The attic is a non-residential under-roof space, which is usually not heated, on the one hand it is limited by the roof, and on the other - by ceilings. Here isolation is usually carried out in order to cut off the main housing from the street. Since the roof accounts for a large part of the heat loss, attic insulation is a very important task, which should be taken as seriously as possible. High-quality work can significantly reduce these losses, as well as the cost of heating the home, contributes to the formation of a normal microclimate inside the building.
Attic insulation is most often carried out in two ways - the material can be fixed to the roof slopes with little insulation of the attic floor, or only the floor can be protected. The difference will be both in technology and in the air temperature in the attic in winter. Roof slopes are insulated using slab or rolled mineral wool materials. If ato isolate the attic floor, then you can use expanded polystyrene, mineral wool, granular heat insulators. Although they are quite cheap, they all require the use of additional hydro and vapor barrier layers. These layers are membranes and films, fixed with great care over the entire surface that needs to be insulated, and their main function is to prevent water from entering the layer of the main protective material.
If the attic is insulated poorly or incorrectly, then the material used may begin to accumulate moisture in itself, which significantly reduces its thermal insulation properties, leading to fairly rapid destruction.
The board and roll materials that are commonly used have another disadvantage, they have seams that can transmit quite a lot of heat. Seams appear both in the places where the plates adjoin the structural elements, and where they are joined. Attic insulation in this way, even with very high-quality laying, leads to the fact that the overall efficiency is reduced by 15-25%. That is why it is required to process all joints and junctions with mounting foam.
It is worth remembering about such a feature of mineral wool and granular insulation as fast shrinkage in the first years of operation, which can be 15%. When choosing the thickness, it is important to add another 15% to the required indicator, which will compensate for this shrinkage. In the same way, it is worth choosing a heater for the ceiling.
It turns out that the apparent simplicity and cheapness of installing traditional materials used for insulation is nothing more than a myth.
If you follow the technology of their laying, as well as the requirements prescribed in building codes for calculating the required thickness, you can significantly increase the price of the material itself, as well as provide for additional work that involves the installation of special layers of insulation, as well as styling. The same can be said about facade insulation systems.
