Happy solstice friends,

Apologies for my absence. I did go on holiday for a week but don't really have an excuse for the rest of the missed ones but let's catch up shall we?

🌡️ Insulating the loft

Summer is...sort-of a good time to be doing this job, certainly before winter sets in but you'll want to pick your days carefully and avoid the sunniest ones, unless of course doing DIY in a sauna floats your boat.

Before diving in here's a checklist to complete first:

1. Will you be doing a loft extension? There's no point adding loft insulation if you'll be pulling it all up in the near future. You'll need around 2.3m headroom to allow for the beefing up the floor joists and the depth of the dormer roof below the ridge line to give you at least 2.1m headroom once completed. We did just about have enough but we decided a while back we weren't going to do a loft extension since we have space to the side for added bedrooms.
2. Finish moving walls below and the location of loft access. We haven't, as you know, but that's to be done on the other side of the loft from that which I'm insulating. You may also want to think about whether you need to strengthen any joists for your planned Baccarat chandelier or sex chair swing.
3. Complete any lighting circuits in the rooms below the loft. If you're planning on fitting downlighters or anything else that involves messing with cables in the ceiling (ethernet cables, smoke alarms, bringing a socket into your loft etc), it's easier to do it first before covering it all with insulation. Pipework too.
4. Any pipework should be insulated with lagging even if it will end up below the top of the new insulation. There's no place worse for a leak than at the top of your house.
5. Downlights might need covering. Some downlights like mine state that they can be covered with insulation without issue (up to 300mm with LED bulbs) but some can't so you'll want to place protector hoods on top of them to keep them from overheating.
6. Current carrying capacity is the maximum current that a cable can continuously carry without exceeding its temperature rating. Insulation can interfere with this but as long as your lights are all LED this is unlikely; though check with an electrician. Remedies include ensuring the cables are clipped to joists to help dissipate heat or increasing the thickness of the cables.
7. Do any loft lighting improvements now, as I did recently. You'll need access to the lighting circuit and it will help you see what you're doing when insulating.

Type and thickness of insulation

Once you've ticked off the list you can think about type of insulation. We know that PIR is the better insulator cm for cm than wool types but with a loft it's one of those places where you can keep adding depth to achieve a similar U-value plus wool is cheaper and can fit through the hatch without cutting it first.

How much insulation? New build regs state that 270mm should be the total depth of insulation between and above the joists. Some new builds lay 300 or even 400mm of insulation. The more the better but there are diminishing returns as shown in this diagram I've borrowed.

You can see that after 100mm or so the decrease in U-value slows with added depth. However I don't think this graph takes into account thermal bridging through the joists so I reckon at least another 100mm above the joists is sensible.

We have 100mm of existing insulation between joists already. I assumed it's still effective but it's so itchy I couldn't bear to remove it. Most rolls of loft insulation come in 170 or 200mm so I'm going with 170mm which brings it up to current b-regs standards and works well with the size of loft legs I'll be using, plus I still want to be able to stand up without hitting my head.

Safety Equipment:

A face-mask is essential. There's a lot of dust in attics. Gloves are helpful as are kneepads. You'll also need something to stand on while doing the work. There are bunch of old doors in our attic but you could use a loft board of plank of some sort. I do get lazy though and play the hot lava game though I'd hate myself if I did put a foot through the ceiling.

To work!

Here's the before pic. Previously there were loftboards screwed to the joists but I've removed them to wire up downlights above each room as I've renovated.

I don't need storage everywhere so where the eaves are I simply rolled out the insulation. This should be done across the joists so no joint in the insulation lines up with a joist - helps stop thermal bridging.

The junction boxes for my downlights need to be accessible and above the insulation to prevent overheating which I thought about when wiring the downlights by situating them towards the eaves with enough slack so they could sit on top of the insulation. FYI - the little white box on top is the Quinetic receiver I talked about in the last newsletter.

The next stage was to add loft legs and boarding. This is mostly for storage but I started far enough towards the eaves that I can reach and access them should I need to.

The loft legs I used are 175mm tall, a touch higher than the insulation. They can support 18mm chipboard up to 600mm apart so how many you need will depend on how far apart your joists are and the size of your chipboard. My joists are about 370mm apart and I have small loft boards so I needed a lot of legs which does add up in cost but is still cheaper than buying replacement chipboard.

After the first row of boards I'd push the next board in place, slip the next set of legs underneath, mark their positions, remove the board, screw in the legs (40mm screws), put the insulation in and re-fit and screw down the board. It's quite slow going.

On it went until it looked like this which is about as far as I can go for now.

Other storage options

Instead of legs you could run joists perpendicular to the existing joists and insulate in between and fix boards on top. You probably wouldn't even need to fix the new joists to the existing. I decided against this simply because of the difficulty of getting timbers into the loft and I'd have needed 170mm+ joists for the insulation to fit which probably wouldn't have been any cheaper than using the plastic legs. You could potentially elevate thinner timbers (2x4s) with offcuts below them which I think would work and would cut costs.

If you roof is made out of trusses you can use ledges instead of legs.

The moisture balance you have to strike

The point of this insulation is to keep the house cool in summer and slow heat loss through the ceiling in winter. The problem is moisture. It moves up through the house from breathing, drying washing, showering and cooking and into the attic which in winter can condense and rot the timber. I've had water droplets form in my attic before now.

With the added insulation (at leat when it's completed) the void will be even colder than before as less heat is moving upward potentially leading to more condensation.

To prevent this you have a few cards to play. The first is to stop moisture getting up there in the first place by adding a vapour barrier to the underside of your joists like I did in the bathroom and bedroom:

Next you have to ensure there's ventilation for the moisture that does get into the loft to leave. Ideally you would have fresh air intake at the soffits which is why it's important to not push your new insulation right into the eaves. Next you'd have a breathable membrane above the rafters to allow water vapour to move from inside out and then you'd have ridge vents right at the peak of the roof.

I have none of these! The rafters go through the walls rather than sitting on top so there's no soffit ventilation, the membrane is un-breathable bitumen and I don't have ridge vents. Last year, I did what I could which was to open up the space between the bitumen membrane sheets to create a through-flow of air.

The other thing that happens when adding insulation is the dew point can lower from the rafter level to the ceiling level so condensation can then occur on top of the insulation or on the underside of the chipboard. To help with this a little gap between the insulation and chipboard is a good idea for airflow to whisk away moisture when outdoor temperatures increase or humidity decreases. I used 170mm insulation and 175mm legs but there did end up being a bit of a gap in most places. It's also good that I haven't covered the entirety of the loft with chipboard so air can more easily pass from one side of the chipboard to the other.

More complicated options include things like PIV units which is still on my radar.

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Loft insulation: easy to do, easy to have problems! I'll have to keep an eye on mine this winter.

👟 May Fitness Update

This will be my last update, at least for a while. I left off April's update wanting to get more active. I decided to strive for 10k steps a day. It's probably a bit of an arbitrary number but is supposedly very good for all aspects of your health.

It's also a deceptive number as if you set out the door to complete your 10k you'll be gone for quite some time whereas some days you can achieve it without noticing by some combination of walking to the office or a meeting across town, wandering around Tescos, pottering around your garden or popping to the post office.

The key is to break it up throughout the day and except for a couple of days where I was feeling under the weather I managed it:

You might notice nearly all the days are pretty similar - at or just over 10k steps - and that's because I got a walking pad!

If you've not heard of them, it's a like a treadmill but smaller, more portable and can be tucked under a sofa or lent against a wall. It's a game changer. Now I know what you're thinking: ' Ali, why don't you just, you know, go for a walk!?'. I agree! But I've got years of data showing that I simply don't. Not consistently anyway. Plus this way I can walk when it's raining, or when the lad is asleep and I can't leave the house or when I want to watch a series I'm into. As I've written about previously, a lot of this fitness journey is about making these positive changes easy and hurdle free. There's literally no excuse now.

After being inspired last year by the standing desks readers had built I figured why stand when I can walk!? Right now I'm enjoying having the walking pad in the gym but may convert my desk to a standing/walking one in future.

It's this model if you're after one for yourself. It goes up to 10kph - a decent jogging speed so you can mix it up now and then. If I use it as much as I have been and it lasts a few years, it'll be a terrific purchase.

Did this extra activity work? I think it did. I dropped another few pounds to get to a new low of 156, a pound lower than the goal I set at the beginning of the year. A total of 24 lbs (10.9kg) of weight loss and probably greater amounts of fat loss as I've definitely put on a bit of muscle too. It wasn't a straight line though!

This brings my BMI (for what that's worth) to the middle of the healthy range whereas before I was teetering on being overweight (24.8). 23, rather than 25 is the cutoff for Asians mind.

Naively I thought I'd be absolutely shredded at this weight but no, there's still work to do. However, each pound lost makes a bigger difference than the preceding one. It's like kitchen towel. At first each sheet may only wrap around the tube (your body) just once but when you get to the last few sheets, one can wrap around 4 or 5 times and so removing it reduces the thickness more than the first sheet.

I am pretty content where I'm at though, it feels really great to not be carrying around the extra bulk. I know she got lambasted for saying it but if we replace the word 'skinny' for fit/lean/healthy/athletic etc. Kate Moss was spot on when she said 'nothing tastes as good as skinny feels'. If you're fortunate, or possibly dedicated enough, to have never put on weight, you'll never know the difference but, trust me, thank your lucky stars.

For the rest of us, it's hard, as is shown through the stats: 64% of UK adults are overweight or obese. Food is everywhere, calorie dense and over processed and I don't come from a thin family. My guess at what creates the range of outcomes is probably less because of metabolism, though still a factor, but more so hunger and satiety hormones.

All diets work by reducing the calories you consume and you just have to find one that suits you. For me I'm poor at regulating the food tap throughout the day. I find it easier to have it either on or off so I leave it off for a good portion of the day - a.k.a time restricted eating/intermittent fasting.

No food is off the table though. I knew I'd give up if I tried to go zero sugar or very low carb. I just try to be sensible with those most of the time. I have restricted alcohol though. I went 3.5 months without and now keep it only as a social lubricant. To be fair, this took virtually no effort as, unlike a delicious cake, I can take it or leave it. For others it could be the biggest challenge but deliver the biggest results.

The journey has taken up a considerable amount of my time and focus though and other goals have inevitably fallen by the wayside - this newsletter for example has not been as regular. It's tricky to balance but hopefully I've created habits that both last and feel automatic.

So what next?

• Studies show that many people who lose weight put it back on so most importantly: no backsliding. With the added activity I have at least 2500 cals a day to eat to maintain where I am so if I eat sensibly there should be no deprivation. I'll continue weighing myself each morning - it's become a bit of a ritual!
• I'm at that age where the body has peaked. The one where footballers hang up their boots and as rudely occurred to me not long ago - middle age begins. Muscle begins to waste away if you don't use it (though never too late to start). There's a dash of vanity involved here as well. I favour the lean athletic build - think Tyler Durden over bodybuilder. Building muscle takes calories so if I happen to get leaner still I'd have to start eating in a small surplus which would require a mindset shift. It also requires eating a lot of protein (about 1 gram for every 1 pound of body weight every day) and I'm not totally convinced eating this much protein is good for you or natural. I'll continue lifting and see where it takes me.
• I don't know as much as I ought to about whether vitamins are something I should be taking (thoughts welcome) nor do I know enough about gut health. There seems to be evidence that the microbiome can have a large impact on your weight as well as other things (depression, focus etc). So those two are my next areas of exploration.

Anyway, I said I'd do it and I did, so good for me. If it has given encouragement to just one of you reading then it was worth documenting.

🌴 Holiday notes

• Long time readers, can you guess where we went? That's right, Spain. Again. Malaga this time. But this lack of variety wasn't our choice on this occasion - we we're out there for a friend's wedding. I'm not complaining though. As you'll know I'm not keen on UK winters so have dreams of having a retirement place out there one day so it's good to explore different locations. I particularly like Spain's chosen time zone and how late the sun sets for somewhere so far south.
• Our checked in luggage was a couple of kg overweight so we had to play the game of putting on extra clothing and moving items to our carry-on luggage. I really can't see what difference it makes where such a small extra amount of weight is carried in the plane - cabin vs hold. Moreover, I felt like showing them my weight-loss graph pictured above: 'Come on, I've saved you over 10kg here.'
• Holy moly, trips during school holidays cost a bomb! I'd heard this was the case but was blissfully unaware of how much extra was added for flights and accommodation during these times.
• Like with Gran Canaria I found a lesser known car hire that doesn't appear on the comparison websites but had great reviews and lived up to them. We got given the older style Kia Sportage to test out another SUV. I didn't think much of it though so will rule that one out if/when we buy one. With big purchases, sometimes I try to trick myself by researching the heck out of it, getting bored of the idea and ending up ditching it completely. That hasn't happened with wanting a larger car but I'm struggling to pull the trigger nonetheless. With only 2 years left to travel before being restricted to school holidays maybe we should be aiming to travel more but, much as i love him, it's hard work with a sprog in tow. I was thinking maybe an SUV to throw everything in and taking off to France may be a good plan? (In order not to sound totally tone deaf, I'm aware SUVs and holidays abroad are of course luxuries.)
• After going for a hotel last year we reverted to an AirBnB. I definitely prefer it. It was pretty spectacular but there were lots of little niggles that would be noticed if the owners/management stayed in the house for a few days from time to time: a loose socket, peeling sealant, blocked drain etc.

• The wedding was excellent. I find it interesting to hear whose surname newly wedded couples take. Some keep each of their names, as in this case; some double barrel and pass the problem to their kids to solve - especially if they end up marrying another double bareller (quadruple barrel?); some amalgamate their names while others go the traditional route or the husband takes the wife's name. Abi has a much cooler surname than me and wanted to keep it but to make things simple and have a consistent family name she's moved it to a middle name. Works for us.

Overall, a great trip and such fun to hang out with friends everyday. We've talked about doing a group holiday for years but we're all too non-committal and poor at planning so a wedding was a good way to make it happen.

👋

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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