Good tradesmen are busy – they have a lot of work on, and to get them to come to you when you need them; you need to develop a good rapport with them.  Provide coffee or drinks, be grateful for what they have done or fixed and the most important or all – pay them on time. 

This will see them come back to you when you need them especially in an emergency.

There is a Australian Government grant available at the moment to insulate your home.  I received a notice in my letterbox and after following it up have found that the grant will cover up to a 10 – 15square meter home – any bigger than that and there is an extra fee which was about a couple of hundred dollars.  This is a great opportunity.

The guys arrived this morning and after much searching they found access to the roof.  With newer homes this is usually through a man hole from inside your house but as my house is over 100 years old, this entrance is on top of the roof and located next to a chimney.

Some parts of the roof – particularly over the kitchen and family room is not accessible at all.  My understanding is that the section of house that has the bedrooms and lounge room is the original house – the kitchen was a separate room and then some time over the past 50 years they have joined the two together.  This makes for a very interesting roof and an even more interesting ceiling line in the house.

The guys installing the insulation said that this will make a huge difference to the heating of the house and in particular I should feel the difference in the summer.  I am looking forward to that, as last summer was a doosey.  Where I live in central Victoria there was about a week of over 40 degrees.

So if you need insulation get in contact with your local supplier and they will fill in the paperwork so that there is no or minimal cost to the homeowner.  If you have a rental property there is a different criteria.  Either way it is a good deal – follow it up.

Be patient – tradesmen are not tidy.

Most will leave their disregarded materials everywhere and anywhere.  Take this as part of the job, if prepared for it, it won’t cause you so much grief.