According to an article in the Australian the scheme has been linked to 105 house fires and four deaths. There were apparently 1.1 million homes insulated under the scheme, and as many as 240,000 roofs are feared to have safety or quality problems.

There are about 50,000 homes that have had foil insulation installed. Improperly installed foil insulation has been linked to all four deaths, and most of the house fires from what I have read. The homes that have had the foil insulation installed have the option of having the insulation removed, or getting an electrical safety switch installed.

Despite stuffing the first insulation scheme up the government is now looking at trying to run another scheme. Home owners who have to get their insulation removed because it wasn’t right the first time, and people who didn’t take advantage of the first failed scheme, will be able to apply for the new scheme in June.

Sources:

• $50m foil clean-up bill
• homes insulation program clean-up outsourced to private firm

Generally speaking foil insulation in new houses is considered to be very safe. Installation in older houses however can be a problem …

Usually foil insulation is only used in new house installations. With the Australian Government’s $1200 rebate that they have been offering however there have been a large number of older homes having foil insulation installed in the ceilings. Some of the older houses have live electrical faults and when the foil insulation comes into contact with these faults, or staples are put through the electrical wires, the electrical current is then conducted throughout the foil insulation.

According to this article on ABC there are about 37,000 homes that have had foil insulation installed and according to an Australian Government audit five out of every 400 or so of those houses have “live ceilings”. They say that would mean about 400 – 500 houses in Australia right now are in a very dangerous situation.

On Tuesday the Australian government banned the use of foil insulation in their rebate program.

The only way to find out if a roof or ceiling with foil insulation is electrically live is for an electrician to be hired to test the installation, at the expense of the home owner. If the electrician finds that the foil insulation in live then they should be able to be compensated by the company that did the installation, otherwise for the moment they are out of pocket the expense of the electrical test.

I don’t know how I missed this, but the Australian Government is offering $1600 to all house owner-occupiers to have ceiling insulation installed. They estimate that it will save up to $200 per house in energy bills, and increase the energy rating of all Australian homes to a minimum of two-stars.

In addition to offering the $1600 to owner-occupiers the government is also offering a $1000 rebates to landlords to encourage them to install ceiling insulation in their rental properties.

Currently about 40% of homes in Australia and New Zealand are not insulated, with Queensland having the lowest percentage of insulation of any state in Australia.

Our house currently has a spray on reflective insulation on the roof, which we also had done to our first house which you can see here, spray on reflective roof insulation. This type of insulation works by reflecting the suns heat, but there is no mass of insulation (like your classic pink bats, or fibreglass insulation) in the ceiling, so the $1600 could be used to insulate the area over the core four upstairs room in the house, although it would definitely cost a lot less than that to do.

You can read more about the free ceiling insulation project from the Australia Government here.

On Friday last week, if you recall, we found out that we need to replace the floor in our bathroom. This means gutting the entire bathroom and starting from scratch with a new bathroom floor, walls and ceiling.

I got a phone call this morning from our builder asking when I would be home, and suggesting that I bring a camera with me when I come to take a photo of something.

So I get there and he shows me how after removing the wall sheeting he can lift up the roof just by pushing on it ! Here is a series of photos of the wall frames, the roof trusses and the ceiling frame, I’ll explain more about the problems after you see the photos.

The top two photos show the wall between the dining room and the bathroom. Although it is an internal wall, it is a load bearing wall. Being a load bearing wall it should be made of structural grade timber (it’s not), it should have a large, high strength continuous beam running the entire width of it (it doesn’t) and it should be tied down to the roof trusses (again it isn’t).

The third photo shows the external wall, which is also a structural / load bearing wall. This is where our builder was able to lift the roof just by pushing up on it. The external wall at least has the continuous beam running the full lenth, and some of it is structural timber, but a lot of the wall framing has been cut in half to put in the louvers and the concrete floor, and again the roof trusses are not tied down to the top beam on the wall , and some of the trusses have been installed upside down.

With the roof itself there is also not enough support for the tin that is there . There is supposed to be either 60 or 90 cm between the timber under the tin (I can’t remember which at the moment), but on our roof there is nearly a metre and a half gap in some places!

Our builder reckons that most of these problems continue into the office area of our house as well. So he will be pulling down the ceiling in the office, which is sagging in a lot of places, and having a look at it.

I won’t know until tomorrow what this all means, but what I do know for sure is that the renovation costs are now due to blow out even more. We have already needed to change our expectations to where we won’t be moving in under the house anytime soon, so I don’t know what all these additional problems with our roof and load bearing walls is going to mean…

Technorati Tags: roofing, walls, framing