I want to add insulation beneath my attic floor, but I’d have to pull the attic floor up to do it. How will this effect my second floor ceiling? I am worried that the ceiling beneath it is protected by the attic floor.
Our Answer
You have options! Certainly your attic floor protects people from stepping through the ceiling beneath it, since that ceiling is not designed to hold weight much heavier than the weight of insulation. But you probably don’t need to remove your attic floor to insulate the space. You could simply lay insulation above the attic floor – unfaced fiberglass batts, specifically, laid over the floor in the areas you wish to insulate. If you use your attic for storage, consider consolidating those stored items and keeping them in one area of the floor that you leave exposed.
Now, if you presently have no insulation whatsoever between the attic floor and the second floor ceiling, take that floor up and insulate it – and restrict the workzone to responsible adults who know where they can and can’t place weight. But if you simply need more insulation in your attic, the easiest bet is to put it over the attic floor.
Lay the insulation OVER the attic floor?? Consolidate items over an area you leave exposed??
So just sacrifice an entire attic space to lay insulation on the floor?? What a stupid answer.
Well Rick, I guess that depends on your goals. If you have no insulation and are tired of paying high heating bills while constantly feeling uncomfortable, then yes, giving up attic floor space by adding insulation over it is a viable option. This applies also if you wish to increase the insulation you already have. For example, if the joists below the floor were 2×8’s, you wouldn’t have been ale to lay more than 8″ of insulation between them, which is far less than the current 10″ to 14″ in Department of Energy recommendations. However, as we also point out, if there’s no insulation under the floor, it’s also an option to remove that floor and insulate under it, a project that is more labor intensive and expensive, but certainly possible. I guess it really comes down to how much attic storage do you need and what do you want to pay for it in terms of increased heating expense and discomfort?