Loft insulation; covering downlighters and board for storage

Hello again,

I need to add some loft insulation, so am buying 170 mm from one of the DIY sheds (any suggestions for a better/cheaper source would be appreciated).

• There is some old insulation in the loft that was probably about 100 mm thick and sits between the rafters, so was proposing to put the new 170 mm insulation across the rafters at right angles. What do you think, a good idea?
• Some rooms (bathroom and landing) have MR16 downlighters. I propose to make a sort of small 'ridge tent' out of plasterboard to go over these in the loft to allow a little air circulation and to, hopefully, stop the light fitting and transformer from overheating. Is this a good approach, I think I saw that suggestion on here or another online source of advice.
• I also propose to use some plastic 'loft flooring legs' with board on to maintain the loft storgae area. What board could be used; I was thinking 12 mm chipboard being lowest cost (8 x 4 ripped into suitable strips)?

I planr to start this over the weekend.

Thank you for your advice. I have had such good advice on here

Steve

 

Sucessfully did the job yesterday

I put some horizontal 3" x 2" across the existing roof supports about 550 mm above the rafters (sorry about mixing the imperial and metric units) and covered these in 8' x 2' 18mm TG. There should be enough crawl space to fit insulation at a later date. These 8' x 2' could fit up through the loft hatch (I am sure that is the intention) and interlocked so little effort was required to fit them.

The whole length of the loft was covered on one half only (3 lengths of sheeting) with about 2' being cut off the end pieces, which also allowed the two rows to be offset to form a stretcher type bond. A few screws only were used to fix down into 3"x 2" supports and a small gap (~ 75mm) at each end to allow air circulation and to allow removal of end sheets in case the need arrives in the future.

So, for storage a shelf 20' x 4' was formed. The other side of the loft has the hatch, cold water tank etc so was left as is. The offcuts and andther sheets was used to board an area alongside the majority of this large shelf. Cost, without labour, was about £65.

Someone (not me I think) is to investigate grants for loft insulation and will worry about covering the downlights at a later date.

Hope this information may help others inthe future, perhaps allowing me return some of the great advice I've got on this forum.

Steve

(do you want photos? - have some on 'phone)