Attic Stair Cover Insulating and Magnetically Sealing Your Pull-down Stairs

After putting this over the attic stairs in my 90 year old house, you could really feel that the second floor was warmer and less drafty. This product is easy to install,too!

For me this product was great. It turns my attic door into something resembling a freezer door. Seems to have a great seal and well designed for what it is. I feel confident it will meet my needs for a long long time.HOWEVER, to say it is easy to install is misleading. I think someone would be very lucky if it sealed their attic door with only the instructions given. I had to build a wood frame around my door to give something flat for the seal. Not a big deal for me but people should know that most engineered roofs now may not have a big platform 360deg around the door for the seal to mount. Also it requires a lot of caulking. Not a big deal but just pick up two tubes to be sure.

I chose this stair cover over others because of the magnetic seal. The product works as advertised. My attic stairs fit under it. The magnetic seal seems to work well. Just be warned that installation was a real pain for me.First off, the instructions could use a spell checker and possibly a higher quality printer. But they were understandable. They say that installation should take about half and hour and you will need one to two tubes of caulk. Installation took me 2.5 hours, 3 tubes of caulk, a roll of caulk saver, and some plywood. My attic flooring needed some plywood in the back before I could even begin and I caulked all the gaps and chinks in the woodwork around the stairs. I really wish that I had sanded the floor level before installation. The plywood floor in my attic has as much as an 1/8" height difference between the different pieces of plywood. The magnetic seal does not bend over these gaps seamlessly. I did the best I could adding extra caulking under the metal strips, but the strips bend slightly and the magnet isn't strong enough for that. In hindsight, I should have sanded the floor smooth first, I wish the instructions had suggested that.The foam cover comes in two pieces for easy shipping that have to be caulked together. It also has four holes near the corners that need to be filled with caulk. The holes mystify me. I'm not sure why there are there to begin with, but I really wish they had been factory filled. Filling those holes was the messiest part of the job for me because the caulk dripped out the bottom.The magnetic seal is similar to a fridge door. There is a rubber gasket like around the fridge door that magnetically seals to the metal strips that get caulked to the attic floor. Unlike the fridge door, there is no hinge. Every time you leave the attic you will need to ensure that the cover is exactly aligned over the metal strips. Its a bit finicky and may add an extra 20 seconds to every one of your attic trips to get the cover sealed properly when you come back down. A better design would probably have a hinge one one side of the cover so that it closes more easily. But then again that would be more expensive, harder to install, and wouldn't allow the cover to be moved aside when bringing up bulky items.

At first I thought that the stair cover was over-priced styrofoam. But after installing it, I noticed an immediate difference in the temperature of the hallway where it was installed. The same hallway has the thermostat, so as a result my furnace now runs less and the heat in my small home is more even. In the end it was worth the investment. If you need to enter your attic frequently, this may not be a good option since the cover is rather flimsy and calls for careful use.

Item was as advertised. Not difficult to put together but the foam is fragile and can be easily damaged if your not careful with it...A more durable foam would be an improvement