Loft insulation

Is there a type of loft insulation that isn't awful?

I had to go into our loft today to look at an electrical problem. It was awful up there. Its got that awful fleecy insulation that just seems to exude dust. I know it contributes to keeping the house warm in winter but I think I want it out.

Is it safe? It seems to me it was blocking access to all the wiring, but the flip side could be, if its flame retardant, then it could be contributing to safety in the event of an electrical fault.

Is there anything better, in the sense that I will very occasionally want to go up there for various maintenance jobs, and may at some point want to convert it out for storage?

 

Anything you put up there will get dusty with the stuff blowing in under the tiles, but I know what you mean with the old fibreglass stuff, its horrible.

Thermafleece is a lot better, bit dusty but not irritating. Made from and smells of, Sheep. Treated with borax as an insecticide & flame retarder.

 

Fiberglass insulation is awful to work in ! Even with a boiler suit buttoned to the neck gloves and goggles , you always become a member of the itchy and scratchy club
The min depth is now 270mm , that will be really hard to work in if you a running a few cables.

 

Thanks all. I should clarify though mine isn't the awful fibreglass stuff. Its newer than that so either the one Zigs or John said I reckon.

Its still horrid though, but I'm glad to learn its flame retardant.

 

If cables are supposed to run over loft insulation how can you top up the insulation without having the whole house rewired?

 

I'm not a qualified electrician, but I studied electronics many years ago at college, and there was some overlap between our course and the electrician's course. We learned about the surprisingly complex task of choosing the right cable for the job (a wire is a wire? no ). Whether its solid core and multicore, grade of copper, type and thickness of insulation etc etc, type of metal in any connectors (because when two different metals meet, things happen all on their own, only usually extremely slowly). Lots of different things were taken into account. Did you know that AC current tries to flow closer the the surfaces of the conductor for example, where as DC prefers to flow through the centre. This is one of the reasons why cables used in DC applications are often single core whereas AC applications usually lean towards multicore, with precision signals prefers very fine multicores so as to make the surface area as large as possible.

Anyway, my point is, one of the considerations any electricians worth his salt would have thought about when choosing the right cable for the job, would be the estimated max RMS current passing through the cable, and based on that, choose a cable that is going to be thick enough to not overheat.

If you look under the bonnet of your car, you'll see crazy fat cables coming off the battery terminals. That's because at most (when you start cranking it over), the cables are going to be expected to carry maybe 100 amps. If there's enough cross section in the cable for all those electrons to go whizzing along without bumping into each other and creating photons (heat) then it will stay cool. Swap that wire for some door bell wire and watch how fast it bursts into flames as soon as you turn the key. (Dont try that ).