We're all aware that a properly insulated home can greatly reduce your spending on heating bills, preventing warm air from making its way into your loft and escaping through the roof.

Taking action, such as fitting your loft with insulation materials, makes controlling the temperature of your home much easier, using less energy and thereby saving you money in the long run. And that can only be a good thing for savvy homeowners everywhere.

But there's still one thing right under your nose (or rather hanging right above your head) that you may have overlooked – your attic hatch.

Just because your attic hatch appears perfectly sound on the outside, with a neat trim finish and fresh lick of paint, doesn't necessarily mean it's one-hundred-percent home-efficient.

Fortifying your attic hatch with insulation materials and air-sealing the trim is the best way of preventing radiant heat loss. After all, you don't want warm air needlessly escaping up into the loft. Not when it's supposed to be keeping the rest of your home nice and toasty.

Air-sealing involves carefully removing the finish trim, in order to seal the gaps around the attic hatch framing with caulk, or foam sealant for the larger ones. Beads of caulk are then applied on the inside and outside edges of the trim before reattaching, so as to ensure the air can't get through.

Insulation materials such as foil-faced polysio, which is the greenest and best-performing of the rigid foam kind, can be cut to roughly half an inch less than the size of the hatch, and then attached with foam-compatible glue. This process is then repeated until the topside face of your loft hatch has anything between 4 to 8 inches of foam layered on top.

 Loft Hatch

Replacing Your Old Attic Hatch With a Brand New One

Getting rid of your old attic hatch altogether and replacing it with a brand new one is definitely your best option, and will save you a lot of headache in the long run.

On top of everything else, a brand new attic hatch requires little to no additional insulation, which means you won't need to go to the time and effort of putting in foam and sealing the frame, and that's a huge convenience. They are very straightforward to install and once it has been fitted, you can rest assured that it will last a good while longer than if you were to constantly repair/maintain your old hatch.

It's important to remember that safe, secure attic access is only possible with a properly installed loft ladder or staircase. Be sure to take a good look at the varieties available on our website before you go poking around up there. We've got you covered.