aAsk a Tradesman

I have a 1930's house with a crawl space under the floor with no insulatation and the floors are very cold. Can you insulate between the joists under the house?

I have a 4 bedroom Waites Dormer Chalet style house - think of a very large bungalow with 2 bedrooms and a bathroom built into the roof. These rooms are very cold, the walls are just boarded. Along both lengths of the house, on either side of the upstairs bedrooms, are very large eaves cupboards. The loft area above the bedrooms I plan to insulate with Rockwall (£3 a roll form b&q).

The roof area inside the eaves cupboards I plan to insulate using celotex between the rafters. The rafters are only 100mm deep so I plan to use 50mm celotex between them and then board over the top of the rafters with 100mm celotex holding into position by nailing it directly to the rafters and taping over the gaps. Is this the best way?

Thanks B J D Building and AJ Plastering. The roof in the eaves will have 150mm Celotex when finished although according to their website I should be able to get a building regs U rating using 50mm + 80mm Celotex.

The loft area above the bedrooms will be covered in 270mm of rockwool or equivalent.

One other question. A retired builder friend has built a stud wall at the gable end, each side of the house. The gabel walls as far as I can tell are just plasterboard, the exterior faced with tiles - I'm not sure what lies between.

Into the cavity between the stud wall and the original plasterboard he has stuffed rockwool but I cannot see any evidence of a vapour barrier. He has not used foil backed boards. Is this going to create a damp problem further down the line or will moisture pass through the exterior wall like I assume it did originally?

Thanks for your advice so far.

Graham

I have recently moved into a bungalow. The previous owner has installed 4 cieling spot lights into each room. When I have gone into the loft i noticed he has removed chunks of the loft inslation from above were all the spot lights are situated. Meaning my insulated roof is not really insulated! Can I put the insulation back over the lights or could this be a fire hazard.

It's a restoration project. An old house in France with a very small attic. New roof, but not insulated. Tiles, under that, wooden lats, and then beams. Lots of leaves, etc, blowing into attic through gaps in wooden lats. We don't know if and how we can seal these gaps without causing problems down the line with dry rot or damp. We want to insulate the attic and plasterboard over it so we can have a small bedroom.

British Gas recently insulated our loft and not long after we noticed wet patches on an outside wall in one of the bedrooms. We have since had roof vents fitted and soffits in the fascia just under the gutters but the problem is getting worse and we have wet patches in two rooms now. We had a new fascia fitted just over a year ago and when it rained heavy the first time, the wall became wet. The company came back and said that one of the clips had been left off and things seemed OK after this but since having the insulation done everything has got worse. There are now damp and wet patches in the bedrooms where the roof vents have been fitted.

I have tried so many websites and none really seem to have the answer. Some websites don't recommend having insulation fitted if you have damp problems - should we get British Gas back to remove the insulation - could it be "suffocating" our house?

Any help or ideas as to who we should be contacting would really be very gratefully received.

They keep waking each other up as you can easily hear talking between the walls. How can I soundproof it - reasonably cheaply but it has to work as I am not getting much sleep!!! Also, there isn't really enough room to do anything 1 side as the door is next to the wall. I have plenty of space the other side though up to a foot that I wouldn't mind loosing if it made a difference.

There is only one external wall in the room and adequate insulation measures have been carried out. Is there anything else we could do?

I've got 2 questions about Rockwool / Acoustic Mineral Wool (AMW) and soundproofing my flat.

I've got a ground floor Victorian semi-detached maisonette and I'm looking to install some soundproofing above my ceiling boards. The upstairs flat has their floorboards laid directly on the timber joists, so I know that I'm not going to get rid of the sound completely.

I would like to use Rockwool flexi 1200x400 as the joists are roughly 400mm apart, and these slabs would fit into the cavity. I have done the measurements and I know that I need 64 slabs in total for my bedroom and lounge.

1) My first question is about what thickness of slab I should get. I realise that if money were no objection I would go for the 100mm / 140mm slabs; but that is sadly not the case. I want to know if there's a very big difference between the 50mm and 60mm slabs in terms of sound dampening.

2) Does anyone know where I can get these size slabs from at a reasonable (i.e. lowest) price from? I've noticed that the size that I want isn't readily available, but that a lot of suppliers only stock the 600mm wide slabs, which would mean a whole lot of cutting to size and therefore a LOT of waste.

Thanks, in anticipation of many good, helpful answers :)