Browse Forums Heating, Cooling & Insulation 1 Oct 09, 2014 1:24 pm Hi all. Sorry to start with such a long post! I'm getting a bit confused with all the possible options for this job - more choices than I can get my mind around. First the context. I plan to replace the rooofing iron on a small 120-year-old miner's cottage. The hardwood frame is still in very good condition; only the iron needs to be replaced. The roof is a double gable, each one covering roughly 6m by 4m at a pitch of about 40 degrees or so. The ceiling (or floor of the attic space if you like) is timber lined on the inside with masonite. Currently there is no ceiling insulation worth mentioning, just some ratty old sarking (some of it foil, some of it cloth) plus the last remains of some kind of fluffy organic fibre insulation (no idea what it was but I know it's not anything nasty like asbestos because a sample smoulders away to nothing with a smell like burning cloth or paper when I put a match to it). Ballarat has (by Australian standards) very cold winters but also has hot summers, 35 degree days are common enough and every year has a few 40+ days, so winter warmth and summer cool both matter. The walls are uninsulated weatherboard which was aluminium-clad (not by me!) 40-odd years ago. The cladding, which has an air gap and silver sarking underneath, is remarkably effective at keeping the heat out, but useless in winter. The wooden floor is barely above ground level and effectively sealed up: I doubt that it is a significant contributor to heat loss or gain. I am slowly removing the wall cladding, together with the ancient old weatherboards underneath, and installing new weatherboards over foil insulation and pink bats, but only small sections at a time in-between other jobs; there is no great hurry to finish it. Clearly, new roof aside, the priority is to install bulk insulation on the ceiling and renew the sarking. From my reading here - particularly in this excellent thread : viewtopic.php?f=35&t=24516 - I understand that roofspace ventilation is of only marginal benefit (none at all in winter) and that reflective foil is far more effective at keeping heat out. Is there much benefit having multiple layers of foil? For example, given that the iron has to be replaced anyway, it would be easy enough to run new sarking immediately under the iron and another layer on the inside of the 4x2 roof beams. (I.e., leaving a 4 inch gap between the two, which it might or might not be worth part-filling with fibreglass by using a glass-foil combination product like Permastop. Or the inner layer could be Foilboard. Or I could put foil on top of the ceiling bats instead. Or both. It seems that the permutations are endless! I don't want to spend a fortune but after all it is a very small house, so a bit of extra material won't matter much. For example, it would only cost around $80 to add an extra layer of reflective foil; about $400 to line the gables with R1.3 Permastop foil/bat; or around $450 to line them with 10mm Foilboard. Or is it better to put all of the material on top of the ceiling (presumably some combination of bats and foil) and regard the temperature of the roof space as irrelevant 'coz all of the insulation is underneath it? Sorry again for the length of this question! you need a fridgie to answer but I would think you vac the whole system then add gas if you have a leak, unless it is new install with the gas already loaded, in that case… 1 3639 We have a Victorian style ripple iron fence out the front that has some moulded timber capping. Probably 15+ years old and has cracked and splintered in parts...not really… 0 2485 Your house roof does not show rusting other than some surface rust on the flashings. In my opinion you dont need to replace or paint the roof other than treat surface rust… 1 10105 |