Other things that are typically seen in a traditional attic include:
- Rarely used items: Rarely used items such as camping gear and luggage bags are often kept in the attic. ...
- Seasonal decorations: Holiday décor, particularly Christmas decorations, are usually stored inside traditional attics. ...
- Off-season clothing: Another common find in attics is clothing that is used only a few times each year. ...
What would you find in an attic?
The first step, which may require expert assistance, is to describe the assets, including: Galleries or dealer names, along with their contact information; and any paperwork that refers to the artwork, such as catalogs, bills of sale and so forth. Discoveries like Mr. Whitcomb’s are daunting to catalog.
What type of insulation is best for your attic?
Understanding R-Value
- Fiberglass (batts or rolls) Fiberglass insulation is by far the most widely used insulation in today’s homes. ...
- Loose-Fill Insulation. ...
- Spray Foam Insulation. ...
- Rock Wool (Mineral Wool) If eco-friendly insulation is the goal, rock wool batts are probably the best option for you. ...
What animals can live in attics?
Noises in the Attic During the Day
- Squirrels Sounds. If you hear sounds in your attic during the day, most times it is a squirrel. ...
- Scratching Sounds in Attic. Many people report hearing scratching in the attic or behind walls. ...
- Animal Vocalizations. Not many wildlife species vocalize in attics, which makes identification easier for the few species that do.
- Flapping Noise in Attic. ...
How do you get into the attic?
Why do mice like my attic?
- Mice prefer to be near food sources. ...
- Mice often come into a home to escape the cold weather outside. ...
- Mice are timid creatures that prefer locations that have lots of safe places to hide. ...
- Even an empty attic is ideal for these timid critters. ...
- Insulation. ...
What should I expect in an attic?
Attic Inspection ChecklistVentilation. Signs of poor ventilation include, mold, rusted nails and condensation.Insulation. Your attic shouldn't feel drafty, and insulation should be plentiful and complete.Leaks. Water stains, rot and mold point to leaks.Pests. ... Exhaust ducts and vent stacks.
What is stored in the attic?
Attics are a pretty common place to store all of your stuff. Between holiday decorations, out-of-season clothing, and even a few boxes of memorabilia, it's the prime free storage space for your home.
Is there something in the attic?
The most common attic pests are racoons, squirrels, bats, birds and mice. Well run through the habits of each to help you determine which pest is making the racket in your attic. Wildlife inside your home can pose a significant health threat and can cause serious damage.
Can you walk in your attic?
1:543:44Walking around in an attic: be careful - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo you just have to kind of be careful as you're walking up in here. And this is about where my workMoreSo you just have to kind of be careful as you're walking up in here. And this is about where my work area is so I'm gonna move the camera I'll show you this.
Is it safe to go up in the attic?
The number of safety hazards in an attic are plenty. According to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, these hazards include: Poor ventilation and fine particulate dust that affects breathing. Low-clearance rafters that affect the safety of your head.
Can you store toilet paper in the attic?
So, let's start with the things you can typically stockpile in your attic that won't go bad....✅ toilet paper (a perfect match since it's bulky)✅ soap, floss and other personal care products✅ blankets, tarps, tents✅ sheets✅ gardening tools✅ wood✅ clothes✅ cooking utensils✅ books✅ chainsaws4 more rows•May 10, 2022
What animal would be in my attic?
Scurrying and Scampering in the Attic or Walls These noises indicate that you are probably dealing with rats, mice, or squirrels. If these noises occur during the night, you most likely have rats, mice, or flying squirrels, and if they occur during the daytime, you most likely have squirrels.
Is it a squirrel or rat in the attic?
Behavior and Activity Squirrels are active during the day, while rats are nocturnal and move around at night. The time of day you hear movement in your attic can indicate which infestation you may have. Both creatures have different mating habits.
What animal is scratching in my attic?
Mice and rats primarily make scratching sounds, both when they move around and when they are rearranging their nests. While most nocturnal animals leave your attic at night rodents, tend to stay and can be heard throughout the entire space. Many night sounds are likely to be from mice and rats.
Can I use my attic as a room?
When converting an attic to a living space, it must meet the same building requirements as the other rooms in your home. To meet most building codes your attic should: Have at least 7 feet of vertical clearance in the majority of the room, be a minimum of 7 feet wide and have at least 70 square feet of space available.
Can my attic support my weight?
If you're talking about the floor of an attic, then it may, or may not, support the weight of a person. We'll tell you how you can figure it out. If you're talking about walking on the roof and therefore relying on the roof truss and attic to support you, it highly likely that the roof will support you.
Why are attics unfinished?
The goal with an unfinished attic is to seal it off from the main living space below. This means you should insulate between and over the floor joists. Don't forget to also insulate the attic hatch.
Attic Anatomy: Rafters or Roof Trusses?
One of an attic’s most important features is its framing. Many older houses (and plenty of new ones, too) are framed with rafters –2x or engineered lumber that extends from the ridge board at the roof peak down to the top plate of the exterior wall, where each rafter typically overhangs to form the eaves of a house.
Attics and the Building Envelope
Where is the insulation in your attic? Most attics have insulation installed in the attic floor. This puts the attic space itself outside the “building envelope,” which we define as the “conditioned” space that is heated and cooled for comfort.
Attic Ventilation: Passive & Active Options
Any unconditioned attic requires ventilation. Without some means of ventilation, moisture and (in summertime) heat can accumulate to undesirable levels in the attic space. Poor attic ventilation can also be a contributing factor in the formation of ice dams in winter.
Important Attic Elements: Air Sealing and Insulation
Unless an older house has undergone an energy upgrade, it’s certain to have too much air leakage and too little insulation. Nowhere is this more common than in the attic. To understand the major role the attic plays in your home’s overall energy performance, let’s talk about the Stack Effect.
Unfinished Attic
An unfinished attic, as its name suggests, is one that’s not yet livable. It has no use to the homeowner and thus, isn’t decorated at all.
Scuttle Attic
Like an unfinished attic, a scuttle attic is empty and not yet ready to serve as a living space.
Partially Finished Attic
As you may deduce from its name, a partially finished attic is not completely ready to be occupied as a living space. It may provide enough headroom for storage or even for a bedroom, but a partially finished attic is less than 40 percent of the square footage of the home’s ground area.
Fully Finished Attic
If a partially finished attic is less than 40 percent of the square footage of the ground floor of a house, then a fully finished attic is around 40 to 54 percent of the main floor’s square footage. And as earlier mentioned, a livable attic should also be at least seven feet high and seven feet wide after all the finishes have been installed.
Full Fin Wall HGT
Now, what if the livable attic area is 55% of the main floor’s square footage? It’s called fully finished wall height or full fin wall HGT. A full fin wall HGT is almost always completely finished.
How to Make Your Attic More Livable
Now that you have a better understanding and appreciation of the various types of attics, you may want to know more about the features you can add to your attic. This may come in handy when you are planning to convert your attic into a livable space.
Conclusion
The attic is an often-overlooked part of the house that can add a livable space for you and your family members. Now that you are familiar with the various types of attics, you can start planning how to get the most out of the attic in your place.
CAN YOU ADD ATTIC FLOORING?
A common misconception is that it takes little more than the installation of some decking over the attic joists to ready an attic for move-in. In some houses, this may be the case; in many others, however, the original joist structure that supports the ceiling of the room beneath was never designed to hold anything more than the ceiling drywall.
BRINGING THE FLOOR UP TO CODE
Modifying an attic floor’s joist system is a job for the pros. But before even they can start on a job that involves altering your home’s structure, they’ll almost certainly have to pull a permit.
ADDITIONAL STRUCTURAL REQUIREMENTS
When houses are constructed, specific walls are selected to be load-bearing walls and designed to support the weight of the structure above them. Houses that have been constructed with the idea of finishing out a future living space in the attic will not require joist reinforcement nor additional vertical reinforcement.
CONSIDERING USABLE FLOOR SPACE
The headroom in the attic will determine how much usable floor space you have. While local codes vary, many communities will not permit the ceiling in a finished living area (attics included) to be lower than 6’ 8” to 7’6” from the floor.
INSTALLING ATTIC FLOORING FOR LIGHT STORAGE ONLY
If your attic joists won’t bear the weight necessary to finish out a living space but the engineer cleared them to support floor decking for light storage, you can install ½-inch plywood or oriented strand board (OSB) in 4-foot-by-8-foot panels over existing 16-inch OC joists.
CONVERTING AN ATTIC INTO LIVING SPACE
Attic flooring intended for a living space must be installed in compliance with building codes. Some communities will allow homeowners to do their own construction, but they are still subject to all inspections required by the building authority.
Understand the pieces and parts that contribute to quality attic ventilation so that you can better cool down the space and prevent roof damage all year long
At first glance, it can seem counter-intuitive: You insulate your home to reduce temperature fluctuations and save on utility bills, but then you allow fresh air to flow through the attic no matter the time of year. The science behind attic ventilation, however, is sound.
How Attic Ventilation Works
Attic ventilation works on the principle that heated air naturally rises, primarily utilizing two types of vents:
Intake Vents
An attic’s intake vents are most commonly installed directly in the soffit, either as individual vents spaced every few feet or as one continuous perforated soffit running the entire length of the eave.
Exhaust Vents
Releasing all of the heat that rises and gets trapped in the attic can be achieved with one or a combination of the three following vent models in addition to the multipurpose gable vents mentioned above.
Ventilating Finished Attics
With square-foot living space at a premium, many homeowners turn to their attics for a little extra room. When the attic becomes part of the home to be heated and cooled, open-wall gable vents and roof vents are no longer feasible, but the underside of the roof (the sheathing and rafters) can still get blazing hot without airflow.
What Temperature Should the Attic Be?
Maintaining attic temperature isn’t always the easiest thing to do, but it is an absolute must if you want to keep both your house and your energy bills in shape. There are a couple of steps to achieving this, the first being to start taking better care of your attic.
Is a Hot Attic Dangerous?
Now, we’ve mentioned that you need to watch out for your heating system’s performance in cold climates, but there are far more problems that might occur due to an unregulated temperature in hot climates. Here’s a breakdown of some of the more important ones.
Do Attics Need Ventilation?
The short and clear answer: yes. However, that doesn’t devote enough respect and attention to this crucial topic. One could even put forward a pretty solid argument that proper ventilation is more important than controlling the average temperature. In this part of today’s article, we will discuss why that’s so.
What Temperature Should an Attic Fan Be Set at in Summer?
Some higher-end active fan systems combine temperature control and ventilation into one. If you’re planning on installing one of these systems – or perhaps already have one of them installed – you might be thinking, what’s the optimal air temperature to set the fan?
Should You Use Radiant Barriers in Attic?
Radiant barriers add a reflective layer and work by reducing radiant heat energy transfer from one side of the barrier to the other. Although this is generally considered useful in most places, it’s an incredibly productive choice if you happen to be living in a warmer climate.
The Home Inspector and Your Attic
When you have a home inspector coming to look at your home, they will check for a couple of key things that are going on in your attic. Those things include wiring, insulation, and the structural integrity of your roof.
Home Inspections Protect Everyone
Home inspectors do their job so that a potential buyer is not surprised by significant repairs as soon as they move in. They are also able to provide a report that indicates these problems, which are then reviewed by the real estate agent, the buyers, and even the bank.
Be Honest and Get Prepared
Follow a home inspection checklist and get prepare for your inspection. Make sure that your attic, basement, and all areas of your house are ready to be checked. Doing this will save you time, money, and stress in the long run.
Air Conditioning Units In Attic: Pros
AC units in the attic save a lot of available space – most often, freshly installed residential air conditioning systems are either two independent units or split units. The unit that is outside, also called “central air conditioning” by some people, includes a single condenser and compressor.
USEFUL VIDEO: Air Conditioning Units In Attic
In this video, you will find information on 5 main pros and cons, highlighted by the technician with a great experience.
Attic Air Conditioning Units: Cons
Attic heating and air conditioning units can use a lot more electricity. The main negative factor about attic air conditioners is that they are usually of little use when energy savings are considered. Contractors often try to increase return and efficiency by carefully sealing all available ductwork in your attic.
