Due to the low angle of my roof I cannot get into all parts of the main
roof-space in fact part of the roof space was totally inaccessible until
I put in a small roof access trapdoor.
Due to my general decrepidness I cannot crawl through this 15" square
aperture with limited headroom to lay fibre insulation and I wondered
about using polybeads and blowing them in there. Can I hire the blower
kit and buy bags of the stuff? any advice please? fire risks? etc
Don

On Dec 1, 11:55 am, Donwill wrote:
Due to the low angle of my roof I cannot get into all parts of the main
roof-space in fact part of the roof space was totally inaccessible until
I put in a small roof access trapdoor.
Due to my general decrepidness I cannot crawl through this 15" square
aperture with limited headroom to lay fibre insulation and I wondered
about using polybeads and blowing them in there. Can I hire the blower
kit and buy bags of the stuff? any advice please? fire risks? etc
Don

what about them blowing around after you've done it? someone on here
(I think) described having "snow" blizzards every time the trap door
was opened...i.e. Right PITA

fire - yes they would be flammable (unless you can get some treated
ones?) and would be *bad* news if the fire started up there... but if
fire started below in rest of house you'd probly be outside (or dead)
by the time they caught light...

Cheers
JimK

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:55:08 +0000, Donwill wrote:

I wondered about using polybeads and blowing them in there. Can I hire
the blower kit and buy bags of the stuff? any advice please? fire risks?
etc

I though Vermeculite (sp?) was the normal sort of lumpy loft
insulation. I wonder about blowing it in though, I don't think you
have much control on where it landed. All right in a cavity wall
where it's contained but in the more open space of a roof void?

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 1 Dec, 12:18, "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

I though Vermeculite (sp?) was the normal sort of lumpy loft
insulation.

Not something I'd ever use again (just used 600 l of the two to make
the drainage layer under my green roof). There's naff all difference
in function between Perlite & Vermiculite, but Perlite is far nicer to
have to work with.

Andy Dingley wrote:
On 1 Dec, 12:18, "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

I though Vermeculite (sp?) was the normal sort of lumpy loft
insulation.

Not something I'd ever use again (just used 600 l of the two to make
the drainage layer under my green roof). There's naff all difference
in function between Perlite & Vermiculite, but Perlite is far nicer to
have to work with.

Coarse vermiculite was £8.80 per 100L lat time I bought some. Nobody
locally was stocking Perlite, and the online price was at least double
that IIRC.

On 1 Dec, 16:02, Stuart Noble wrote:

Coarse vermiculite was 8.80 per 100L lat time I bought some. Nobody
locally was stocking Perlite, and the online price was at least double
that IIRC.

I've just paid a tenner for either, same price. Local retail is twenty.

Donwill wrote:

Due to the low angle of my roof I cannot get into all parts of the main
roof-space in fact part of the roof space was totally inaccessible until
I put in a small roof access trapdoor.
Due to my general decrepidness I cannot crawl through this 15" square
aperture with limited headroom to lay fibre insulation and I wondered
about using polybeads and blowing them in there. Can I hire the blower
kit and buy bags of the stuff? any advice please? fire risks? etc

I have exactly the same problem, with senility added to decrepidness.
An insulation-laying robot would be the perfect solution.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

"Donwill" wrote in message
...
Due to the low angle of my roof I cannot get into all parts of the main
roof-space in fact part of the roof space was totally inaccessible until I
put in a small roof access trapdoor.
Due to my general decrepidness I cannot crawl through this 15" square
aperture with limited headroom to lay fibre insulation and I wondered
about using polybeads and blowing them in there. Can I hire the blower kit
and buy bags of the stuff? any advice please? fire risks? etc
Don

I'd personally turn up the heating before i'd even contemplate using this
crap. After a few windy months it'll look as though someone has been trying
to build a slalom course. Some areas are bare, others are about 2 feet deep.
*My* problem is getting rid of the friggin stuff. And yes, open the loft
hatch and expect a snowfall.

Did I mention that I wasn't too keen?

brass monkey wrote:
"Donwill" wrote in message
...
Due to the low angle of my roof I cannot get into all parts of the main
roof-space in fact part of the roof space was totally inaccessible until I
put in a small roof access trapdoor.
Due to my general decrepidness I cannot crawl through this 15" square
aperture with limited headroom to lay fibre insulation and I wondered
about using polybeads and blowing them in there. Can I hire the blower kit
and buy bags of the stuff? any advice please? fire risks? etc
Don

I'd personally turn up the heating before i'd even contemplate using this
crap. After a few windy months it'll look as though someone has been trying
to build a slalom course. Some areas are bare, others are about 2 feet deep.
*My* problem is getting rid of the friggin stuff. And yes, open the loft
hatch and expect a snowfall.

Did I mention that I wasn't too keen?



Vermiculite is very good for the garden if you need to get rid of any.
Not sure about polybeads, but I guess they would have similar properties.

On 2 Dec, 09:52, Stuart Noble wrote:

Vermiculite is very good for the garden if you need to get rid of any.
Not sure about polybeads, but I guess they would have similar properties.

Nope. The beads aren't porous (to a useful degree for horticulture).
They have _some_ use for conditioning heavy clay soils in somewhere
like South Bristol, but not so that you'd ever want them in a pot.

Andy Dingley wrote:
On 2 Dec, 09:52, Stuart Noble wrote:

Vermiculite is very good for the garden if you need to get rid of any.
Not sure about polybeads, but I guess they would have similar properties.

Nope. The beads aren't porous (to a useful degree for horticulture).
They have _some_ use for conditioning heavy clay soils in somewhere
like South Bristol, but not so that you'd ever want them in a pot.

The strange thing about vermiculite, perlite, (and rockwool) is that
they don't *absorb* water, they just suspend it within their structure,
rather like a J cloth holds water without being porous. Splitting hairs
maybe

In article ,
Stuart Noble writes:

Vermiculite is very good for the garden if you need to get rid of any.
Not sure about polybeads, but I guess they would have similar properties.

Interesting. I think I still have half a large bag in the loft, left
over from making the hearth floor. (Loose dry-ish mix with sand and
cement to make a high temperature insulating layer).

Bought it from Travis Perkins about 8 years ago. Computer said they
had 3 bags, but they had to turn the depot upside down to find them,
and none of them had ever seen a bag of it before, and so didn't
know what they were looking for.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
* * * * Stuart Noble writes:

Vermiculite is very good for the garden if you need to get rid of any.
Not sure about polybeads, but I guess they would have similar properties.

Other than rising to the top and blowing everywhere.

NT

NT wrote:
In article ,
Stuart Noble writes:

Vermiculite is very good for the garden if you need to get rid of any.
Not sure about polybeads, but I guess they would have similar properties.

Other than rising to the top and blowing everywhere.

NT

Vermiculite holds so much water that it rarely dries out sufficiently to
blow about. Certainly cuts down watering by a huge amount in summer.

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Stuart Noble writes:
Vermiculite is very good for the garden if you need to get rid of any.
Not sure about polybeads, but I guess they would have similar properties.

Interesting. I think I still have half a large bag in the loft, left
over from making the hearth floor. (Loose dry-ish mix with sand and
cement to make a high temperature insulating layer).

Bought it from Travis Perkins about 8 years ago. Computer said they
had 3 bags, but they had to turn the depot upside down to find them,
and none of them had ever seen a bag of it before, and so didn't
know what they were looking for.


I bought mine from a large distributor, and the fork lift had to move
several pallets to get to the remaining stock. Something tells me it's
not widely used these days other than perhaps for flue liners.

On 4 Dec, 07:49, Stuart Noble wrote:

Something tells me it's [Vermiculite]
not widely used these days other than perhaps for flue liners.

Try the chemical waste trade. They use huge amounts of it - any random
junk in small bottles gets loaded into 40 gallon drums, packed around
with vermiculite. It's unlikely to react with anything (unlike
polystyrene or cellulose peanuts), it provides shock packing and it
also absorbs spills.