Insulating Sliding Bessler Stairs
Beckettbrood
| Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on
I have sliding bessler stairs (not folding) I am trying to find a way to insulate them. Currently we have a piece of styrafoam on the inside of the hatch door but it is not doing the job. Has anyone found an insulated hatch door? Or found a good way to do this?
Please let me know with photos if possible thank you.
Replies
A tough one
Having just a bit of experience with those stairs makes me think you'd have to examine concentrating on the underside. The hinge end of the door would be the first place to do some serious figuring.
The perfect air seal of the door panel to ceiling alone would be worth some effort. How often you go up to the attic might give you a bit of leeway on the way you insulate.
I would recommmend retrofitting the interior side of stair panel with at least 2" of laminated polystyrene. While this only gives you about an R-10, it is probably 5x's better than what you have. This will probably mean resetting staircase in rough opening to allow for thickness. You'll probably going to have to allow for swing clearance of the thickened panel as well and/or some type of custom edge interlock seal.
While these type of stair have some attractive features, incorporating thermal breaks are not one of them. If you want your "cake and eat it to" for this item, it looks like you're goiing to have to come up with a custom receipe. I doubt you'll find an off the shelf recipe. YOu might find it more advantagous to define a thermal break within the attic (or newly defined anteroom) that this stair opens into.