Loft insulation case study – Richmond London

Yesterday, The GreenAge team went to help a local resident with her loft insulation.

Normally we would recommend a local installer to carry out the works but the resident was very keen to get the loft insulation in place before Christmas, so we thought we’d go and do it ourselves!

The local resident is called Phyllis and she is 93 years old and lives alone in a large semi detached house. Her health issues means she lives a fairly sedentary lifestyle and because she’s not moving around much, she says she often feels cold. As a result, she spends loads of money on heating, which leaks out of her home and constantly needs topping up. Phyllis had a small amount of insulation in the loft already (about 100mm), but it was in disrepair and needed topping up.

Phyllis said she’d looked into getting double glazing upstairs but had been quoted over £4,000 so was looking for other measures to keep her home warm – free loft insulation was a bit of a no-brainer.

Loft insulation is quick and easy to install, but it is a really effective way to keep your house warm and save you money on energy bills. Obviously, heat rises, and without a barrier it can go straight up and out of your roof. Loft insulation can stop up to 20% of your heating escaping.

We choose Knauf Earthwool as the material to insulate the loft; it is a flexible glass mineral wool quilt which is lightweight, resilient and non-combustible. Unfortunately like most loft insulation it is still really itchy, so before we started the job we suited up to try and minimise the contact of the wool with our skin. The aim was to add an additional 200mm of this insulation on top of the old insulation to produce a nice 300mm thick blanket in Phyllis’s loft.

The job was finished in less than 2 hours and we left a happy customer who will hopefully feel an instant difference in the warmth of her home!

Job done!