Loft Insulation and Plumbing the En-Suite

There has been an extended period of cold weather in the UK, so we thought maybe it was time that the rolls of loft insulation that have been in the loft since mid-summer were actually unpacked and laid. Two layers are required, 150mm thick between the roof joists, then another 150mm laid at 90 degrees across the top of everything. As access to the loft space is still required for a few cabling jobs etc, for the moment I am just doing the "between" layer.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon up in the loft doing what must be one of the worst jobs in the world. Despite freezing temperatures outside, a loft soon becomes a very hot space when you are wriggling underneath beams and manipulating big rolls of insulation. I bought rolls that were about 2m wide, semi-cut into 3 strips (i.e. cut half thickness), supposedly to match the "standard" joist spacing. This is the loft over the new extension, so we thought it probably best to use the official insulation as specified by the structural engineer, rather than the sheep fleece we have used elsewhere, and described previously in this blog. Anyway, it is a big space, and would require a lot of fleece !

A whole roll of insulation is quite hard to manipulate in a confined space so in the end I found the easiest way was to use a kitchen bread-knife to hack the roll into it's three component parts before unrolling it. Most of the strips then fitted reasonably well into the joist spacing, though maybe 1 in 5 had to be trimmed. However, the trimmings were good for fitting in the small spaces between the last joist and the wall, so there was very little wastage.

The loft above Victoria's room is complete between the joists, and above the master bedroom 3/4 complete. Just the remaining 1/4 and the en-suite space to go.

I remember dealing with loft insulation when I was much younger, and the fibres stuck in your skin and really itched. The modern stuff seems different. I was prepared with latex gloves, but didn't really need them. However, I did find I needed a mask as it seems to give off a very irritating dust that causes coughs and sneezing. With a mask, my glasses steamed up, so I had to dispense with them, hence ended up with red puffy itchy eyes. Really, not a pleasant job at all.

Today, I could not face more time confined in the loft, so Dad came over and we made a start on the plumbing to the en-suite bathroom. When the central heating was installed I had hot and cold pipes run from the boiler to under the floor just inside the bathroom door. Today we positioned the bathroom cabinet onto which the basin will be fitted and cut holes in the bottom, then down through the floor to carry the water pipes. The hot and cold feeds rise into the cupboard where we have installed shut-off valves so that the whole bathroom can be isolated. They then go back down under the floor where they will distribute to the other appliances :

The basin tap is a mono-block which comes with copper tails which screw into the bottom (with a rubber o-ring) and then solder onto your pipe work. I was a little concerned about this as, once the solder joints are made, you have no opportunity to tighten the screw joint if it leaks. I opted instead to buy some flexible tails with a compression joint on the end. This makes it much easier to fit, and to "tweak" later if it needs it. The clothes pegs in the picture are just to hold the pipework at the right level, and give away the fact that none of the connections under the floor have been made yet !

The cabinet is not, in fact, designed for a bathroom at all. The holes in the back are not for plumbing - it is a printer cabinet for a home office and the holes are for cabling ! The top is going to be tiled, so for the moment I have used a piece of 9mm ply under the tap to get the spacing right.

One piece of old technology was brought into play today. In order to drill the holes down through the cork floor covering without doing any damage, Dad brought over a hand-brace and an assortment of bits. It wasn't easy to use in awkward areas up against the wall etc, as the threaded tip of the bit tends to pull it into the wood a little faster than the cutting blade would need, hence it jams, but the finished hole is excellent, with no damage at all to the cork. It is not really an issue here, under the cupboard, but there are other areas (toilet for example) where the pipe will rise from the floor in a visible place.