Having loft ladder fitted, what do I need to know?

[EarSlaps]

We're looking at having a new loft hatch and ladder added so we can get in and out of the loft easily for light storage (clothes, suitcases, toys, bedding etc that is currently stuffed into every crevice in the house).

What with someone cutting into our ceiling and potentially the joists(?), what should an installer do to make sure the roof and ceiling don't collapse? What should they be telling me they will do to support it all?

It's a 1970s end terrace, fairly decent size hatch already but I suspect it would need to be a bit longer to accommodate a ladder.

Which sort of ladders are best? I'm not too worried if it takes a little room up as there's tons of room up there we just aren't using at the moment.

Reasonable cost for all the above? We're Bristol based so not London but still pricey round here.

Sorry not at all technical but we have a foldy down wooden one rather than a shunting down metal one and it's great. We had to have this type because of how the roof joists are in relation to where the hatch was (it takes up less space).

We got a joiner to do it for us, but have no idea what it cost, sorry.

Has made a massive difference having easily accessible storage space.

Foldy down sounds good does it have the handles towards to top?

I nearly cried when I peered up and saw how much unused space is up there, the few bits we've got up there are mostly junk. Then contrast it with a house full to bursting of stuff we need to keep but not access that often...

I'm thinking of getting those little loft zone leg things so we can board over the full lot of insulation and have space and more warmth.

what do you mean about handles? ours are attached to the ladder. we have a pole thing with a hook to pull down the loft ladder. it make is all super easy to toss stuff up (which is not all good as I'm sure you can imagine!). Fab for storing kids clothes/shoes until wee sibling(s) are ready for them. And bedding for guests. And Christmas decs.

We had one fitted a few weeks ago, it's great it's a foldy down ladder one too. I would recommend dust sheets, lots of dust sheets. The mess went everywhere! I kind of forgot that they would literally cut a hole in the ceiling, We had a joiner fit ours so he did tidy up though.

Oh and think about where the ladders going to pull out too incase you have a airing cupboard in the way.

Good tip with the dust sheets .

There's a local loft ladder and boarding specialist that a lot of people in my local Facebook group have recommended (a couple are friends of friends).

I think, if it would go the way our hatch currently does then the ladder would be in a good position.

I'm already mentally packing boxes to go up there!

You need to build a platform using loft legs to store things on, if you leave it on top of the lagging you'll reduce the efficacy of it and more heat escapes out of the roof.

You do have 27cm of lagging?.

Pil had their loft lagged for free and then boarded over it so their bills didn't improve and the house is no cosier.

Dh is desperate to store stuff in our loft but I'm sticking to my guns on this one.

Some areas are already (badly) boarded with just the minimum lagging, the rest has the maximum- apart from over the bathroom due to the down lighters.

I'm planning on doing loft legs, or getting the loft ladder fitter to put wood across the joists and boarding over that so that it will spread the weight better and we can have enough insulation.

Our house has no internal supporting walls so I'm very mindful of being careful of how much goes up there.

We had a wooden one with handles on the side of the ladder. It's been brilliant - we got big boxes from Ikea with handles and big marker pens and now we have a nicely organised loft over our extension with kids clothes, my clothes that don't fit etc and baby gates, cots, travel cots, summer garden toys, spare chairs, books, high chair, suitcases, empty boxes from TVs, just loads of stuff. We didn't use legs, we just walloped a load of insulation between the joists and loose boarded for now, but we do intend to do it properly soon. The rooms below are warm and the loft is currently freezing, so I think it's worked reasonably well.

We had our loft hatch made bigger and a wooden fold down ladder fitted in our old house. We also had the loft boarded.
Our joiner did it. The areas he cut into for the larger hatch were braced with extra timber.
We got a wooden ladder as it felt sturdier than the metal one we had in an old house. It was heavier but because it was well balanced even tiny me could get it down easily.
It's important to have a good latch too. Our joiner just put out dust sheets and hoovered it was very quick and clean really.
Ours had insulation under the boarding and then the rafters were lined with a foiled bubble wrap type insulation staple gunned to them - easy enough to do yourself.
In our loft here we have a huge loft so have only partially boarded it. We have solid insulation under the boards and glass wool everywhere else. It's very warm.
Mark on the boarding the position of any pipes or wires so that if there are any problems you know where they are. We boarded our loft before we redid our heating so our pipes are sitting on our boarding in nice neat labelled rows.

We had a wooden fold down ladder, a new hatch and the loft fully boarded for £1500 a few months ago. The added new hoist 100mm deep over the top of the existing at right angles to raise the floor level up to sit above the insulation in the loft. It also acts to spread any load out over a few joists. Think we had an area of 16' x 20' done it doesn't go all the way to the eaves but quite close. No point going right to the edge as best to jeep it open there for ventilation anyway. Don't feel the need to stick to the original lofthatch location. Personally think it's best to avoid the hall as busy with people and if you did fall there is a chance you could fall down the stairs too. We put ours in our bedroom so we could get things in and out without disturbing the kids.

Just don't put mountains of crap up there which will still be there, unused, 10 or 15 years later!

Dh re-boarded and re-insulated our loft a few years ago so we had to clear it out - a major operation.
At least half the stuff went to the tip or charity shop.
On the plus side, we had a note from Oxfam to say our 'junk' had raised over £200!