Guide · Insulation removal · Brisbane insulation contractor since 1986
What removing insulation actually looks like — cellulose fibre against fibreglass, filmed on real jobs.
Most people picture insulation removal as one job. It isn’t. A 20-year-old Cellulose Fibre Insulation job vacuums out clean — no fibres in the air, nothing living in it, no suit needed. Pulling fibreglass batts out means a full suit, a proper respirator and dealing with whatever’s been living in them. Both filmed on real roofs, below.
I’m Peter Johnson. I’ve been pulling insulation out of Brisbane roofs since 1986, across more than 6,000 Queensland homes. This page is the removal job itself, not the theory of it — what actually comes out, what it smells like, what needs to be worn to handle it and where it ends up once it’s down off the ladder.
A skip bin full of old pink and yellow fibreglass batts pulled out of a Strathpine roof. Every batt in that bin is rubbish now — there’s nothing to do with it but dump it.
Same word, two different jobs.
Cellulose fibre vacuums out clean. Fibreglass comes out in a full suit.
Why I built this page
People imagine cellulose fibre as the loose, dusty product and batts as the tidy one. On removal day it's the exact opposite.
I say this to customers on the phone more than almost anything else: the perception of cellulose fibre is the opposite of the reality. People think a batt in a plastic pack sounds tidy and a blown-in fibre sounds messy. Then removal day comes. The batt that looked tidy going in comes out full of rat droppings, dead rodents and years of dust. The crew has to suit up in full PPE and a respirator to handle it. The cellulose fibre job I vacuum out the same week comes out clean, with no rats and barely any dust. My installers don’t need a full suit to do it.
This page is the two jobs side by side, filmed on real roofs, not described in a brochure. If you want the health and particle-size argument behind why fibreglass sheds so much more airborne fibre than cellulose fibre, I’ve laid that out separately on are fibreglass batts safe and how much fibreglass dust ends up in your house. This page is what removal day itself actually looks like.
- Cellulose fibre vacuums out clean, with no fibres floating in the air and no rats to deal with — a cleaner job, not a quicker one.
- Fibreglass removal means a full suit and a proper respirator because of what's usually nesting in it.
- Cellulose fibre we pull out goes back to our own factory. Fibreglass batts go to landfill.
- Do you have fibreglass batts in your roof now? We can quote to remove them or fix your insulation.
Vacuuming out a 20-year-old cellulose job
A 20-year-old cellulose job vacuums out clean — no rats, no rodents, no piss or shit, and no fibres in the air.
Read the transcript
So we're just vacuuming the cellulose out of the ceiling and you can see here we've already done a lot of the rest of the roof and we're just up to here and so this is how the job's done. Good as gold. And we've got another guy down on the truck who's filling the bags up and clipping them up as we go and you can see how easy it is to vacuum it up with the machines that we use. This would be a big pile to do if we're trying to do it with a normal vacuum cleaner. So if you want a quote for vacuuming your ceiling out we're happy to do that and as you can see it's not an issue if you ever needed to do any work with the roof or ever had any damage or that, we can just pull the stuff out again and obviously the insurance company normally pays for us to come and vacuum it up if you've had a roof leak or something. So it's just as easy to pull this out as it is to pull batts out.
What comes out of a cellulose fibre roof
A 20-year cellulose fibre job vacuums out clean, with none of what you’d expect.
This is a real 20-year-old cellulose fibre job, vacuumed straight out. No rats, no rodents, no piss or shit, very clean, no fibres floating in the air while it comes out. My installers don’t need full suits to do this job — it’s a clean vacuum-out compared with suiting up, masking up and dealing with rat piss, shit and dead rodents pulling fibreglass out. No suit also means nobody is cooking inside taped-up coveralls while they work. It’s usually one person up in the roof running the vacuum rather than two rolling batts, so there’s less heat exposure to go around.
Rodents aren’t interested in cellulose fibre the way they are in a soft, loose batt to burrow into, so it doesn’t build up the same nesting problem a batt does over the years. When it does come out, it comes back to our own factory in Tiaro rather than going to landfill — more on that further down this page.
- No rats, no rodents, no piss or shit.
- Very clean, no fibres in the air while it's vacuumed out.
- Installers don't need full suits for this job.
- Comes back to our own factory instead of going to landfill.
What comes out of a fibreglass roof
Full suit, full PPE, a proper respirator — and everything goes to landfill.
Removing settled old fibreglass batts means a full suit, full PPE and a proper silicone respirator, the Sundström SR100. Every bit of what comes out goes to landfill as rubbish — there’s nothing you can do with it — and it’s usually full of rodent piss and shit.
Rolling up, bagging and dumping settled batts shows exactly how dusty and dirty they get on top and how degraded they are after years in a roof. Glass fibres floating in the air are why we wear asbestos-rated masks for this job. Face, eyes and ears are still exposed. It’s itchy on the neck, wrists and hands, worse with older fibreglass.
The part that gets overlooked is the heat. Pulling batts means a disposable white suit worn over your work clothes, taped off at the wrists, with the mask over your face to keep the itch off your skin. A roof cavity is already baking on a warm day. Put a sealed plastic suit over the top of your clothes in that heat and the worker inside it gets far hotter than the roof alone would make them, which is how heat stroke happens on removal jobs. It usually takes two people up there rolling and bagging batts as well, so that heat lands on two workers rather than one. Cellulose fibre isn’t itchy, so there’s no suit and no taped wrists on a vacuum-out. My installer runs the vacuum in normal work gear and stays far cooler. It’s usually one person up in the roof rather than two, so there’s less heat exposure and less heat-stroke risk across the whole job.
The newer low-itch batts are finer fibre. That cuts both ways. Owens Corning’s own patent for its soft batt says conventional residential fibreglass runs at fibre diameters greater than 4 microns and that its replacement uses 2.03 to 3.04 microns because a thinner fibre end is what stops the prickle. US Patent 12,297,342 B2 (Owens Corning) — “conventional residential fiberglass insulation products, which have fiber diameters typically greater than 4 μm”; invention “in the range of 2.03 μm (8.0 HT) to 3.04 μm (12.0 HT)” ↗ The federal carcinogen profile is just as plain about where a thinner fibre goes: aerodynamic diameter decides whether a fibre lands in the upper airways or the deep lung. Thinner fibres are deposited into the deep lung. NTP Report on Carcinogens, Certain Glass Wool Fibers (Inhalable) — “thinner fibers will be deposited into the deep lung” ↗ So the batt that feels softer on your forearms is the one carrying more fibre in the size range that reaches the bottom of a lung. Less itch is not the same thing as less to breathe. It’s the wrong way to judge which product is safer to be around while it’s coming out.
Whether it’s fibreglass batts or loose-pumped fibreglass like Knauf Jetmax, once it’s in the roof and settled, the removal job is the same full-suit job — see are fibreglass batts safe for the particle-size numbers behind why.
- Full suit, full PPE and a proper silicone respirator (Sundström SR100).
- The taped-up suit over your clothes makes a baking roof hotter again — heat stroke is a real risk on a batt removal.
- Everything that comes out goes to landfill — nothing to do with it.
- On the removal jobs I get called to, usually full of rodent piss and shit built up over years.
- Dusty, degraded fibre, worse the older the batts are.
Removing old fibreglass batts in full PPE and a Sundström SR100 respirator
Removing settled old fibreglass batts means full suit, full PPE and a proper silicone respirator — every bit of it goes to landfill full of rodent mess.
Read the transcript
Just here removing some fibreglass batts that are all degraded over time and so they actually all settle down, they start out a lot thicker than that and over time they just sink down and you don't have anywhere near the R value that you bought in the first place. These are about 30 years old, these ones. So we're just rolling them up, pulling them out and then we're going to put in some cellulose fibre. It's just like this, I'm going to roll every bit up. There we go. We're going to put it right in.
Rolling up and bagging degraded fibreglass batts
Rolling up, bagging and dumping settled fibreglass batts shows how dusty, dirty and degraded they get after years in a roof.
Read the transcript
Ok so we're just here pulling out these fibreglass batts. The guys are here. G'day Carl. And so we just roll up the batts and put them in a bag. You want to show a customer how you roll one of these up Carl? You can see the safety equipment that Carl's wearing. All this fibreglass shit is... Sorry, I shouldn't swear. But it's all terrible stuff to breathe in and itchy as. So Carl's just rolling them up and then that saves us using so many bags. And then we put them in the bag and take them out of the roof and then I'll go to the dump. Thanks Carl. Alright. Alright and we've got the rest of the job to do as you can see. And here's Teddy over here working on the other side. Teddy's bag is full already so he's obviously a faster worker than Carl. Just joking. Alright.
The single biggest reason removal happens at all
Rodents burrow and nest right into fibreglass batts. The damage builds up for as long as they've had the run of the roof.
Old fibreglass batts show how much damage rodents cause over time — they burrow and nest right in them. All you can really do is pull the batts out and dump them. The rodent smell stays in the roof after they’re gone. When we pump Cellulose Fibre Insulation in afterwards, it disinfects the smell and makes a much better environment up there. Rodents gnaw power and water pipes too, which is damage that has nothing to do with the insulation at all and everything to do with what the batts let them get away with.
Rodent urine staining soaked straight through a ceiling sheet, found when old batts were lifted during a removal job — Ashgrove.
Rodent damage in old fibreglass batts after years in a roof
Old fibreglass batts show how much damage rodents cause over time, burrowing and nesting right into them.
Read the transcript
Ok so just up in this roof pulling all the batts out, so as you can see that way I've already done all those bays there, but over here I just got to this bay here and I just wanted to show you something, because this is rats building nice little insulated homes in fibreglass batts. People say that they don't and that, but you can see that batt there's all torn apart and that one there is nice and good, right, and when I lift this up, see, the rat's been climbing in here and climbing in there and he built his little burrow in there, he's been living in there, and when you lift this up, that's all the rat foul on the ceiling where he's been fouling on the ceiling, you know. So probably not a rat, maybe a mouse, but look at that — we are out in the country so could have just been a little mice. But you can see there's damage to all the batts, a lot of batts up here, because of mice. So there's another little hole there, we're having a burrow in there and building a little nest. So it's pretty common in batts for mice to build nice little insulated homes, and so we're going to pull these out and we'll put in cellulose fibre, and I've never ever seen them build nests in cellulose because it won't hold up for them to build a nest.
It isn't just fibreglass
Polyester batts aren’t much better on the rodent front — they give rodents the same soft, warm place to live, burrow, nest and breed. The damage can take anywhere from a handful of years up to twenty depending on how close the roof is to water, chooks or bushland. Cellulose Fibre Insulation isn’t nesting material a rodent wants, which is a big part of why it doesn’t build up the same problem. I’ve gone through what rodents do to both products, pipe by pipe, on rodent damage in roof insulation.
The part nobody thinks about until removal day
Cellulose fibre goes back to our factory. Fibreglass batts go to landfill — and plenty of tips won't even take them loose.
Cellulose Fibre Insulation we vacuum out of a roof goes straight back to our own factory in Tiaro, where it’s remanufactured into new bags rather than sent anywhere as waste. Fibreglass batts have nowhere to go but landfill. There’s no factory taking old batts back in to remake into anything — once they’re bagged, that’s the end of the line.
City of Moreton Bay — Caboolture Waste Management Facility, 2025–26 fees
$823/tto tip insulation, against $328/t for general waste
That’s the real price on Brisbane’s own doorstep. Moreton Bay doesn’t lump insulation in with ordinary household rubbish — it charges the batts pulled out of your roof under their own fee line, “Light Weight Waste - Inc. polystyrene & insulation,” and that line runs more than double the price of General Waste at the same facility. City of Moreton Bay — Caboolture Waste Management Facility, Waste Disposal Charges 2025–26: “Light Weight Waste - Inc. polystyrene & insulation” priced at $823/tonne against $328/tonne for General Waste ↗
Moreton Bay doesn’t call it hazardous waste — it doesn’t need to. There’s a federal handling rule that already covers it: the national code that Australian glasswool manufacturers’ own safety data sheets point back to says glasswool waste “shall be placed in containers, plastic bags or other methods which prevent fibre and/or dust emission” before it’s disposed of. Safe Work Australia — National Code of Practice for the Safe Use of Synthetic Mineral Fibres [NOHSC:2006(1990)]: “waste shall be placed in containers, plastic bags or other methods which prevent fibre and/or dust emission, and disposed of in accordance with local waste disposal authority requirements” ↗ That’s a bagging-and-containment rule, not a hazardous-waste classification — manufacturers’ own safety data sheets say fibreglass batts aren’t classified as hazardous under GHS. It still has to go out sealed so fibre and dust can’t escape, before it ever reaches the scales.
Down in Victoria, Latrobe City Council has gone further again. It now treats insulation disposal the same way it treats asbestos: fibreglass insulation has to go to one nominated landfill by appointment only, packed in special large clear bags you buy from the council at $6.00 each, at $43 per cubic metre. Latrobe City Council — Asbestos and Fibreglass Insulation Disposal: “The disposal of insulation is now being treated in a similar way to asbestos… you must pack the material in special large clear plastic bags which can be purchased at any Latrobe City service centre for $6.00 per bag” ↗ That’s a Victorian council rather than a Queensland one, so it doesn’t set the rule for a Brisbane job — ring your own tip before you load a trailer. It does show which way councils are moving on it.
In 40 years dealing with tips and skip-bin operators myself, the reason comes down to the fibre itself — glass fibre is so light it blows straight back out of an open skip or a ute tray in any bit of wind, which is why so many operators want it double-bagged and secured before they’ll take it at all. I’ve laid out the full plastic-bag and landfill side of a batt job on fibreglass batt waste.
- Cellulose fibre we pull out is remanufactured into new bags at our own factory in Tiaro.
- Fibreglass batts have no factory taking them back — landfill is the only destination.
- Moreton Bay (SEQ) prices insulation as its own "Light Weight Waste" category at $823/t — more than double the $328/t charged for general waste.
- It has to be bagged and sealed so fibre and dust don't escape (Safe Work Australia's national code) — that's a handling rule, not a hazardous-waste classification.
- Latrobe City Council (Vic) now handles insulation like asbestos: nominated landfill, by appointment, in $6 council-supplied clear bags.
- In my own experience most operators want it bagged and secured before they'll take it — ring your tip first.
The two jobs, side by side
Cellulose Fibre Insulation removal against fibreglass batt removal, on the things that actually matter on the day.
Both filmed on real jobs above. This is the same comparison laid out flat.
| On removal day | Cellulose Fibre Insulation | Fibreglass batts |
|---|---|---|
| PPE needed to remove it | None — no full suit needed | Full suit, gloves and a proper respirator (Sundström SR100) |
| Heat for the worker | No suit, so the worker stays cooler — usually one person up in the roof | Disposable suit taped at the wrists over work clothes in a roof that's already baking — far hotter, a real heat-stroke risk, usually with two people up there |
| What's usually living in it | On the cellulose fibre jobs I've pulled — nothing, no rats, no rodents | On the batt jobs I get called to — rodent nests, droppings and dead rodents, built up over years |
| Smell | Clean — pumping fresh cellulose fibre in disinfects the smell | Rat piss and shit, often strong enough to smell from the manhole |
| Dust and fibres in the air | Vacuums straight out, no fibres floating around | Dusty, degraded fibre floating in the air, worse the older it is |
| Where it goes when it's out | Back to our factory in Tiaro, remanufactured into new bags | Landfill — most tips won't take it loose at all |
| How it's carted off | Vacuumed straight into the truck | Rolled up, stuffed into bags and carted off to the tip |
Do you have fibreglass batts in your roof right now?
We can quote to remove them or fix your insulation — either a full removal and a pump of Cellulose Fibre Insulation or a top-over that fills the gaps without a full-suit removal job at all.
Common questions
Insulation removal, answered
What does insulation removal actually involve?+
It depends entirely on what's coming out. Pulling Cellulose Fibre Insulation is a clean vacuum-out — I've done 20-year-old cellulose fibre jobs with no rats, no rodents, no piss or shit, very little dust. My installers don't even need full suits to do it. Pulling old fibreglass batts is the opposite job. It means a full suit, gloves and a proper silicone respirator like the Sundström SR100 because on the jobs I get called to the batts are usually full of rodent nests, droppings and dead rodents. Rolling them up kicks dusty, degraded fibre into the air. Same word, removal, two completely different jobs depending on what's up there.
Can you dump fibreglass batts in a normal skip bin?+
Often not. Even where it's allowed it costs more. Down in Victoria, Latrobe City Council now treats insulation disposal the same way it treats asbestos — fibreglass insulation goes to one nominated landfill by appointment only, packed in special large clear bags you buy from the council at $6.00 each, at $43 per cubic metre. That's a Victorian rule rather than a Queensland one, so ring your own tip before you load a trailer. Closer to home, City of Moreton Bay prices insulation as its own separate "Light Weight Waste" category at $823 a tonne, against $328 a tonne for general waste — not because it's hazardous (the makers' own safety data sheets say it isn't) but because it has to be bagged and sealed so fibre and dust don't escape. It's also so light for its bulk it costs a council more to land. In my own experience dealing with tips and skip-bin operators over 40 years, the reason comes down to the fibre itself — it's so light it blows straight back out of an open bin or a ute tray in any bit of wind, so a lot of operators simply won't take it loose. You end up bagging and securing it either way, which is more handling and more cost than most people expect before they start.
What happens to fibreglass batts once they're pulled out of a roof?+
They go to landfill. There's no factory pulling old fibreglass batts back in to remake them into anything. Once they're rolled up and bagged, that's the end of the line for them. Compare that with our Cellulose Fibre Insulation, which we manufacture ourselves at our factory in Tiaro — the old cellulose fibre we vacuum out of a roof goes straight back to that same factory and gets remanufactured into new bags, rather than ending up as rubbish in the ground.
Do you need full PPE to remove Cellulose Fibre Insulation?+
No, not the way we do it. Vacuuming cellulose fibre out is a clean job — no rats, no rodents, no piss or shit, very clean, no fibres floating in the air, so my installers don't need to suit up in full PPE the way we do for a fibreglass batt removal. It's still a roof job, so we still wear the basics. It's nothing like suiting up, masking up and dealing with rat piss, shit and dead rodents to pull fibreglass out. The other difference is heat. A fibreglass removal means a disposable suit taped at the wrists worn over your clothes. In a roof cavity that's already baking that suit sends the worker's temperature right up, so heat stroke becomes a real risk on those jobs. With cellulose fibre there's no suit and the worker stays much cooler. It's usually one person up in the roof running the vacuum rather than two rolling batts.
Why do rodents cause so much damage in fibreglass batts?+
Batts give rodents somewhere soft to live, burrow, nest and breed. The damage builds up over however long they've had free run of the roof. All you can really do with an old batt that's been nested in is pull it out and dump it — the rodent smell stays in a roof long after the rats are gone. When we pump Cellulose Fibre Insulation in afterwards, it disinfects that smell and leaves a much better environment up there, on top of rodents not being interested in cellulose fibre as nesting material the way they are in loose, soft batts.
Is insulation removal in Brisbane worth doing or should I just top it over?+
It depends what's up there. I'll price both ways rather than push one. If the old batts are sunken, gappy or full of rodent nests, removal and a pump of Cellulose Fibre Insulation is the job I'd do — after more than 6,000 roofs I can tell you removal is the part nobody enjoys because the product's itchy and it usually stinks of rat urine. If the batts are still in reasonable shape, a top-over with cellulose fibre fills every gap and puts a seamless blanket over the old fibre so it stops getting stirred up every time a trade goes up there. Send me your address and I'll price both.
One job vacuums out clean. The other needs a full suit. We’ll give you a fixed price for either.
Tell me what’s up in your roof and I’ll quote removal, a top-over or a fresh Cellulose Fibre Insulation install — whichever one actually fixes it.
Keep reading
Are fibreglass batts safe? — the particle-size and respirable-dust numbers behind why removal needs full PPE.
How much fibreglass dust ends up in your house — the kilogram-by-kilogram breakdown.
Fibreglass batts, explained — who makes them and how they end up in nearly every Queensland roof.
Cellulose Fibre Insulation vs fibreglass — the full head-to-head.
Rodent damage in roof insulation — what rats and possums actually do to batts and how to fix it.
Fibreglass batt waste — the plastic and landfill side of a batt job.