Insulation

I spent most of Sunday putting more insulation in the loft. Despite the argument about climate change/global warming, nobody's denying that there are finite reserves of oil, gas and coal, and using less of them is subsequently a good idea. That, and the facts that the house gets really cold during winter, and that it'll save me money (possibly quite quickly), all seemed to make it appeal to me.

It was a relatively easy thing to do, but it did take about 5 hours, and most of that time was spent going up and down a ladder, and scooting about in the roof.

The real pain was that I couldn't get the whole rolls of insulation up into the roof, as the hatch is only about 30cm wide, and about 50cm long (yeah, I do only just fit up there!), and the rolls were about 40cm wide. There was also so compressed that I couldn't squeeze them at all. What I ended up doing was cutting up the rolls then having to partially unroll the pieces before I could tkae them into the roof. It was very messy, and I'm glad I wore a mask and gloves.

Our house was built in about 1890, and it didn't seem like much had been done up there for ages. There was signs of some rewiring going on: the original wiring was very neatly done and enclosed in pipes. TThe rewring was a mess of different gauges of wire (oh yes). There was one wire which I pulled and tripped out the whole of the lighting service. I was sure to neaten that up before I put the power back on. Apart from that, the main problem was the dirt: it was absolutely filthy. Some of this may have been soot, but I think a lot of it was general filth. Again, the gloves and mask were by friends.

Laying the insultation wasn't too hard - just strenuous. I found a length of pipe in the roof, which was really useful for pushing the insulation into the corners. The serated bread knife the last inhabitants left behind also proved useful: easily cutting through the insulation when I need to leave gaps for the chimey breast and loft hatch.

It was a messy messy job, and I ended up throwing away the old clothes I use for DIY - they were filthly and full of small bits of insulating.

So, was it worth it? I don't bloody know, as it's apparently been milder this week. Fucking weather.