Insulation Case Studies

Case Study 1 – Tile roof

This job was fairly typical of an older house that has had insulation installed, but it is past it’s use-by date. The glass fibre batts aren’t too degraded, we’ve seen much worse, but they are full of dust brought in via the gaps in the tiles and they have been thrown around by various trades over the years, leaving significant roof areas with no insulation.

This is unfortunately all too common. An electrician comes in to change some wiring and moves batts out of the way, but doesn’t replace them. The evaporative cooling gets serviced, they move some batts to get access to vents and don’t replace them. The owner never goes up into the roof to check and you end up with 20% of your roof not insulated. Having the batts sitting over joists and folded into strange shapes speeds their degradation and you end up with this kind of mess.

Batts that have been moved and not replaced, leaving a significant gap in the insulation. You can clearly see the old plaster and lathe ceiling. This is probably a pipe from an old ceiling-mounted hot water service. We can also arrange for these to be removed, along with any other rubbish that has accumulated in your ceiling.

More dirty batts, major gaps and rubbish left in the ceiling.

Large sections of ceiling left uninsulated.

After cleaning and installation of fresh polyester insulation. Rubbish removed, dust vacuumed out and polyester batts laid neatly, giving complete coverage.

Fresh insulation in a clean roof. All electrical wiring is above the insulation. Enclosing wiring in insulation reduces the current rating of the cable, which means circuit breakers may need to be changed for smaller ones to ensure safety.

Before and after shots of the same area, showing the results of cleaning and insulating