Insulation between or over old beams?

WJT

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Hi all. New poster so please be gentle!

I have outlined an issue below and I wonder if anyone has had experience of some time similar and can offer some advice please?

Issue: Old cottage with crossed exposed beams in one ground floor room. However, in the room above there is only a layer of ply board and then the carpet on top of the beams. As a result, there is no thermal insulation between floors and the ground floor room is almost unusable in winter without constant heating, as all of the heat escapes into the room above.

From an extreme amateur perspective, I can see two options:

Option 1: Thin PIR insulation board and a paintable covering cut to size between the beams on the ground floor ceiling. The beams are quite deep (c. 100mm) so I recon you could get away with something 20-25mm deep without ruining the aesthetics too much.

Option 2: Lift the carpet and underlay on the floor above and create some sort of insulation "sandwich" before relaying it. I'm not sure how feasible that is and whether you could put board directly on top of the insulation, or if you'd need to reinforce it first. Adding too much height to the floor is a bit of an issue as it's a cottage with low ceilings already!

Many thanks
 

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You want heat from downstairs to rise upstairs. You want to keep heat within the entire house, so wall insulation and loft insulation are the priority.
 
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