By using expanded polystyrene, cork or fibre board tiles to the rooms below the loft will create valuable additional insulation.
Material for Loft insulation.
Blanket Rolls (mineral/Glass fibre)
(Insulation is not effective if water condenses in the material. For this reason some rolls are backed with foil or polythene, which acts as a vapour barrier).
The disadvantage: compresses, as it gets older.
Mineral-Fibre Slabs.
- Less bulky- easier to handle than blanket rolls.
The disadvantage: more expensive.
Loose Fill
- Vermiculite granules – holds it’s bulk.
- Polystyrene granules.
The disadvantage: vermiculite is more expensive than loose mineral wool – polystyrene blows about in a draughty loft.
Expanded Polystyrene Sheets.
- Good for sliding into areas. Difficult to reach e.g. Flat roof over an extension. Fire retardant sheets available.
The disadvantage: It costs twice as much than glass fibre.
Reflective Foil Building Paper.
- Heat reflects off the shiny surface- back into the house in winter/or back into the loft in summer.
Results
Method
In this investigation I made a model house out of cardboard using plastic for the windows, which I attached with sellotape. First of all I took the room temperature using a thermometer and recorded it on to a table (as shown under RESULTS), I switched the light bulb on and recorded the temperature at intervals of one minute, over a period of ten minutes. The light was switched off and after waiting for a while I was ready to begin my next experiment.
For this part I laid some insulation material on the top of my model house and carried out a similar test again. My results were recorded as before.
To make sure the experiment was safe the insulation material was placed on top of my model so that it didn’t overheat near the light bulb. I also checked that no water was anywhere near the plug before I plugged it in to light the bulb.
Insulators are very poor conductors. Wrapped around hot objects, they act as a barrier, reducing heat loss. Trapped air is an effective insulator. Fibre glass layers contain lots of tiny pockets of trapped air so less energy is allowed to flow into the airspace to form convection currents in the loft.
Reducing the energy loss from a warm building makes it more energy efficient – less energy needs to be supplied to maintain a comfortable environmental temperature.
Results
Conclusion
I found out that the temperature increase a lot higher, the longer the amount of time. At three minutes my graph with loft insulation increased drastically against my graph without loft insulation. If more insulation was used on my model house the gradient would be much more steep. If I had used a different sized house e.g a larger one, the results would have been affected making the them different e.g lower. The results could have also been affected if a different sized or wattage light bulb had been used. To see a different table of results I could have repeated the experiment by using other types of insulators e.g loose fill or expanded polystyrene sheets. I could have also repeated the experiment by recording the temperature every 30 seconds instead of every minute to make the experiment more accurate.
Evaluation
I feel as though I completed the experiment fairly by looking at my results, they followed a pattern which increased continuously.
The results were shown as reliable and a prediction could have been made to get further or more accurate results.
My results support my original prediction, which was the temperature increased with loft insulation than without loft insulation over a period of time.
I would like to carry out this same experiment using different loft insulators on a larger house and a smaller house, to see what results they would have.
