Condensation in my loft

Joatmojo

Sidefx -

Have a look around the www.lapvent.co.uk website. If you click on the headings in the left hand column it opens up a lot of in depth info that you wont find elswhere.

I have fitted 100's of them for local authorities, conservation bodies, etc., (380 in a hospital complex) - they are good. Not only that, they are the less expensive option!

Joatmojo

emweaver

it probably is as my bedroom ceiling went yellow and now black and it smells of damp in that area of the bedroom

Butterfliesarepretty

My house has a slated roof and its over 100 years old. If its lasted this long then I guess it must be ok. But I would like to have a loft ladder installed so I can check on the loft now and again.

bryanb

shawtj2 wrote: »

My house has a slated roof and its over 100 years old. If its lasted this long then I guess it must be ok. But I would like to have a loft ladder installed so I can check on the loft now and again.

Have you changed things? Insulation? More heating? Covered airbricks ? All these can cause problems.

Oddgy

msun wrote: »

We had severe condensation in cold weather (water dripping off he rafters) in the loft after having loft and cavity wall insulation installed. The complete cure for us was to fit "easyvents" - they are very simple plastic devices held open by a spring that are inserted into the felt lining - we used 10 in all. They look like this and completely cured the condensation for us.

How much were these? Did you buy them yourself and fit them, or did an outside company do this for you? These look much easier and simpler than the lapvents people have talked about - on the same lines but just look a lot simpler. The lapvents are £38 each - so these easy vents must be (hopeful) a lot cheaper?

Thanks in advance...

Beedle_2

Sorry for not replying sooner but only just got my local roofer to sort problem due to the pretty horrendous weather over the last week and his work schedule

He has now fitted 10 ventilation tiles to roof(these replace an existing tile and have vent in etc which protudes into loft space - the roofer fits them by making incision into roofing felt and nailing to existing tiles and ensuring it's weatherproof - 5 each side - 3 near the bottom and 2 further up - this is to allow air flow and air rising inside the loft space apparently)The good news is that that should solve the problem - the not so good news is that the ventilation tiles are not cheap!!!!!! between £30 -£40 per tile .But all in supplied, fitted etc the bottom line was £400(after some slight negotiation). The actual fitting took less than an hour and the tiles are coloured to match existing tile colour as near as possible(e.g charcoal,terracotta etc) and are made of uvpc/plastic(?)and should weather down to be almost un-noticeable.In fact unless you know and look very closely you can't notice them anyway so I'm really pleased with the effect. I also got a roof inspection no damaged or loose tiles thrown in as well

The roofer made the observation that down the road not one single house appeared to have either roof ventilation or soffit ventilation so it could be that the other 10 houses of similar design to mine will have the same problem to a greater or lesser extent. However it is only the main loft space affected, the smaller loft over our 1st floor extension is completely unaffected although this could be because it is built over the garage and therefore does not experience "hot air" leaking through which is apparently the main reason although the cold and damp summer this year hasn't helped as usually the hot weather during the summer months self-corrects the condensation build up(whether that;'s correct I don't know but it's strange that we've been in the house since new 25 years and almost all the houses on our estate have no soffit ventilation or roof ventilation so it must be either a new phenomenon or a one off because of the weather situation in 2008).

It's an expense I could have done without but I suppose its cheaper than a new roof ultimately if the rafters start to rot and no doubt I could have got away with it but I didn't feel like deferring spending a few hundred now as opposed to a few thousand later when I've retired as the insurance won't cover the actual defect just the cosmetic repairs to damp patches on ceiling which at present a bit of emulsion will fix.

Hope this is helpful to others having the same problem

03022242

i cant believe its taken 41 posts for somone to say the right words,

breathable membrane,

whilst working in the housebuilding industry and ive come across this problem a few times,

on a particular site there were two identical houses, each with a different orientation but using the same spec.. one had condensation but another didnt, why not? who knows but the developer use normal roofing felt as opposed to breathable roofing felt... the solution was just to fit as many roof ridge vents as possible, and in future you Tyvek or similar breathable roofing membrane..

Frostygills

We've just noticed this in our loft too. We moved in late '07 and put in some space blanket top up over the existing insulation between the joists, but only over the front half of the house. This covers the master bedroom and bathroom, we left the back end of the house with just insulation between the joists, as those rooms aren't used. I went up in the summer and all appeared fine, went up today to put more space blanket over then back end and noticed puddles of water sitting on top of the space blanket and could see it dripping off the felt. Weirdly it is only damp where we put the space blanket the back end of the house is fine.

Our bedroom and the bathroom both have spots in the ceiling, about 10 in total, the bathroom has an extractor which goes into and pipe in the loft and out the front of the house. All these spots have a massive clearance of insulation. When we put the space blanket up, it's not anywhere near where the beams and felt meet the ceiling. It's also hard to tell if the original insulation is blocking the airflow as our roof is pitched, but has little head room and is at such an angle that you can not get near or really see the eaves. This has obviously been fine for years.

I could also see what looked like black stuff on some of the beams, when left a black mark on my fingers when rubbed. I'd like to get this checked out asap, but not sure who to call. Would a roofer be a good start? Or a damp specialist?

peediedj

03022242 wrote: »

breathable membrane,

in future you Tyvek or similar breathable roofing membrane..

vp400 is best but quite expensive or protect

The_Governor

This is mental - it must be weather related to current conditions as none of us have experienced this before.

I reckon we just need a bit of wind to blow and some nice warm weather