Room over carport is cold

[icebun]

I have a new build house (from Redrow) which has an integrated car port with a bedroom above.

During winter time, the room gets cold along with the walls. You notice the floor even more.

Does anyone know the minimum amount of insulation there should be in there. There is some mineral wool but I am not sure if there is enough.

Because of the way the floorboards have been installed, it's not that easy to lift up and add more insulation.

I have 2 choices:-

- Add a false ceiling under the car port with insulation.

OR

- Have a specialist "inject" some cavity wall insulation (or something similar) to fill the shortfall of insulation under my existing floorboards instead of having them lifted individually.


In the very long term I am hoping to convert the carport into a garage.


Any advice would be grateful.

[insulag]

Do you know if there is any existing insulation in the walls or ceiling of the bedroom? Since heat rises you first priority when insulating would be the roof of the bedroom, then the walls. Although you will lose heat through the floor if there is little or no insulation, it shouldn't be the biggest factor if the room is cold.

If you did want to start off by insulating the roof of the car port, I would of thought insulation boards (there are a lot of these available, a lot would depend on your budget) would be the easiest solution - a rigid insulation is generally the simplest to fix into place. I don't think there are any regulations to cover this, or at least I'm not familiar with any, but I would guess if there is a large amount of heat being lost through the floor due to the relative heat transfer something like 60mm to 100mm board would make a big improvement.

Sorry if that's a little vague, hope it helps

[icebun]

Hey Insulag,

Thanks for the response.

The floor is very cold when outside temperatures drop.

There is insulation (glass fibre) under the boards but there is a definite breeze of air circulating which indicates a breach somewhere.

There is adequate insulation in the roof.

Using insulation boards would certainly make the floor warmer but what actually happens is the the whole room including the walls are also very cold to touch. I am not so sure that using those boards would improve this.

Having spoken to a firm of insulation specialists, their view is as follows:-

- You cannot mix and match insulation

- Need to find out from the original installers regarding the materials used so that the same can be applied if missing or insufficient.

As I may may mentioned, the original builders (Redrow) have washed their hands of it. They cut out an inspection hole and said that because there was insulation there (not alot I guess the minimum) they said that it was up of building regulations etc etc.

May next challenge is now to go back to Redrow and try and get the info off them and take it from there.

Alternatively I was thinking of converting the carport into a garage and seal it that way (assuming the cold is in fact coming under the car port itself).