a government grant/scheme of sorts.

And @Howard

Would probably mainly be used in unoccupied rooms for drying laundry and when I'm out so guess it's not worth it.

Our loft is already boarded and insulated, however, I don't think it's that good.

I was actually thinking about insulating the loft roof, but from reading it sounds like increasing the loft floor insulation would probably be better.

If I can find matching loft boards to replace any damaged ones then I think that will save a chunk of costs.

That said idk how all the shit in our loft doesn't = insulation

How much did it cost in the end?

I don’t remember the insulation itself being massively expensive. Shop around as the prices vary quite a bit and a lot of the chains put it on special offer. DEFINITELY get the no itch rock wool type, wear a dust mask and get some long rubber gloves to keep the fibres off your hands and arms.

As @eskay said, the loftlegs and loft board packs ended up being ££££££££. It’s far cheaper if you can chopsaw legs yourself and cut boards yourself from 8x4 sheet, but I didn’t have any way of doing this. The loftlegs are definitely a way more convenient way of doing it - great invention!

if you can chopsaw legs yourself

Google images isn't throwing up any results for DIY equivalents.

Loft Zone say that adding extra joists puts too much weight on top. Obvs they would say that tho.

My thermostat is a bit old and sometimes loses connection to our boiler. Should I get a Nest thermostat fitted?

I think the best price per SQM for 100mm I've seen is Knauf Eko from B+Q. £2.70. It's rather annoying that there are so many different names for the same product. (Loft 44/ earthwool loft roll/Eko/space bottom layer)

No harm in having control and visibility over your energy use in the house

Also consider tado and Drayton wiser.

Cheapest loft insulation near me was wickes.

I've just installed 6 rolls of the Knauf Eko stuff from B&Q, much cheaper than Rockwool and seems the business, easy to roll out and handle.

There are lots of options, I've got one of these Netatmo ones which was cheap and, most importantly, really easy to fit with a variety of different installation options.

Doesn't do the learning stuff but being able to switch your heating off remotely has been invaluable at times.

I have a netatmo too - the only 'smart' aspect is the heating comes on before the setpoint or something like that. Not that I am too bothered about that right now

I've turned that off as my heating struggles to actually hit the setpoint so it turned it on really early. It also lets you pull out graphs and data and shit and link in to Alexa, etc.

PIR insulation like Kingspan or Ecotherm is about twice as good as fibreglass roll for the same thickness. It’s loads more expensive, and needs neatly cutting so probably too dear if you’re paying an installer rather than DIY, but it could be worth running the numbers to see if 100mm of it between your existing joists is cheaper than 200mm of fibreglass and the fancy Loft Zone kit.

No wonder my house gets old, as soon as we're out of summer. These wall were very cold to touch and often wet in winter.

This was my external wall - they clearly weren't big fans of insulation in the 60s!

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Good shout.

Also I'm not sure I factored in having to rotate my existing loft boards - which I think I'd have to do with loft legs.

Kingspan

Nah fuck those guys

Oh yeah. Shit. Not them. Celotex maybe. There are various.

talk to me about portable heater options for when I'm working in one room vs having the heating on.

It's Celotex that loopholed their insulation.

We've got a couple of those oil-filled rads for wfh when there's no heating on. Better than a fan heater for efficiency I think and do a good job in heating a small room. Bit chunky though.

Yeh I’d start with looking at oil heaters

Our loft is well insulated among the rafters then boarded out. Anyone able to comment on whether it is worth the additional cost/effort of insulating the underside of the roof. Tondo correctly looks somewhat non trivial/potentially fraught eg the cold roof approach described in https://www.ecotherm.co.uk/educate/blogs/how-to-insulate-a-room-in-the-roof

I’d only bother if you need to use it like a room or store stuff in it that needs stable temperatures.