Elves In The Attic

When I changed my utilities last month I was given the option of going for a "Green" tariff. As far as I can tell, this costs a couple of hundred pounds extra for no obvious benefit to me or the environment. I saved my cash. I did this last year as well and spent the money I saved on improving my draught proofing and fixing a badly fitted French window. This will have had a direct effect on the environment by causing me to burn less fossil fuels to heat the house although my main reasons for doing this were creature comforts and unrepentant miserliness.

Now we are settled into our new house (well late Victorian but new to us) I am looking at various home improvements to make the house more comfortable. During last month's storm I made a start by carrying out emergency repairs to Jake's bedroom window which was letting hurricane force air howl through his room and causing his toys fly around like a scene out of the film Poltergeist. His toys normally do this but I put that down to Jake. The next job I wanted to do is to improve our loft insulation as I had the feeling that we were doing a very good job of warming up the birds. As this is a revoltingly messy job I decided to get someone in to do it and found a grant was available via the Scottish Government. All well so far.

When the surveyor arrived he looked in the loft and pointed out that I had, in fact, no insulation at all but that he wouldn't be able to do anything about it due to 'elf and safety legislation. Now I've heard lots of story about the mischievous elves and tabloid stories of 'Elf an Safety Gawn Mad but, even in this day and age, I have rarely heard of workmen turning down paid work on the basis of workplace legislation - charge double for safety equipment, yes, but turning down work is a rarity. It turns out that our loft does not have the minimum working height for installing loft insulation. Nevertheless, the surveyor was very helpful and pointed out that if I wanted to have crack at this myself, I could get cheap loft insulation materials via NPower.

The NPower scheme is part of the government's scheme to reduce carbon dioxide emissions via carbon trading. Essentially, NPower pay for me to insulate my loft and they get to run coal fired power stations in return. It does sound like a bit of a fix, and I suppose it is, but the end result is that I will end up burning less fuel and it is still an encouragement to power producers to make their own operations more efficient instead of having to fork out cash to the likes of me. The insulation arrived at the remarkably cheap price of £3 per roll (by comparison, the price at Wickes was about £30) and I had the joyous task of stuffing it into the loft. This is when I discovered why the insulation firm turned the work down themselves.

Firstly, I must say that Rockwool, the insulation material I was using, may have fantastic physical properties in terms of U and R factors, flame resistance and so on; but it is a really disgusting, vile and bloody minded substance to work with. NPower supplied gloves, goggles and a face mask to work with. These were pretty essential but I found the goggles simply misted up rendering them not entirely useful. I also invested in some disposable overalls. In principle these were a fantastic idea but the problem I had was that, despite being described as XL size, they weren't big enough. I think XL must refer to extra girth as I had no problem with this. Unfortunately, the problem I has is the arms and legs of the overalls didn't reach the ends of my arms and legs. XL must be extra large rather than extra long and I suppose I'm probably both - at least I can never spend a whole day in Glasgow without someone referring to me as "Big Man" usually followed by a request for sustenance.

Anyway, I climbed into the loft and this is when I discovered the wisdom of the Elves. I could just about fit in but any form of movement was a struggle. Even worse, I was finding it almost impossible to unroll the Rockwool and even when I did it was then an effort and a half to push it into place. I think at this point the claustrophobia of the whole situation cut in as I imagined myself as some sort of Welsh Miner in a cramped Victorian pit. I thought I'd sing a couple of verses of Land of My Fathers to cheer myself up. It didn't. I started to invent some new swear words and this did, in fact, help - even thought at this point my ankles and wrists were starting to itch as the full body overall's limitations were made clear to me.

As with anything as trying as this, the best bet is to stick with it and just get the job done. I did, eventually. Afterwards, I had a shower and a bath and another shower to try and clean all the accumulated loft crap off me. I did end up vaguely clean but with both wrists and ankles red raw as well as a patch on my side - which looked strangely biblical. I was going to put a picture of my handy work up but I have sealed the hatch and will not be going back up there. The loft is a bad place, we shall not speak of it again.