aemeijers wrote:
CJT wrote:
Phisherman wrote:

On Fri, 30 May 2008 09:01:27 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:


Attic Access Insulation
http://www.brandsconstruction.com/ph....php?f=12&t=12

What are your thoughts on stairway pull downs areas and insulation
in this area?



I cut sheet Styrofoam and secured/protected it with thin hardboard.
Also, I made a large cardboard box that slips over the folded
stairs. This box is getting a little raddy after 18 years of use
and I will make a flip-up hardboard hinged cover box someday.

No rush ...


I built a fence out of some scrap 1x8 I had laying around, and screwed
it to the attic floor, to keep the blown-in insulation from cascading
down whenever I opened the attic hatch. (no stairs, just a lift-out
panel.) I made sure to put space at one end to park my butt as I was
climbing up from the stepladder. I then cut several sheets of the
closed-cell foam panel stuff, that drop down inside this 1x8 fence,
and lay over the hatch so as to keep all the heat from rising up out
of the hallway. It is a bit of a PITA to juggle the foam sheets and
the hatch cover so everything falls back in place correctly when you
close it up, but aside from that it works okay, and the price was
right, as I had all the stuff laying around. If I was doing it right,
I'd have put a hinged top lid on, and glued the foam to that. Attic
is useless for storage with the blown-in anyway, so I don't need to
open it more than once a year just to check if it is all still there.

You definitely do need to do something to insulate that access hole,
otherwise your 15" of attic insulation starts acting like about 6",
due to the big heat chimney in the middle of it.

Adding insulation into the attic is my next project. We need to add another
10" of blown-in insulation but before we do I want to run some 2 x 8's and 2
x 10's across the joists at a diagonal (just a strip down the middle about 6
to 8' wide) so that once the insulation is blown in I can put in a floor for
storage and access. A man has to have a place to put his treasures (out of
his wife's sight).