J
Jessa B.
Brisbane
“It dropped about 4 degrees straight away, and we added another 3 with the second job. I appreciate Peter's honesty, and the team showed pictures before and after.”
Roof, ceiling & underfloor insulation · Brisbane & SE Queensland
Cellulose insulation that fills every gap, made and installed by the family that’s been doing it since 1986.
A proper, fixed-price quote from a tradesman who actually crawls through roofs. No deposits, no day-of surprises, just an honest job done right the first time.
Comfort Zone Insulation Team is a family business that makes its own cellulose insulation in Tiaro and installs it across Brisbane and South East Queensland, pumped in as a seamless blanket with no gaps, treated with borax for fire and pests, to keep your home cooler in summer and warmer in winter, since 1986.
This is cellulose
one seamless blanket, no gaps
174+
verified reviews
rated 5.0 on Google
- 40 years
- insulating SE QLD since 1986
- 6,000+ roofs
- Peter has personally insulated
- ~2,000 homes
- mapped across SE QLD since 2016
- 5.0★
- from 27 Google reviews
- We make it
- one of very few who make & install their own cellulose
Came here for a batt quote? Read this first
The only product I’d put in my mother’s house.
In the end about 92% of my customers go with the pump-in cellulose fibre insulation, 6% with polyester batts (the King of batts, locally made and non-itchy) and just 2% with the cheap fibreglass products.
I hope you realise by now that you are buying a service as much as a product.
“Honestly we don’t make any money out of not selling stuff when customers ask for it and everyone else tells them they need some. It is your decision though.”I quote to complete the job properly and not have to come back and fix it.
Funny thing about insulation brand names. Steel wool doesn’t have any wool in it. Two-dollar gold coins aren’t made of gold. Earthwool® isn’t from a sheep. Gold Batts® aren’t actually gold (just a tint on them). I’m not knocking anyone’s product, just having a chuckle at the names. What matters is what’s inside the bag, and that’s where it gets interesting.
Whatever you choose, every single job is photographed and the photos are checked before the invoice goes out. That’s our system, the same on every job. Most customers never see inside their own roof, so we show them. Your job is done by a Comfort Zone franchise partner, an owner-operator running their own family business to our standards, who cares about their own reputation in your area, not a subbie paid by the job.
People ask me about whirlybirds and roof vents all the time. They’re the “would you like fries with that?” of the insulation world. If those vents were actually doing the job, I wouldn’t be up there putting insulation in and taking these photos. The insulation does the heavy lifting.
“An owner-operator earns the right to run a job on their own after years on the gear. My sons Noah and Eli are part of it, and we’re building a family of franchise partners, other families running their own businesses to our systems and standards, so your job gets done properly the first time.”
Watch first · 5 minutes
Everything you need to know about cellulose insulation.
Before you spend a cent, let me walk you through it. In this video I show you what pumped-in cellulose actually is, what goes into the bag, how we install it as one seamless blanket with no gaps, and why after 6,000+ roofs it’s still the only product I’d put in my own family’s home.
No sales pitch, just a tradesman explaining the job so you can make up your own mind.
“Everything you need to know about cellulose insulation” by Peter Johnson, Comfort Zone Insulation Team.
The evidence
Day one looks fine. The test is 40 years later.
Cellulose
Batts
Why does cellulose still look almost new after 20 years while batts don’t? Two reasons. One: we don’t get rodents nesting in cellulose, so no urine, no droppings, no dirt to make it smell or look grim. Two: cellulose is harder to disturb. When the sparky comes back to add a downlight, they can’t just lift a slab of cellulose aside and dump it on the aircon ducting like they do with a batt. The cellulose just stays the way we put it in.
Cellulose we pumped 10+ years ago still looks new. In 6,000 jobs I’ve never seen it settle, blow around, get mice nesting in it or start a fire. The only time I’ve removed it is when someone was replacing their ceilings. I’ve pulled out plenty of fibreglass batts, though, that settled and broke down as they aged.
Three products, honestly
I sell all three. Here's the honest version of which one I'd actually use.
I sell all 3 but, after installing insulation since 1988, I only recommend the pumped-in cellulose fibre. Here's how they stack up.
Comfort Zone cellulose pumped-in, recommended ★ Recommended | Polyester batts the best of the batts | Fibreglass batts the cheap ones | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gaps | Seamless, no gaps | Cut to fit | Gaps from day one |
| Settling over time | I've never seen it settle | Doesn't settle | Settles after ~10 yrs |
| Pests & vermin | Borax-treated, insects won't live in it | Mice can nest | Rodents love them |
| Fire | Shown to slow fire spread | — | Useless in a fire |
| Sound | Fills the cavity, quieter, for the same thickness | Standard | Not even STC-rated |
| Roof leaks | Absorbs, dries, shows the leak | — | Water spreads under the batts |
| Air-tightness | Air can't be forced through it | Air passes through | Hold a batt to a fan, air blows straight through |
| Packaging waste | Reusable bags, zero waste | Plastic packs | Trailer-loads of plastic |
| Guarantee | Transferable Life-of-House | None | None |
| Peter's verdict | The one I'd put in my mum's house | The best of the batts | I don't recommend these |
I’m not hiding the batts. I fit them every week for the people who want them, and the polyester ones are genuinely good. But I don’t have a dog in the fight between my own two products, so when I tell you the cellulose wins, it’s because after 6,000 roofs I’ve watched what each one does over time.
A blowtorch on bare cellulose
Watch what doesn’t happen.
Cellulose is treated with borax, which melts at about 734°C, roughly 200° above the temperature of a house fire. Hold a blowtorch to a handful and it chars and glows, but it won’t carry a flame.
Fibreglass batts melt away in a fire and leave your timber exposed, and the binders give off poison gas. Cellulose has been shown to slow fire spread, and gives off only CO₂ and steam. That’s a demonstration you can watch, not a marketing line.
The smell test
Rats love batts. They leave cellulose alone.
Cellulose is treated with borax (a natural mineral salt about as toxic to you as table salt), and insects won’t live in it, and the borate treatment resists mould and fungal growth too. No insects means no food for rats nesting in your roof, and no food for rats means no food for snakes. So a cellulose roof after 40 years is far cleaner than a batt roof.
“I pull rat nests out of batt-insulated roofs every week. I have NEVER pulled a rat nest out of a roof that was pumped with cellulose.”
Why Comfort Zone cellulose
The top reasons I only recommend pumped-in cellulose.
Here are eight of them. The full fourteen are on the Why Cellulose page. It's what I use in my own home.
Seamless cover, no gaps
Pump-in means no cut-to-fit gaps. When batts aren't fitted perfectly, even a 5% gap drops an R3.5 batt's effective R-value to R2.1, about 40% gone (Sustainability Victoria). A small gap in a fridge seal stops it getting cold, and the gaps in poorly-fitted batts let the heat through the same way. A seamless cellulose blanket has no cut-to-fit joins, so it holds the R-value you paid for.
Borax keeps the bugs out
It's treated with borax, a natural mineral salt batts don't have, about as toxic to you as table salt. Insects won't live in it, and being borate-treated it resists mould and fungal growth, so cellulose roofs after 40 years are far cleaner than batt roofs. No insects = no food for rats = no food for snakes.
Fire-retardant
Borax melts at 734°C, about 200° above house-fire temperature. Cellulose has been shown to slow fire spread; batts melt away leaving the timber exposed and produce poison gas. Cellulose only gives off CO₂ and steam.
Handles a roof leak
Cellulose is hygroscopic: it absorbs a leak in one spot, dries out, and shows a discoloured patch right below where the water came in, so we can pinpoint it. Batts hide leaks: the water just flows under them into the rooms next door.
Stops mould, the full-contact way
Pumped-in cellulose sits flat against the plaster everywhere, with no gaps where heat from the roof cavity hits the cool ceiling and condenses. With every inch covered, the temperature gradient is gone and the ceiling stays dry.
Disinfectant & deodoriser
Boric acid is a natural deodoriser. A roof we put cellulose into 20 years ago smells nicer today than the day we installed it, because it slowly neutralises whatever animal urine, droppings and grime end up in the cavity, instead of letting it sit there and stink. Batt roofs just trap the smell.
Quieter than batts, for the same thickness
Big for road noise, rain on a tin roof, and keeping it quiet between floors, because pumped-in cellulose fills the cavity with no gaps for sound to slip through. Batt companies don't even rate their sound batts with an STC; they still quote R-value, which is the wrong metric for sound.
Life-of-House guarantee, transferable
Our cellulose carries a transferable Comfort Zone Life-of-House Guarantee, and you can pass it to the next owner if you sell. It won't blow around or settle over time like batts do.
Worried about what’s in it? It’s just recycled paper, boric acid and borax: no ammonium sulfate, no asbestos, no formaldehyde. Cellulose is recycled paper, and many a child has eaten the pages out of a book, so I’m not worried about a bit of it ending up in your water tank. Don’t eat the insulation, but unless you worry about the kids grabbing the salt shaker off the dinner table, you don’t need to worry about them touching this either.
Before you buy batts, read this
“An R5 is an R5”, except it isn’t.
According to Choice Magazine, leaving just 1% gaps in your insulation can reduce performance by 30%, and 5% gaps in batts reduces the efficiency by as much as 70%. When batts get cut into all the different size bays in your roof and squeezed into the tight corners, most batt installers take short cuts, especially in tight, hot roofs.
And batts are easy to short you on. With cellulose there’s one way: pump less in, and it’s measurable. With batts there are a dozen ways and they rarely get caught: I’ve seen 100m of R3.0 batts stretched to cover 300m at R1.0, and the customer never noticed (he said the bloke was a real nice guy, too). I’ve found whole jobs where the batts were left in the roof still in the packets, because the installer gave up before reaching the tight corners.
And read the fine print before you buy batts. The manufacturers’ own safety sheets tell you to wear a P2 dust mask and to wash your work clothes separately. Their fine print is more honest than their marketing brochure. Our installers go home in the same clothes they came in.
An R-rating only counts if there are no gaps, and batts always have gaps, so an R5 batt is not really an R5 in your roof.
Maybe you just need insulation
The cheapest air-con you'll ever buy.
On a hot afternoon your roof cavity hits 55–60°C and pours straight into your rooms, and that's the heat your air-con fights all day. A seamless blanket of insulation across your ceiling slows it down, so the air-con runs less and the area it can cool or heat gets bigger.
Maybe you don't need a bigger air-con. Maybe you just need insulation. The Australian Government's yourhome guide names the roof and ceiling as the single largest source of heat gain and loss in a home and the most cost-effective part to insulate, and estimates ceiling insulation can cut heating and cooling costs by up to 45%.
Watch before you call anyone
The insulation trade hasn’t been licensed since 2006.
Since 2006 the trade hasn’t even been licensed, so any bloke with a ute and a ladder can call himself an insulation contractor. In this video I walk you through the common scams and the four things to check in your own roof. To be clear: it’s me explaining the scams, not running one.
A lowest-bid labourer gets paid whether the product goes in right or not, and you can’t see your own roof. That’s exactly why our system photographs every job and the photos get checked before you pay, and why your job is done by a franchise owner-operator with their own reputation on the line, not a body paid by the job.
“Every scam you should know about home insulation contractors before you call one” by Peter Johnson, Comfort Zone Insulation Team.
What's in every job
A fixed price, an honest job, and a guarantee you can pass on.
- You get the photos, before-and-after of your roof, yours to keep. Every job is photographed and the photos are checked before you're invoiced, and that's the system, the same on every job.
- Done by a Comfort Zone franchise partner, an owner-operator building their own family business and reputation in your area, not a cheap subbie or hired labourer who moves on to the next job.
- Trained to one standard: everyone follows the same installation checklists, and an owner-operator earns the right to run a job on their own after years on the gear.
- A fixed price. We do not increase the quoted price ever, if we have started the job.
- No deposit needed: full payment only when the job is complete and you're happy.
- You deal with the owners, not a call centre, and I take customer calls up to about 8pm.
- Team in uniform: clean, polite, no bare chests in your front yard (sorry, ladies).
- We won't upsell you. Honest advice is literally written into our company rules.
- Fully insured: public liability, WorkCover, the lot.
Free roof inspection while we’re up there, and we fix the little stuff for free. Broken tile, an uncapped pipe, a cracked flashing: minor repairs are on us. None of this is a sales pitch. We don’t do roof repairs.
Comfort Zone® Life-of-House Guarantee
Transferable to the next owner.
Our cellulose carries a written Life-of-House Guarantee that you can pass on to whoever owns the home after you, a real commitment in writing, not a slogan. We don't know of another insulation in Australia that carries this.
Batts get our Best Service Guarantee. Either way, a customer who has a problem fixed well refers us ten times more than one who never had a problem at all, so it's in our interest to make it right.
Real customers, real reviews, not a marketing brochure
Rated 5.0 on Google.
K
Karen B.
Bracken Ridge
“When we had the roof done, the only rat mess was in the polyester batts, not the cellulose. That told me everything.”
Chipages
Christophe C.
Coolum Beach
“Peter is the insulation guy you want to insulate your house. Straight up, no nonsense, did exactly what he said.”
If we’ve done your roof, a quick review really helps a small family business, thank you. Read all our reviews.
Reviews5.0 from 174+ reviews
Helped you out? Add your review.
A quick honest review genuinely helps a small family business, and helps the next person decide. Thank you.
Three generations, same family
Family owned since 1986.
I started doing this with my dad in 1988. He taught me at Insulsafe back in 1986. Now my sons Noah and Eli are part of it, and we’re building a family of franchise partners, other families with the same dedication, running their own businesses to our systems and standards across SE QLD, so every job gets done properly the first time. We make our own cellulose right here in Queensland, so we know exactly what goes into your roof. Since 2006 the trade hasn’t even been licensed, so any bloke with a ute and a ladder can call himself an insulation contractor, which is exactly why systems, training and checked photos matter. Same family. Same standards.
What we do
Insulation for every part of a Queensland home.
Ceiling insulation
Pumped-in cellulose, the biggest comfort upgrade for a Queensland home.
Underfloor
Polyester batts under timber floors, healthier and removable, unlike spray foam.
Soundproofing
Quieten internal walls, between-floor cavities and home theatres.
Steel-frame homes
Steel conducts heat, so these roofs need full-contact cellulose, done right.
Removal & ceiling vacuum
Old, sunken or pest-fouled insulation vacuumed out before we re-insulate.
Roofs others can't do
Raked, low-pitch, flat and Super-6. Most batt companies say it can't be done. We can.
Honest answers
The questions I get asked most.
Is insulation worth it in Queensland?+
Yes. The roof and ceiling are the single biggest source of heat coming into a Queensland home in summer. Insulating the ceiling properly is the most cost-effective comfort upgrade you can make, and yourhome.gov.au estimates it can cut heating and cooling costs by up to 45%.
Does insulation trap the heat in?+
No. In a Queensland summer the heat is pouring down from your roof. Insulation slows it on the way in and stops your air-con's cool air leaking back out through the ceiling. It works both ways: cooler in summer, warmer in winter.
Why is an R5 batt not really an R5 in my roof?+
An R-rating only counts if there are no gaps. Batts have to be cut to fit every bay and corner, so they always leave gaps, and according to Choice, just 5% gaps can cut performance by as much as 70%. Pumped-in cellulose fills every gap, so the rating you pay for is the rating you get.
Do I need a deposit?+
No deposit on jobs under $8,000. You pay when the job is finished and you're happy. We don't increase a quoted price once we've started, and you keep the before-and-after photos of your roof.
Ready for a cooler, quieter home?
Thanks for reading this far. I’ve shown you what I’d put in my own mum’s house, the reasons I stand by it, what’s in every job, and what the batt companies print in their own paperwork. The rest is up to you, and whatever you decide, I’ll give you an honest quote and an honest answer.
Get a home insulation quote today by filling in our simple online form and receive a detailed quote within 48 hours for most houses. Servicing SE QLD.
“I am happy to take customer calls up to about 8pm at night as I am hard to catch during the day sometimes.”
Peter Johnson
Owner / installer · Comfort Zone Insulation Team® · Since 1986
