To date 700,000 homes in Australia have been fitted with insulation batting provided under the federal insulation rebate scheme.
And while this has resulted in many more insulated homes in Australia, there are mounting concerns regarding the quality of these insulations. In particular, the number of house fires believed to have started as a result of these poor quality installations.
Many fires have been caused by insulation batting being laid directly on top of downlights. These downlights become extremely hot when left on, and it is not hard to see how the fires start.
In another instance, at a family home in Port Macquarie, a fire was started when insulation batting was laid directly across an exhaust fan in the family kitchen. The family woke at 4:30am to see smoke and flames coming from the kitchen ceiling.
The danger of these ceiling fires is increased by the fact that most smoke alarms are not set off by ceiling fires, as the detectors sit under the ceiling and so can’t detect the smoke from the fire.
Since the scheme started on July 1st, the NSW Fire Brigade has reported an alarming 57 fires. To put this into perspective, there were only 28 ceiling fires in the whole of 2008.
The Environment Minister Peter Garrett however, has denied this figure, stating that only 28 fires this year were caused by poor quality installation of insulation batts.
But in my mind, 28 fires caused by poor insulation batting since July is 28 too many! And that figure is only for fires in NSW, so the true figure is much higher.
Garrett has confirmed that 120 companies are facing imminent deregistration, with 100 more companies already deregistered since the scheme began.
From tomorrow a name and shame list of these deregistered providers will be established. Further to this, risk assessments of electrical risks will also be required and mandatory installation of covers over downlights and electrical appliances required.