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8 August 2022
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New home build makes the most of wool

When North Canterbury farming couple Greg and Lois Newell were planning to build their new house they were determined to use as much wool as possible.

Greg and Lois have leased a 300 hectare North Loburn property since 1992, and purchased 80 hectares of it in 2009, partly with a mind to build. They currently lamb 1900 ewes and 500 hoggets, producing up to 4000 lambs, and some trading cattle. Canterbury-based PGG Wrightson Wool representative Doug McKay has taken the bulk of the Newell’s wool throughout their farming tenure.

After their new four bedroom 312m² home was finished earlier this year, they moved into it in May. While carpeting the house with wool was simple, insulation was more of a challenge, as Greg explains.

“We wanted a well-insulated house of course, and we wanted to use wool. We did some research, and found Christchurch company Terra Lana. Terra Lana manufactures scoured wool into a batt that holds its shape, and has a 50 year guarantee, maintaining its insulation rating for the life of the building.

“Initially we wanted to use our own clip, processing that to the point where we could install it in the new house. Due to the volume and quality needed, using our own wool was too difficult. For our house we needed approximately 700 kilograms of scoured wool, which meant starting with approximately 1000 kilograms of greasy wool, or between five and seven bales. However, the best option for good fleece wool is to process it into carpet yarn: lower value types, such as raddle stained wool, are preferable for insulation, and we didn’t have enough of that from our own sheep, so we asked Doug to procure what we needed. Although that was more complicated than diverting wool direct from the farm to the scour, accumulating enough of our own wool, aside from our good fleece wool, would have taken longer, so was impractical.

“That wool was taken from the store to Canterbury Wool Scourers in Timaru, where Emily Shields looked after us, making the whole process straightforward. It went through the Eulan treatment, which ensures the end product is resistant to insects, and was then dispatched to Terra Lana to make into batts,” he says.

One of the Newell’s neighbours, Brent Stewart, a computer aided design specialist and draftsman, drew up the plans, and builders Williams Elvidge built the house. Terra Lana’s dedicated team installed the wool insulation, which they did in the ceiling as well as the internal and external walls.

“With the wool batts in place, the subbies liked working with it: crawling around in the ceiling on wool is much more pleasant that with fibreglass insulation, though they did break a few drill bits because the wool is so strong, and tends to wrap around the drill,” says Greg.

Having gone through the worst part of a challenging Canterbury winter in their first few months, Greg and Lois are delighted with how cosy their new home is.

“On average, we have maybe a dozen frosts through the winter up here. We have a log burner, and in the morning, whether the fire has gone out or not, the house is still almost the same temperature as when we went to bed. It is certainly snug, with an R rating of 4.0 for the 180 millimetre ceiling batts, a 2.4 rating in the external walls, and 2.2 for the acoustic insulation in the internal walls. We didn’t come from a double-glazed house, so that definitely is part of the picture, and we also have a ducted heat pump system, though we mainly put that in to stay cool in the summer.

“It’s warm as, and pretty sound proof: when someone turns the TV on in the lounge, you don’t know about it when you are in the bedroom,” says Greg.

So the new build has passed its first test admirably, and the Newells are now looking forward to finding out how cool it keeps them when the mercury passes 30 degrees during an inland Canterbury summer nor’ wester.

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