The insulation questions homeowners actually ask.

In my opinion yes, and after installing insulation since 1986 it's the only product I'd use in my own home. The big reason is gaps: pumped cellulose lays as one seamless blanket with no gaps, while batts have to be cut into every bay and leave gaps from day one, and gaps wreck an R-value. Cellulose is also borax-treated, so insects won't live in it and it has been shown to slow fire spread. Fibreglass is cheaper to buy, but you only insulate once.

An R-rating is the lab number for a perfectly-fitted product with no gaps, and batts always have gaps. Sustainability Victoria's Energy Smart Housing Manual shows the effective R-value collapsing as more of the ceiling is left uninsulated, and notes that even a 5% gap drops an R3.5 batt's effective R-value to about R2.1, roughly a 40% loss (Sustainability Victoria, p.63). When batts are cut into every bay and squeezed into hot corners, shortcuts happen, so the R5 on the packet isn't the result in your roof. Pumped cellulose has no gaps, so what you pay for is what you get.

No insulation is fully rat-proof, and anyone who tells you it is, is having you on. But borate-treated cellulose is a dense, packed blanket rats can't fluff into a cosy nest the way they do with soft batts. The insects rats feed on can't survive in it either, so there's nothing in there for them. We're so confident rodents won't nest in it that we back it with a $1,000 reward, paid to the home owner if a nest is ever found built in a roof we've pumped, and in 6,000-plus roofs we've never seen a rat nest in our cellulose.

Fibreglass batts are the cheapest to buy, and that's the only thing they've got going for them. You'd be lucky if you weren't just buying trouble for the future. For a little extra the cellulose gives you full contact across every inch of the ceiling, no gaps, borax for fire and pests, and a transferable Life-of-House guarantee. We make the cellulose ourselves at our Tiaro factory, so there's no middleman markup. You only insulate once, so it pays to get it right the first time.

We don't sub the work out to the cheapest bidder. The job you book is done by a Comfort Zone franchise partner, an owner-operator running their own family business to our systems, training and quality standards, not an unbranded van of per-square-metre subbies who don't know what was agreed and move on to the next job. Because they're building their own reputation in your area, they've got real skin in the game to do it right. It's the same system on every job: trained to one standard, our installation checklists followed, and every job photographed with the photos checked before you're invoiced, so the work you can never climb up to inspect is on record.

Cellulose is treated with borax, a natural mineral salt. Sustainability Victoria states that cellulose treated with a borax fire retardant means flame won't spread, tested under AS 1530.1, and the CSIRO describes cellulose as recycled paper combined with fire-retardant chemicals. Hold a blowtorch to a handful and it chars and glows but won't carry a flame. By contrast, fibreglass batts melt away in a fire. The separate risk to manage is insulation packed against a hot downlight, so it's part of our system to keep the required clearance and photograph those spots.

Be careful of anyone who wants a large deposit 'to buy materials' and then goes quiet. Deposit-then-disappear is one of the most common complaints in this trade. We make our own cellulose at our Tiaro factory, so the product is already ours. You get a fixed written quote and pay on satisfactory completion, after you've seen the finished, photographed job. We're an established Queensland family manufacturer, not a fly-by-night ute-and-ladder crew.

We don't upsell whirlybirds on commission. The National Construction Code only requires roof-space ventilation in the cold southern climate zones (6 to 8), not here in South-East Queensland, which is Climate Zone 2. Once your ceiling is properly insulated to the right R-value, vents on top of that gain you little, and they can leak or fail. I'd rather spend your money getting the ceiling right than selling you a fix you don't need for this climate.