How Precise is the Loft Insulation Calculator?

by Mark Row

Determine How Much Insulation You Need

Adding insulation to any part of your home is, although very useful, never a cheap job. It involves many costs, some of them you can plan ahead but some can depend on many factors and are basically variable throughout the installation process. However, we all have usually a limited budget for the entire insulation project why we need to know our costs in advance, at least in general, in order of determining whether the plans are feasible at all. Note that the costs of insulation will depend on many factors so there is not a unique price for insulting your walls, ceilings or lofts for example, which makes your estimates a little more complicated. Now, do not despair since there are a few modern and innovative solutions that can offer you some help, one of them being online insulation calculators that can determine the overall costs of an insulation project. They are especially designed for certain types of insulation, why what we will discuss here is how precise loft insulation calculator is, since lofts are among most vulnerable areas within home due to direct exposure to the heat and cold.

First, we’ll try to answer some questions on what should all be accounted for when estimating the costs of your loft insulation project.

• the size of the loft – the larger the space is, the more insulation material will be required to adequately cover it up;
• the existing insulation – if your loft has no insulation added, then it is reasonable to expect that you will spend more money on the material than you would when only supplementing the existing insulation;
• the type of the material used – you will notice that some materials are more expensive than others;
• installation costs – some materials include additional installation costs, such as using special equipment, undertaking necessary repair work or hiring professional help;
• the climate region – if your home is located in a colder or hotter climate you will need more insulation and more effective type of insulation product installed, which all includes higher costs;
• complexity of the performed work – in some cases you can simply add insulation without any reconstruction done, while in other cases, this may also include additional costs of maybe doing necessary repair or remodeling work which will also raise your initial costs.

Well, a very useful thing that can help you estimate your costs pretty accurately is a loft insulation calculator. It will allow you add certain parameters and based on those calculate the costs that you will have when adding insulation. The calculator works as a mediator between you and a large available database that stores information on insulation material prices, cost of general installation and repair work that need to be performed and some other data important for determining the overall cost of adding insulation to your loft. It will ask you to enter your location, that is the country your building is located in, preferably a concrete region (bear in mind that this is not available in all calculators), the area you are insulating (there are calculators for determining the costs of insulting other spaces within your home) and the size of the space that is going to be insulated.

Once the previously mentioned data has been entered, the calculator will compare it to the available data on the material’s price, the amount required, cost of delivery, preparation work and the costs of labor in the installation process. Then it will simply divide it with the country average and determine the overall cost of loft insulation. Note that there is a chance of 10% inconsistency, especially if there is not an option of entering a more concrete region your building is located in, if there are considerate differences between the climate and market prices within one country. Also, if your building has some special requirements like obtaining a local permit for undertaking any reconstruction work, massive repair work that needs to be done prior to adding insulation or a lot of services that need to be accommodated through the material, you will have to count this expenses in and accordingly increase the given result.

To sum it up, once you have determined all the required data that needs to be entered, the loft insulation calculator will give you the final result by collecting all the following costs:

• the price of ordering, purchasing and delivering the insulation material (this can be affected by the quality of the material and its manufacturer)
• necessary preparatory work that is usually required in order of preparing the area for adding insulation
• the price of installing insulation

Compare insulation products and pick the best one from our wide seletion of insulation materials for your home improvement project, or seek advice from our experts. You are welcome to leave a comment or share the article.