Same. I spent a good amount of time in our house the first fall setting up PoE cameras, which involved much time crawling around the attic. Hell of a workout and can be unpleasant but extremely doable.
Unless you're mobility limited, everything in an attic should be accessible.
The main considerations are:
- Do work when it's cold outside. Do not be up there when it's warm and sunny
- Wear a breathing mask. N95 / painter's mask works fine. Glass insulation particles aren't lethal, but also aren't stuff you want in lungs
- Think twice. Then move. Slowly. And feel you're standing on something stable before fully transferring your weight
- Mind your head. The roof plywood will likely have roofing nails sticking through
- Bring 2 lights, preferably one lantern-type. That way you can leave one en route
If it's blown insulation, you can sweep it over and expose joists to stand on.
They're regularly spaced from the exterior wall to an interior beam, all running the same direction, and the support boards up to the roof will run down to one.
I actually brought up an old LED rope that I wasn't doing anything with and just left it there unplugged for future needs. Probably will be dead by the time I need to work up there again, haha.
Mask, Gloves and a Long Sleeved shirt and it's all good.
Some of the old insulation will make you itchy as hell and probably not something you want to breathe but otherwise yeah, it's just a chore its not difficult assuming you are able bodied (I'm UK so our houses (until recently) had heavy duty joists so you can just clamber around on them, if gonna me up a while take a board up and lay it over a few to kneel/lay on and that's about it.
I've always wondered if that's the old glass insulation itself, or the accumulated mouse-poop-dust embedding itself in the microscratches and freaking out your immune system.
A lifetime of accumulated pollen/dirt/mousepoop does add some extra fun though in my experience.
The reason fiberglass is itchy is because it’s piercing the epidermis. It’s basically a pad of brittle micro hypodermic needles. Add those two together, and it gets extra fun.
