Hello,
I have been reading posts and comments on this forum for a long time. I have not participated, mostly because I am not a homeowner. However, I am impressed by all the knowledge shared here, which has helped me in situations.
Next year, however, there will be big changes as my partner and I will move into a house. The house is a turnkey new build being constructed in an area with several houses. All the houses are built by the same company with subcontractors. Ours is part of stage 3, as stages 1 and 2 have been completed and handed over to buyers up to 2.5 years ago.
Among other things, the house is attractive to us because the small upstairs is delivered unfinished (40 square meters). However, the floor structure is dimensioned for being finished, and water/sewage and electricity have been installed, and windows are fitted. It is well underway, so to speak, but needs to be completed when finances allow.
The upstairs is thus more or less an attic and is uninsulated except for the layer of 500mm of loose-fill insulation blown over the floor. If after moving in I want to lay down subflooring to both utilize the upstairs for storage and prepare for what will eventually become a usable upstairs, what do you, with knowledge, recommend to consider?
Should I raise the floor, lay additional joists, to lay subflooring on these and thereby not compress the loose-fill insulation too much? Or can I place the subflooring directly on the existing joists and thereby compress the loose-fill insulation from about 500mm to about 220mm? Or should I perhaps ask the construction company to insulate using another method or lay less loose-fill insulation?
Thank you for your input!
I have been reading posts and comments on this forum for a long time. I have not participated, mostly because I am not a homeowner. However, I am impressed by all the knowledge shared here, which has helped me in situations.
Next year, however, there will be big changes as my partner and I will move into a house. The house is a turnkey new build being constructed in an area with several houses. All the houses are built by the same company with subcontractors. Ours is part of stage 3, as stages 1 and 2 have been completed and handed over to buyers up to 2.5 years ago.
Among other things, the house is attractive to us because the small upstairs is delivered unfinished (40 square meters). However, the floor structure is dimensioned for being finished, and water/sewage and electricity have been installed, and windows are fitted. It is well underway, so to speak, but needs to be completed when finances allow.
The upstairs is thus more or less an attic and is uninsulated except for the layer of 500mm of loose-fill insulation blown over the floor. If after moving in I want to lay down subflooring to both utilize the upstairs for storage and prepare for what will eventually become a usable upstairs, what do you, with knowledge, recommend to consider?
Should I raise the floor, lay additional joists, to lay subflooring on these and thereby not compress the loose-fill insulation too much? Or can I place the subflooring directly on the existing joists and thereby compress the loose-fill insulation from about 500mm to about 220mm? Or should I perhaps ask the construction company to insulate using another method or lay less loose-fill insulation?
Thank you for your input!
You should probably address the insulation issue first to avoid ending up in a dead end or increasing the cost of completion to living space. If you raise the floor joists, you lose standing height. Find out how to proceed with insulating the ceiling and gables before starting with any flooring. If you remove the loose fill insulation or parts of it, you need to compensate for this if you don't want to end up with very poor insulation.
Thank you for your input. You are onto something I have suspected as a solution, i.e., if I am to lay a floor that can be used for the future upper floor in the long term, I should probably insulate everything at once, i.e., walls and the ceiling for the future attic space. Feel free to share more reflections.
I'm currently decorating the upper floor of our house. In our case, the house supplier (Anebyhus) offered a fully furnished upper floor, an insulated but unfinished upper floor, or a completely uninsulated upper floor. We chose the latter. However, we moved in with the intention of insulating and decorating as soon as possible.
What was good about Anebyhus was that they facilitated things for me by providing all the blueprints on how the upper floor was intended to be built. Additionally, they smartly used board insulation instead of loose-fill insulation between and on the floor joists. This allowed me to use the board insulation laid on top of the floor joists in the sloped ceilings
But if you don't plan to finish the upper floor right away, you must have more insulation than what fits between the floor joists. That is, you'll have to wait to lay the floorboards until you have insulated the walls and ceiling and can remove the insulation down to the floor joists.
And you can forget about compressing the loose-fill insulation. Firstly, I don't think it's possible to halve the thickness, and secondly, it doesn't insulate well if it's compressed. It should be fluffy—it's actually the air inside that insulates, not the insulation itself.
What was good about Anebyhus was that they facilitated things for me by providing all the blueprints on how the upper floor was intended to be built. Additionally, they smartly used board insulation instead of loose-fill insulation between and on the floor joists. This allowed me to use the board insulation laid on top of the floor joists in the sloped ceilings
But if you don't plan to finish the upper floor right away, you must have more insulation than what fits between the floor joists. That is, you'll have to wait to lay the floorboards until you have insulated the walls and ceiling and can remove the insulation down to the floor joists.
And you can forget about compressing the loose-fill insulation. Firstly, I don't think it's possible to halve the thickness, and secondly, it doesn't insulate well if it's compressed. It should be fluffy—it's actually the air inside that insulates, not the insulation itself.
Thank you for your reply Micke. Insulation boards are indeed much easier to move/remove. Similarly, one does not want to remove all of it in order to have a soundproofing layer in the floor to the downstairs. I think I have a question that should be addressed to the supplier (Derome) about the possibility of changing the insulation to boards for the part that constitutes the upper floor. There are also parts that are insulated and form the attic, which can preferably have loose fill.