Before you start insulating the roof, you must thoroughly study all kinds of materials used as a roof insulation, know the advantages, disadvantages, as well as their scope. The material in this article will help you make the right choice. Having studied it, you no longer need to enter a query into the Internet search engines on how to insulate the roof.
Today's market provides a huge selection of
thermal insulation materials. The most common of them are: polystyrene foam and
mineral wool, foam glass, cellular concrete and rigid fiberglass. Let us briefly dwell on each of these varieties.
Mineral wool, or rather, mat and a plate from it, is today the most common type. The insulation of the roof with mineral wool can rightly be considered the best solution to this issue. Since it has a low coefficient of thermal conductivity (from 0.032 to 0.045 W / m × K), good vapor permeability, sound insulation, durability (about 50 years) and elasticity. Also, it completely lacks water absorption and has high resistance to mechanical damage. And the most important property of mineral wool is that it has low flammability.
Glass wool has almost the same characteristics, although water absorption is much higher and vapor permeability is much lower. To get the same result as from mineral wool, you can insulate the roof with
stone wool, since its properties are very similar to the properties of mineral.
Roof insulation with extruded polystyrene foam can also be called a good option. It has low thermal conductivity (from 0.02 to 0.035 W / m × K), low weight and, importantly, relatively low cost. The special chemical additives added to its composition made it a non-flammable and self-extinguishing material. There are also disadvantages to this type of insulation, for example, the possession of very low vapor permeability, which with improperly mounted ventilation can lead to increased humidity of the ceiling of the structure. Also, polystyrene foam has low elasticity and high elasticity, which makes it impossible to use it in the so-called “roofing cake” for mounting complex roof configurations.
On the basis of foamed plastic, there is another type of material with which roof insulation is often performed - it is polyurethane foam. Its positive characteristics include the following: increased resistance to aggressive environments, a huge range of operating temperature (from -180 to +250 ° C). Disadvantages - this is sensitivity to direct sunlight, which is why it is necessary to build a protective coating. This type of material allows both sticking, mechanically fixing it to the required surface, and spraying it. These are only the main types of foamed
polymer material, there are also many others.
Insulating the roof with the effect of microchambers that are filled with air, possibly with an inorganic material called cellular concrete. Yes, of course, this can undoubtedly be attributed to "yesterday." But to use organic fibrous heaters, the basis of which is cork chips, this is the immediate future development of construction technology. But today it is an incredibly costly pleasure.