To get air con in our loft room

[Pollyforever]

After another night where I've hardly slept because of the heat I'm desperate. Our room is in the loft conversion and is insulated to a ridiculous extent to comply with building regs. It makes it unbearable in this heat. We've resisted getting air con because of its high use of electricity but I don't know what else we can do now to get some sleep! We've got two high powered fans but last night they barely made a difference. You can feel the heat like a blanket as you come up the stairs. Any ideas other than air con? Anyone got air con in a loft room?

@Quartz2208 would you mind PMing me the company you used? I'm in Mitcham and would be interested in getting a quote too. They might be happy to come to us.

We built our extension in a heatwave year, so had proper installed aircon in our bedroom. Extra bit of heat if needed in the winter and lovely cold nights in heatwaves.

You won't regret it!

I have the same problem in my loft room. My quotes for aircon came in at 4-5k for the one room! I got a portable unit instead and it's great. Makes a huge difference to my sleep. It's a bit noisy, but I love it nonetheless.

@Sunnyshoeshine of course. We are only a 15-25 min drive depending on traffic so he should

It may have gone up though price rises are crazy! I do love it though

We open everything up in the evening once its cooler outside than in (keep it closed if its hotter outside in the day)

It's important to open things downstairs (at least until you go to bed), as well at the top, so your house can act like a chimney drawing the cool air up from below. If you have veluxes in the bedroom those are ideal. If they don't have blinds on get them, so you can block out the sun in the daytime. Likewise close any curtains that face into the sun.

If you do need aircon, I like the idea of running it during the day from solar panels - going to be a good match of supply and demand there! But be aware that if the unit is a portable one it has to send the heat out somewhere, which might be awkward - though not necessarily insuperable- if you only have veluxes

My office is in the loft and it is meting up there at the moment. I keep the windows and blinds shut during the day (does feel a bit like a cave) and open it all up overnight, closing down as soon as I get up in the morning. It's ok for sleeping in as it hasn't got too hot during the day.

In the rest of the house I have windows open only on the shaded side. So the rest of the house isn't heating up too.

We had aircon installed in our bedroom in 2019 and it’s definitely money well spent. We’ve been more conscious this summer of the cost of the electricity to run it but we switch it on when we go to bed and cool the room enough to get to sleep. We’ve only run it all night on a couple of occasions.
we had three quotes. £2700, £1500, £1200 and one guy came round and muttered about armoured cables in the garden and a new fuse box. He never quoted, presumably because he knew the price would be ridiculous.
We went with the £1500 quote because we were confident they’d do a decent job which they did.

I second a ceiling fan.

we built a bedroom in our loft, and you are right that building regs means it’s super insulated and can get very hot.

we had a small skylight at the front and a Juliet window at the back. The ceiling fan made all the difference.

we also used to use a big portable standalone fan for other rooms.

Yanbu, get the air con! We have one in the boys’ room and it doesn’t need to be on all the time. It’s really good, blast it for half an hour at bathtime and it’s lovely and cool for falling asleep in

We have solar panels and battery storage (Tesla Powerwall). We also have an air source heat pump air conditioning unit in our conservatory. The air con unit heats as well as cools and we can heat half the house using it. The heat pump gives us the equivalent of 4KW of either heat or cooling for each 1KW of power used... The solar panels are way more than enough to power the cooling when the sun is out. The solar panels also charge up the battery, and store power to be used in the evenings and overnight. During the recent hot weather we have been running the cooling for most of the day (the conservatory which used to reach over 50°C last summer is a blissful temperature) and powering it purely from sunlight.. Guilt free air conditioning! We are also powering an electric car purely on sunlight. When it's been cool in May, we've heated most of the house, also powered by sunlight. Yes, the set up cost was quite high, but with the rising cost of energy and petrol/diesel the pay back time is getting shorter and the environmental guilt from running air conditioning, non existent.

I have a lot of sympathy for this, our loft room is very hot. The bloody birds tweeting from 3am means that it’s difficult to have the windows open too.

But if it’s that hot up there haven’t you got poor insulation, not good insulation?

I’ve name changed for this but we are in exactly the same area as you (I wonder if same road actually as ours straddles both S&S) could you please PM me the name as well? Thank you

Very good point. In our last house (Alsace, well inside European land mass so cold winters and hot summers) we fitted 12cm of external insulation all over the house. We not only halved our heating oil usage but found the house stayed much cooler during the summers.

Portable ones are good,make sure it's big enough for the room.

@Dooodlebop of course. He may well wonder why he has started to get emails. If you live on the road I think you do he is fairly near it. Can highly recommend by our loft builder (who also everyone uses).

But I guess that is where we live

We had a portable unit for years which was much better than nothing, but very noisy (couldn't run it during a Zoom meeting) and we had to vent the hose. Plus it was fairly large and not very pretty! Without it there were times when our bedroom was still 30C at 11pm (and that's with keeping the curtains closed etc.)

Last year we had proper air con fitted - 3 bedrooms and the living/dining room. It cost £6k, and it means that DH is actually able to work from home effectively. We definitely don't regret doing it.

As others have said, the system can also heat, which means we can get just one room warm in winter, and have backup should our (very elderly) boiler die.

You do need to check planning regs about units - we have one external one as we could do that without getting planning permission.

Thanks everyone. I've had a company call me back this morning. £2,300 and can fit it next week so need to speak to my husband tonight and try to get a couple more quotes too. Good to know that those who have got it don't regret it! My husband works in the construction industry and doesn't like solar panels at all as he has seen them damage roofs. I think that was some years ago but I can only work on changing his mind on one thing at a time! The insulation was the one that the building inspector specified so I don't know if it's good or bad, it's all fitted now so it'd be a massive job to change it.

I have a portable air con unit which is great. Agree with other posters.
But on some hot nights I sleep outside - sometimes under a gazebo, sometimes under the stars. It is fabulous.

Ohh @NoseyNellie that is just what I've been looking for for our air con unit!! Thank you 😃

@Pollyforever which fans do you have? I found the Dyson one didn’t make much difference but the Meako fan is excellent. It does seem to cool the room down but I doubt it will be enough in a loft room. Air conditioning will be better than any fan and I hope you manage to get it fitted quickly!

Are you all in the U.K. the highest our bedrooms get are 28/29 degrees so not too hot. How hot are people’s rooms that they need air con?

You would be better to spend the money on a second dormer window so you have one front and one back, and create a through-draught that allows the heat to escape.

I think 28/29 is too hot

Menopause!!

Do it. Every loft conversion I’ve ever visited has been unbearably hot. We’re considering it in our house and my red line is that it just have air con built in.

We have 2 portable ones and keep the room
at 22 degrees all night