Photo: Ivan Samkov

Can insulation be laid over joists?

If access is easy and your loft joists are regular, you can use rolls of mineral wool insulation. The first layer is laid between the joists – the horizontal beams that make up the floor of the loft – then another layer is laid at right angles to cover the joists and make the insulation up to the required depth.

energysavingtrust.org.uk - Roof and loft insulation guide - Energy Saving Trust

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An alternative way to insulate your loft is to fit rigid insulation boards between and over the rafters. Rafters are the sloping timbers that make up the roof itself. This isn’t a DIY job, so you’ll need a specialist professional to insulate your roof. The roof space will be warmer than with standard loft insulation, so you won’t need to worry so much about freezing tanks and pipes. You can board the floor for storage without having to raise it to create extra depth.

Disadvantages:

Insulating at rafter level is much more expensive than most standard loft insulation. As well as insulating the roof, you will have to insulate any gable walls, party walls and chimneys in the loft space. If you leave these uninsulated, then the heat will bypass your new insulation making it ineffective. Insulating at rafter level is fundamentally less efficient than insulating the loft floor. This is because you’ll need to heat a larger volume of air (the air in the loft as well as the air in the rest of the house) and you’ll have a larger surface area losing heat to the outside. Some companies may offer to fix your damaged or leaking roof by spraying foam insulation directly onto the underside of the roof without fixing the problem first. We don’t recommend that you do this. As with any type of insulation, you need to make sure that the roof is dry and in good condition before adding any insulation. Also, right now many mortgage companies aren’t willing to offer loans for properties with foam insulation in the roof, which can make it very difficult to sell a property with this type of insulation. If you want to turn your loft into a heated, useable room, then you need to take a slightly different approach and carry out a loft conversion to create a room in the roof.

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What is the best insulator in the world?

aerogel A: The best insulator in the world right now is most probably aerogel, with silica aerogels having thermal conductivities of less than 0.03 W/m*K in atmosphere. of aerogel preventing ice from melting on a hot plate at 80 degrees Celsius! Aerogel has its amazing properties because it's mostly made out of air.

van.physics.illinois.edu - What is the Best Insulator? | Physics Van | UIUC

A:

The best insulator in the world right now is most probably aerogel, with silica aerogels having thermal conductivities of less than 0.03 W/m*K in atmosphere. of aerogel preventing ice from melting on a hot plate at 80 degrees Celsius! Aerogel has its amazing properties because it's mostly made out of air. In the manufacturing process, first you create a gel, then you remove all the liquid in such a way that the gel walls don't collapse, thus leaving tons of little air pockets. These air pockets then basically shut down conduction and convection, making heat transfer very slow. The way they remove the liquid is really cool - it doesn't work to just evaporate it, because that would end up collapsing the gel, so they actually need to heat up the liquid past the liquid-gas critical point to become a supercritical fluid, then maneuver it back down to a gas. It's nuts! I think a thermos with an aerogel core is a very good idea. In fact, they already exist, and you can find some for sale online!

Matt Z.

Another material that's often used in good lab thermos bottles, called cryostats, is vacuum with layers of superinsulation wrapping. The wrapping is thin plastic (Mylar) coated with a film of aluminum. The vacuum means that there are very few air molecules to conduct heat, and the mylar keeps them from traveling far, sort of like the aerogel. The aluminum reflects thermal radiation, keeping it from carrying heat well. Mike W.

(published on 02/08/2015)

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