Insulating My Old Loft Hatch (Reduce Winter Heating Costs)

hi everyone and welcome back to the channel so in this video i wanted to insulate my current loft hatch so i went off to the uh the local hardware store and i noticed that the the modern loft hatches they sell are made of plastic and i've got a layer of polystyrene insulation on them so i bought the equivalent polystyrene board to do my hatch so just a quick disclaimer before i begin i am not a qualified builder so please don't take my advice on how to do this and it does depend on your setup in your property please do your own research so i got the the hatch down and i noticed that i already had some draft excluders which would save me time later on didn't have to fit them so that's great so when i got the hatch down you can see that it's a fiberglass material inside a bag and that has been stapled to the hatch so there's a lot of areas where there's no insulation at all around the edge and there's no airtight seals so i began by removing the staples and taking this bag off and what i want to do is i want to insulate it and completely fill in any cracks or areas where air can leak because i don't want the warm air mixing me the cold air and you can see there's a piece of paper there from when it was originally done and it was actually done in 1997 so it's pretty old so now just having a look at the hatch i think it's made of pine and there's a thin piece of plywood and then these four pieces of pine which are jointed together to make the hatch so i wanted to start by filling in that main section of the hatch in the middle there and for that i used the piece of polystyrene that i bought from the diy shop and that is 25 millimeters thick which equates to a rough industrial standard which is okay for uh for roofing um it holds enough warmth in um there's lots of technical terms so as i say please do your own research on this so i cut a piece to size with a knife and then i just snapped it and i used some instant grab adhesive to attach it i used a solvent-free variety just so that the any solvents which would be there wouldn't melt the polystyrene so solvent-free is that better for that so then i pressed it into place a nice tight fit to make sure it's nice and secure and i cut another section so that area is the the main area of the hatch which is exposed on the other side to the room the outer parts are not so much exposed the kind of the lip where it lips onto the hatch frame i then went round with the instant grab and just sealed in any little gaps so i'll then use some aluminium tape when that was finished to seal all the joins where the polystory meets the wood and this will prevent any air coming up through the hatch hot air mixing with cold air or cold air mixing with hot air and this aluminium type is self-adhesive it's a little bit like flashband it connects really nicely and you can just push it on to fill in all little gaps so once i got a nice seal it was time for stage two now i now wanted to go ahead and cover the entire hatch so i used another layer of insulation i've got some various different insulations from previous projects on my workshop insulating that so i wanted to build up the layers to add to just to give it more effect and to make it um more insulated really so i just used uh the hatch as a template and drew around it with a pen and then cut this material out and before i stuck it on i just cut some strips and put these around the sides because the middle part was slightly raised so i just wanted to level it up a bit using the instant grab again and then i put instant grab all over everything to add this next layer and this layer is about three or four mil thick and the aluminium will help to reflect um differences in temperatures it would reflect the cold away stop it dropping down into the hotter room and vice versa so then i added another layer of instant grab for the final layer of insulation and i wanted this layer this final layer to be a hard layer so that it could protect all the softer insulation underneath and again i stuck that down and that is a layer of foam and aluminium again so once that was done i went round with a final layer of aluminium tape again to seal all the joints and i also went around all the edges just to help seal everything in and this should prevent any air escaping out into the loft you just don't want any cold air mixing with your warm air so that's it all finished now it took a while to do but i was pleased with how it turned out in the end i've got a nice seal there and the entire hatch is completely insulated now so the only thing left to do was to give the other side a quick roll with some white paint to freshen it up so i then added a layer of aluminium tape around the edges you can see there because there was a little void going all the way around where air can come through and i wanted to seal that off so look out for that on the lips of your hatch so the only thing left to do now was to put it back in place so if you did find this video useful please leave me a like and also comment and also consider subscribing if you haven't already for more videos and as always thank you very much for watching and i'll see you next time you

Channel: Phill Wyatt Projects

Views: 6,416

Rating: 4.8867927 out of 5

Keywords: how to insulate a loft hatch, insulate loft hatch, insulate attic hatch, how to insulate loft, how to insulate attic, how to insulate home, how to install insulation, how to stop draughts, how to fit draught excluder, how to use aluminium tape, how to insulate your loft, home improvement tips, diy

Id: YvA526jJD50

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020