Back to Nature

In those halcyon days of the 90s, when Banks still resembled Banks, unemployment was low and one got more than two $ for the £, most people were fairly content. At least they should have been, but for the national trait – resentment of others’ success.
However, there was one group who had every reason to feel hard done by. They were the sheep farmers. The tidal wave of Gorbachov’s reforms in Russia – Perestroika – reached as far as the bleak moorlands and craggy uplands of Wales, Scotland and Cumbria, where wool was about the only thing that those farming communities could grow.
For years, those farmers had shorn their sheep, bundled the fleeces and sent them to the British Wool Marketing Board, where they would be weighed, graded and collectively offered for sale to processors. The farmers, in due course, received payment based on the prices realised for the various qualities of wool. More often than not, that cheque represented a major slice of the hill farmer’s meagre income.
Over the years, manmade fibres had reduced the traditional demand for wool from the clothing and furnishing industries, but the Wool Marketing Board had found substitute buyers. One such buyer was the USSR, whose predominantly cold climate prompted an almost insatiable demand for wool. However, the break-up of the Soviet Union put the value of the Rouble against the then strong Pound into free fall. Russia and the newly independent satellite States could no longer afford British wool. The Wool Marketing Board’s wool sheds bulged with unwanted fleeces and sheep farmers found that the cost of shearing exceeded the price of the resulting fleece.
The Wool Marketing Board, faced with the equivalent of the Common Market’s butter mountain or wine lake, has made major efforts to find other buyers. To an extent, they have persuaded the fashion world to ‘rediscover’ wool but one of the most promising uses is for insulation in buildings.
The logic is inescapable. If wool keeps a sheep warm during a blizzard on an exposed hillside, it should do the same in the roof and walls of a building. However, the insulation market was already crowded with tried and tested products. Fibreglass, polystyrene, vermiculite and rockwool to name but a few, so if wool insulation was to succeed it needed to offer positive advantages.
I have long been concerned that fibreglass is a potential irritant to us humans. It is basically spun glass filaments and whilst these are flexible, they do break up. Going, as I do, into roofs where there is old fibreglass insulation, I see that it becomes compressed with age and there is a powdery residue beneath it formed of broken filaments that, like dust, will blow around and can be breathed in. Although not yet in the same league as asbestos, I notice that new fibreglass carries the recommendation that installers should wear dust masks and gloves. Similarly, much of the new insulation is being encased in polythene or foil ‘envelopes’ so that it remains enclosed when laid.
Wool, being a natural material, does not have irritant problems. One of several companies producing wool-based insulation, is Second Nature UK Ltd. They are producing flexible rolls and semi rigid panels of wool based insulation, under the name ‘Thermafleece’. It has exceptional heat and acoustic insulation properties, is fireproof and being natural it acts as a humidity buffer.
The product is totally inert and non-irritant; no protection is needed when handling. For the environmentally concerned, it is a ‘home grown’ material involving minimum energy input in manufacture and transport, compared with the glass and plastic based alternatives. For anyone considering new building or improving existing loft insulation, I suggest that you should consider the health and environmental advantages of wool.
©February 2010

NOTE:
The writer is an independent chartered surveyor and has no connection with any firm of estate agents or surveyors. For reasons of client confidentiality he writes under a pseudonym. Comments and enquiries are welcome and may be sent c/o Wealden Advertiser Property, Gardens & Interiors.

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