Roof types, explained
I’ve personally been on thousands of roofs over 40 years, and I’ve yet to find one we couldn’t insulate with pumped-in cellulose. Find your roof below — each one shows how to spot it and how we insulate it — and there’s a gallery of real job videos further down. Not sure which is yours? Don’t worry, we work it out when we measure.
Start here
The material tells us how we get in and out without damaging it. Find the one that looks like yours.
Rounded steel ribs about 50mm apart, usually held down with tek screws. Colorbond, Trimdek and old galvanised iron all live here. It's by far the most common roof we work on in SE QLD.
How we insulate it: We pump cellulose fibre in through the manhole, or lift a sheet where there's no access, so it lands as one seamless blanket with no gaps. A standard pitched iron roof is quick and tidy for us.
How we do ceiling insulation
Profiled clay (terracotta) or cement tiles on a pitched roof. They lift out one at a time, which is exactly how we get in and out without a trace.
How we insulate it: We slide a few tiles up and lift two out for access, pump the cellulose, then put every tile back the way it was. In 30 years on tile roofs I can count the tiles I've broken on one hand.
How we do ceiling insulation
Grey fibre-cement sheets with big wide corrugations (Super Six) or smaller mini-orb. If the house is older, treat it as possible asbestos until it's been tested.
How we insulate it: We never cut, drill or disturb a fibro roof. We pump cellulose from inside the ceiling, so the sheets are never touched. Please read our asbestos-roof page before anyone goes up there.
Asbestos & Super Six roofs
Pressed-metal tiles with a stone-chip coating. They look like clay tiles from the ground but they're light steel — common on project homes from the 80s and 90s.
How we insulate it: They dent and kink if you walk them wrong, so we work from inside the ceiling wherever we can and only ever step where the batten supports the tile.
How we do ceiling insulation
Very low-slope roofs: standing-seam ClipLok, flat clip-lock, or old wrap-over iron where one sheet folds right over the ridge. Often there's no manhole and barely any roof cavity.
How we insulate it: This is the roof five batt companies will tell you can't be insulated. We can. We pump cellulose into the tight cavity — there's a knack to lifting and re-seating wrap-over sheets that most trades simply don't know.
No-cavity & low-pitch roofsThen the shape
This is really about the space above your ceiling — a big roof cavity is easy, a raked or exposed-beam ceiling has almost none. Either way, we have a method.
A normal sloped roof with a triangular roof space above the ceiling — hip (slopes on every side) or gable (a triangle of wall at each end). Most homes are this.
How we insulate it: Plenty of room to work. We pump a seamless cellulose blanket straight across the ceiling, over the joists and out into the eaves.
How we do ceiling insulation
Older timber homes lifted up high, often with steep roofs and the manhole hidden in a wardrobe or hallway. The roof space can get tight right at the edges.
How we insulate it: We get in through the manhole and pump right out to the eaves. Cellulose flows into the tight edges that a batt can never reach.
How we do ceiling insulation
The ceiling follows the slope of the roof, so there's only a shallow gap (sometimes as little as 40–150mm) between the plaster and the roof sheet. No flat roof space to crawl into.
How we insulate it: We open the ridge or lift sheets and pump cellulose into the raked cavity. For the really shallow ones, we built our own tool.
Raked & skillion ceilings
Timber-lined ceilings with the beams on show and the boards running between them. Beautiful — but there's no cavity at all above the lining.
How we insulate it: We pump cellulose into the gap between the lining and the roof sheet with our special exposed-beam tool, without pulling your ceiling apart.
Raked & exposed-beam ceilings
A steep roof that comes most of the way to the ground, common on cabins and pole homes. The roof and the walls are nearly the same thing.
How we insulate it: We treat the sloped sections like a big raked ceiling and pump cellulose into them section by section.
Raked & sloped ceilings
Hidden vertical walls up in the roof space — where the ceiling steps up or down, around a raked section, or over a bulkhead. Easy to miss, easy to leave a cold gap.
How we insulate it: We fit polyester batts into those in-ceiling walls before we pump the flat ceiling, so there's no vertical gap left for heat to pour through.
In-ceiling walls & bulkheadsThe little things
None of these are problems — they just take time, so they help us quote it right the first time.
From the tools
Real job clips, all in one spot — how we walk each roof type without damaging it, how we insulate the roofs other companies say can't be done, and the dodgy tricks worth watching out for.
Some were filmed a while back — our methods, safety standards and products have moved on since. Subscribe to the channel for the rest.
That’s completely fine — most people aren’t. Send us your address and a photo if you can, and we’ll identify it and quote the right way to insulate it. No roof has beaten us yet.
Roof FAQs
Not at all. Pick the closest match if you can, but if you're not sure, just leave it — we work it all out properly when we measure. Knowing it ahead of time only helps us bring the right gear.
Honestly, we insulate them all. A standard pitched iron or tile roof is the quickest, but we've pumped cellulose into wrap-over iron, ClipLok, raked and exposed-beam roofs that batt companies wouldn't touch.
Yes. Because we pump cellulose fibre in rather than laying batts, we can insulate roofs with almost no crawl space. See our no-cavity and low-pitch roofs page for how.
Treat older Super Six fibro as possible asbestos until it's tested. We never cut or drill it; we pump from inside so the sheets are never disturbed. See our asbestos-in-the-roof guide first.
Yes — it's one of our specialties. We pump cellulose into the shallow cavity, and for exposed-beam ceilings we use a tool we built ourselves to reach the gap without pulling the ceiling apart.
