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Hi
just moved to a new to me (1970ish house) and looking at boarding loft. Discovery 1 is that there are more wires than I expected and discovery 2 is that some of them are connected to thin black mats that are placed on the plasterboard under the fibre insulation and appear to be wired together.
So - any ideas on what these mats are for.
and for boarding (as there are wires running over/across rafters) rather than taking a nip out of the existing rafters I plan to add a 1" strip to top of rafter with cutout for wires in that, screw this to rafter and board (for box etc storage) on top of that - does that sound ok ?
cheers
and for boarding (as there are wires running over/across rafters) rather than taking a nip out of the existing rafters I plan to add a 1" strip to top of rafter with cutout for wires in that, screw this to rafter and board (for box etc storage) on top of that - does that sound ok ?
No ideas about the wires, but your 1" strip sounds like a good enough idea. I assume your loft boarding is 18-20mm thick, in which case you'd probably need 50mm-ish screws, so just go with 70-80mm screws (but stick with No.10s) and screw straight through the strip. It might be an idea to pilot drill the screwholes as the screws may well split the 1" strip if you don't.
Mark the wires position with black permanent marker (not pencil) as you go (but I assume you know this already).
Sounds like you've got some ceiling heating that was used around then. Might not be live but worth checking out first.
DO you have water supplies/cisterns in the loft? Perhaps the mats are trace heating to prevent freezing pipes?
It's a split multi level bungalow, and is updated to a combi boiler, so far I haven't seen any copper etc in loft but will do some more digging and see if I can find a header/water tank
re wiring/boarding - another idea seems to be another layer of rafter at right angles to existing rafters, in my case this might be easier. I need to board a rectangle 25ft long, 5ish ft wide (currently with rafters running parallel to the short sides) and if the 'new' rafters were to run along the long I could just get t+g boards 5ft wide and fit together without having to fix it all down and it would let me put in a bit more insulation.
I'm pretty sure bear is correct. sounds like ceiling heating panels, like underfloor heating in reverse. I've seen it in a few houses that have or had no gas supply originally.
probably best to get someone to check they've been disconnected properly, then you can remove them
I put 1 inch battens in and part floored a small part of a loft just for storage but when had tiles on roof replaced was told wouldn't pass regs as insulation under flooring not current regs reqd depth - so assuming will take weight need to build up floor sufficient to fit rerd dept hof insulation or fit something with sufficient U underneath - you can get plastic feet things that will do the height thing but look a bit of a faff
edit and never assume disconnected / wired to circuit you'd expect it to be wired to