Hi,
First time poster, and apologies for another loft boarding / insulation thread - can't find the specific answers to solve my loft-related woes.
Just moved into a new house and am looking to stash some of that timed-earned clutter up in the loft. After some trawling the forums between the day job and putting up shelves, cross battens seems the no-brainer route for simplicity / cost effectiveness, and I'm after some sage advice about the sizes and loading involved in putting cross battens down. The basics:
- 1940's semi with steep pitched roof and loads of head room so no worries about raising the floor height. Future aspirations of full habitable space in the loft, but not for a good couple of years yet.
- Joists/rafters all 3x2 at ~500mm spacing, if you'll pardon my imperial metrics
- Single supporting wall running lengthways along the loft, 2m from one side, 3m from the other
- Ye Olde Original insulation between existing joists, depth varies somewhat around 60-80mm
- 200mm glass fibre insulation at 90deg to joists
- Only the centre section between the two struts spaced at 2.5m needs to be used for storage (for now...).
So, if I'm going to counter batten, then board on top without compressing the additional insulation, I'm going to need 8x2 joists... sitting on top of 3x2s...?! Seems like a heap of loading to be putting on the rather slender original joists?
If that's going to be too much, I'm figuring I could go for smaller counter battens, then put insulation boards (Celotex?) between the counter battens and board over that lot. If that's the road to take, how thick would I need to go on the counter battens/insulation boards to meet regs and keep the house warm? My postage-stamp calculations come out at 100mm. This seems a more intuitive approach to take, but I'm open to suggestions!
Humble thanks in advance for any advice!
First time poster, and apologies for another loft boarding / insulation thread - can't find the specific answers to solve my loft-related woes.
Just moved into a new house and am looking to stash some of that timed-earned clutter up in the loft. After some trawling the forums between the day job and putting up shelves, cross battens seems the no-brainer route for simplicity / cost effectiveness, and I'm after some sage advice about the sizes and loading involved in putting cross battens down. The basics:
- 1940's semi with steep pitched roof and loads of head room so no worries about raising the floor height. Future aspirations of full habitable space in the loft, but not for a good couple of years yet.
- Joists/rafters all 3x2 at ~500mm spacing, if you'll pardon my imperial metrics
- Single supporting wall running lengthways along the loft, 2m from one side, 3m from the other
- Ye Olde Original insulation between existing joists, depth varies somewhat around 60-80mm
- 200mm glass fibre insulation at 90deg to joists
- Only the centre section between the two struts spaced at 2.5m needs to be used for storage (for now...).
So, if I'm going to counter batten, then board on top without compressing the additional insulation, I'm going to need 8x2 joists... sitting on top of 3x2s...?! Seems like a heap of loading to be putting on the rather slender original joists?
If that's going to be too much, I'm figuring I could go for smaller counter battens, then put insulation boards (Celotex?) between the counter battens and board over that lot. If that's the road to take, how thick would I need to go on the counter battens/insulation boards to meet regs and keep the house warm? My postage-stamp calculations come out at 100mm. This seems a more intuitive approach to take, but I'm open to suggestions!
Humble thanks in advance for any advice!
