We visited the HomeBuilding & Renovating Show in the Scottish Exhibition + Conference Centre (SECC) at the weekend. It was an impressive show and well worth a visit even if you are not into building a new home for yourself as it had information and exhibits on building conservation and technologies involved in renewable energy.
The number of companies promoting self-build was impressive and I was surprised to learn about the use of sheep wool to act as an insulation material for walls was fascinating and as a Scot anything that can be used to help support farmers in the highlands is of interest to me. The problem is the high cost of the wool, not from the farmers, from the Wool Marketing Board who buy all the wool in Britain and then create an artificially high market cost for this natural material. On a recent visit to the Outer Hebrides I was surprised at the small numbers of sheep and this is seemingly due to the low subsidies provided to farmers along with the poor value of the wool - lets get real and encourage farmers to have sheep for their wool and use it in the building industry.
There were many companies exhibiting and I was impressed all of them, however I can only mention a few - ones I am very impressed with include:
Thermafleece from Second Nature is on of the companies supplying wool for wall and building insulation.
There is a bit of contradictory information on the increased cost of using natural wool insulation products compared to the other building insulation materials that have a higher energy and CO2 manufacturing cost. Anyway we were quoated that natural wool insulation costs twice, three times and the highest being five times the cost of "traditional" insulation materials. The government could help by giving a special subsidy for using this fantastic natural material while increasing the money paid to hill farmers for producing this material.
