Last week we completed our first, underfloor and ceiling insulation, projects in Arrowtown. I can report underfloor for 6 hours in a 450mm crawlspace with spiders and sharp bits of wood and tin for company is pretty grim; it was only made bearable by the wit of Gromme and the brilliant Novatherm product, no nasty Pink Batt dust, no nails glue or staples! More about it later.

This video Features Tyler Buck, Tribal Construction and The Jackpine Collaborative.

This project includes researching the potential, branding and communications and then forming a team, and putting together the paper trail and doing the quality control as we roll out the service. Initially we will be contracting to the Otago Regional Council to their Clean Heat Clean Air program.

I put some thought into the brand and decided something a wee bit cleaner and smarter than the ‘Comfy Homes’ message out there may be a little more appealing to the Central Otago Audi driver. I really like German trades logo styles as well which tend to be small and authoritative. I settled on ‘Energy House’ which I think sums up our mission, to reinforce (through insulation) that a house needs energy, good energy, and to retain it.

One of the biggest was not sealing the strawbale wall top adequately, combined with the curved and therefore gappy nature of the surfeit it resulted in way too mch air movement through the rafter cavity. The roof is insulated on the exterior of the waterproof membrane so the dew point can not be inside but with the rafter cavity running some brisk natural air-con the insulation never really got to do its job.

So, the problem sat in my draft addled head for many years. How best to inject insulation with the least amount of work and maximum impact.

I found Paul Kennets house insulation project very inspiring but I didn’t really want polystyrene inside the house where it could rain down through the micro gaps in the T&G ceiling. But the method made sense.

My belief is that an unwanted singular thing can be a problem, waste I guess – but a lot of an unwanted thing is normally a resource I started looking for insulation options from the wastestream. It didn’t take long to find bedding grade polyester fibre insulation offcuts through the Christchurch waste exchange Terranova. Toby and I needed a shipping container so as it was travelling empty I took a day to fill it with free insulation in Christchurch and ship it down.

So the last few months has been the occasional session of ripping up 30m3 of insulation and blowing it into the roof space with a Ryobi leaf blower on suck (over 200kmh muzzle velocity!). Kinda noisy and mindless work but it already seems warmer.