Insulating your way out of a recession
The markets have gone haywire again today, and the last figures available show that unemployment is up. I was wondering, if we are heading for some sort of great depression-style meltdown, will we all start wearing hats? Back in the thirties everyone in the dole queue, dustbowl migration and workers march seemed to sport a trilby or flat cap.
The other strange thing about this meltdown is that everyone seems to be getting in much more of a tizz over this than the Iraq or Afghan wars. Surely, the death of thousands of innocents is far worse than economic hardship, even if millions of us are left with no jobs, money and eating leaves to survive. Better alive than dead.
Our bare-headed Prime Minister, Mr Brown thinks he can spend his way out of our problems. Some say that’s what eventually lifted the Great Depression.
An example that the Prime Minister gave of this increased spending was to train people to lag the roofs of the elderly. Sounds like quite a good idea, although I’m not sure it’ll more than a scratch the surface.
The reason Brown thinks lagging is a good idea is because the building regulations have changed. The amount of insulation required by legislation used to be 100 mm, which is fits nicely between the joists in your loft. Now the regulations require 270 mm of insulation – a thick snowdrift of the stuff.
Earlier in the year a member of Lewisham Council’s Energy Effiency team came round and told me how to make the flat more energy efficient. They left a leaflet for a company that provides a subsidised loft insulation service. ‘Subsidised’ set off money-saving alarm bells, so I arranged for the loft to be lagged.
It turns out that lagging lofts is pretty easy and I reckon I could have done it myself. Also the insulation itself is not too expensive (Wickes even have a ‘two for one’ offer), so there wasn’t much of a saving either. But at least the loft shouldn’t allow precious warmth to escape in the deep mid-winter.
The flat is T-shaped and Dawsetway, the insulation people, wouldn’t insulate the back loft over the bedroom. They’d only lag the one in the front of the house as the back loft is only about a foot and a half high and they (reasonably) thought they wouldn’t be able to get down there. I, however, unreasonably perhaps, thought I would.
Last weekend, with my head-torch strapped on, I opened the back hatch and crawled inside. This involved flopping myself onto boards layed across the joists, dragging my torso inside as far as possible and then slowly folding my just-short-enough legs through the hole. A broomstick was useful to prod it down to the end of the 10 metre space. Finally I finished after numerous journeys out to cut off more lengths of insulation. I was filthy, itchy but very satisfied, and also looking forward to a ready brek glow of energy efficiency.
I am all for insulation, it makes sense in terms of finance, having a warmer house and reducing use of a finite natural resource – gas. It’s a win, win, win situation. We’d better not forget a fourth ‘win’ too – the glow of satisfaction… or possibly smugness. However there is a problem with deeper insulation. As you’re not meant to put anything on the insulation, all your lovely loft storage space disappears. In a box-sized flat like mine, that’s not good.
Necessity is the mother of invention (and the Mothers of Invention were Frank Zappa’s band), so a platform was called for. This would be a structure above the 20 odd centimetres of insulation where which I could store stuff.
I had an idea about how to build a platform, but I thought I’d ask someone with a bit more DIY experience. So, I tried one of the guys down at Wickes. He said I shouldn’t bother with the insulation, unless I was renting out the flat and it would be subject to inspections by the council. I explained that it was a bit too late for that, so he suggested laying secondary lengths of wood along the top of joists, and then put a board across the top. As the insulation was lying at right angles to the joists I couldn’t very easily follow that plan.
My new loft platform hovering above the thick layer of insulation
This meant I would follow my original plan. I screwed small legs into the joists (or into the boards already screwed into the joists, where I used to store stuff) and popped a board on top. Each leg was about 25 cm high and had a supporting prop sticking out of it at 45 degrees. I used five legs – there was one in the middle – then screwed the board into them. I wouldn’t have a disco on it, in fact probably might not walk on it, but it’s definitely strong enough to support a few hundred CD cases.
One of the legs used to support the platform
It turns out you can insulate your loft with something called Celotex, which are hard insulation boards, and you can store stuff on this if you screw wooden boards on top. As it’s more expensive I doubt that’s what the new cadres of government loft insulators will use - so there’s a business idea: an easy to assemble storage platform for the millions of houses who find their lofts have been over run by piles of scratchy yellow stuff.
Tags: Celotex, Gordon Brown, Great Depression, Loft insulation, storage space
October 27th, 2008 at 9:20 am
The guy at Wickes said don’t bother with insulation? What was his reasoning? Did he advise you to chuck fistfuls of money out your window as well, and that climate change is a myth? Jeez.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I think the chap thought it was just another annoying regulation to be avoided in the cause of an easier life. I agree - utterly daft. The regulations might mean extra cost and effort in the short term, but the increased warmth, decreased energy bill not to mention the benefit to the environment are all fairly clear. Being green is another way of being tight, as they say.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I got two rolls from B+Q 100mm thick to lay on the 100mm odd of v. dirty - I wish my wife was that dirty - insulation already down. It seems to have done something. Who’d have thought insulation could be so interesting?