Does anybody have experience of using sheepswool for loft insulation? I (well, my house does) have a thatched roof, with zero insulation on the loft floor except for what fell there by accident, and I am thinking of using wool. There is plenty of room for 250 mm depth. Any pros and cons?
I looked at it, but it is expensive. Apparently it's good at storing/releasing heat and moisture. GF will so soggy and useless if it gets wet and has a life of about 30 years (mine after ~25 years was well worth removing) whereas wool could be 70+.
If I had the space and money I'd use it but it'd be a hell of a lot of Wetherspoon's beer tokens.
I looked into this once. The only con was it was a bit more expensive than glass wool. The U-value was IIRC about the same. The claimed "pro" is that the wool will act as a mositure buffer, unlike glass wool.
The obvious pro is it is not crap to work with.
Thanks. I have priced doing my loft, and it is less than =C2=A3600, CERT subsidised, plus VAT. Whether or not it is much more expensive than the more modern methods, I have yet to calculate, but it is affordable. And the fact that it is not nasty and probably dangerous when accidentally breathed is a bonus. The wife is definitely for the wool, which helps push it into the 'favourable' region, if only to make life easier! SWMBO, and all that. And it does seem to fit in with the house construction.
--=20 Davey.
If you do, shop around. A lot of it comes from Ireland where they have lots of sheep with coarse wool. Prices will vary wildly from stupid to reasonable.
Have you considered whether you actually need insulation? I thought thatched roofs were quite insulating on their own. (A foot of straw is certainly going to be a *lot* better than a layer of felt and a tile. ... and a foot of straw is quite thin thatch.)
The mice will probably be appreciative.
The stupid feckers will live in and eat (but not for long!) glass wool, so I would not worry too much about this...
flammable, or do they treat it?
I'm insulating my loft floor with kingspan seconds and glass fibre, it would slow down a fire, and less area than the roof so less heat loss.
[g]
Wool has natural flame extinguishing properties (will not support combustion by itself) - have you tried burning some? When it is forced to burn, it produces a horrible smell but little in the way of noxious smoke (unlike plastics).
I find it frustrating that farmers moan that they have (by law) to sheer their sheep when wool is of little or no value, so why ain't it cheap?
I looked into this last year and was intrigued to find a site which mentioned a diy approach of buying a bale of wool from a market for
190 quid. A surprising amount of wool in that bale, it seemed. I don't recall the site, but it might come up with a givemebackmygoogle.com
But presumably still "raw" ie as it came off the sheep complete with the lanolin, twigs and other detritus including ticks. It would also be prone to moth and/or carpet bettle attack.
Thermafleece is 85% wool the rest is polyester fibre. I think the polyester is there to keep it together and give it some permenant body.
I heard something about this on the Farming programme on R4 first thing in the morning a month and more ago.
It is being used these days because nobody wants to buy woolen clothes. Farmers are not making any money on sheep. More so the long woollen breeds which are in great danger of disappearing.
Check out what fleeces are available locally or if it is worth a trip to Wales or the Lakes to get the heavy wool directly from the grower. They would need washing I imagine, Desperately so in some cases. But a bale of wool would fill a pick up and do a roof to one hell of a depth.
OTOH the OP has a thatched roof. The whole point of a thatched roof is the insulation. Why do you think you need more, Davey?
In theory you can't do that all wool has to be sold through the British Wool Marketing Board. The rules under which wool can bought and sold are really very strange and not in step with the modern world. The BWMB came into being in 1950...
Yes, they mentioned cleaning and carding it; a lot of work, but frugality was the essence.
Fwiw, I've found a sheepwool site with prices and really, they don't seem too bad (I'd thought it was much pricier).
Thanks. I'll compare that with the site I was looking at. I also thought that the price was not bad.
Yes, this has been considered. We recently had one gable open, and there was a considerable flow of heat up through the ceiling and out to the world via the loft, which is what prompted this. But yes, the thatch (reed, in our case) is above that, and provides a separate, higher, insulating area. But it has a quite considerable volume of air, all of which has to be brought up to temperature before the thatch does any good. But the house also has thin walls, we can't do anything to insulate the outside, and we are not sure what to do inside without putting up some ghastly-looking internal celotex, which would be totally naff-looking against the visible exposed beams. We had thought about some nice-looking hanging tapestries, in 'The Tudors' style. (!) So doing something (loft insulation) is better than nothing, if you see what I mean. Prevent any heat loss that we can.
--=20 Davey.
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