The Woolmere way
Fibre first, numbers second, always both
Wool manages moisture the way synthetic fibre cannot — taking on a third of its weight and giving it back without slumping — and borated cellulose settles into a wall cavity like snow into a fence line, two and a half to three and a half pounds to the cubic foot, dense enough to resist fire and quiet enough to hear yourself think. But fibre without air sealing is a duvet with the window open, so every job starts with the door frame and the smoke pencil, not the hose.
The test-out number
Every Woolmere contract names a blower-door target for the finished house. The re-test is included; if the house misses, we come back and keep sealing until it doesn’t — the invoice does not change, only the calendar.
Services
The envelope menu
01
Dense-pack cellulose walls
Two holes per bay, fill to a verified density, plug and patch — R-13 to R-15 added inside walls that had nothing but siding and hope. Dense-pack is its own air barrier at proper density, which is why the density is written on the work order and checked with the gauge, not assumed from the bag count.
02
Wool attics & rafter bays
Sheep’s wool blown to R-60 over the flat, dense-packed into cathedral bays with ventilation channels preserved, and dressed back from the flue and the fixtures with proper clearances. Wool buffers the vale’s damp swings instead of losing its temper with them, and a wool attic is the quietest room in the house by accident.
03
Air sealing, the invisible half
Top plates, wire and pipe penetrations, the attic hatch, the rim joist — the holes the infrared camera finds before any fibre is ordered. Half the comfort in a typical vale house comes from this day alone, and it is the day the blower door remembers: smoke pencil, foam gun, and a running body count of sealed bypasses.
04
HRVs for houses that finally hold air
A tight house needs engineered ventilation, not nostalgia for draughts. We fit and balance heat-recovery ventilators that trade the stale air’s warmth for the fresh air’s chill at 80-odd percent efficiency — dry air in winter, no window condensation, and the humidity dial doing what the brochure said.
The door remembers
Before and after, the same house
The Ashcroft cottage, Shearwater Vale — one week apart, March. Blower door at 50 pascals: the air changes per hour the house managed before the crew arrived, and what it managed after the sealing day, the dense-pack and the R-60 flat were done. Same door, same fan, same gauge.
How it goes
Test-in to test-out, ten working days
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 1
The blower-door baseline
The frame goes in the front door, the house is depressurised, and the gauge reads the truth. Then the infrared camera walks every room at minus 50 pascals — the plates are printed and bound, and the binder is yours before we quote.
Days 2–3
The sealing day
Smoke pencil and foam gun, top plate to rim joist, every bypass the plates named and a few they missed. The blower door runs all afternoon as a leak detector; the body count of sealed holes goes in the binder with the running CFM number beside it.
Days 4–7
The packing
Cellulose dense-packed into the walls to a gauged density; wool blown over the flat to R-60 and dressed into the bays with ventilation channels preserved. The hose is the loud part; the density gauge is the honest part.
Day 8–10
The test-out & the binder
The fan goes back in the front door and reads the new number against the contract’s target. Hit it and we shake hands; miss it and we come back — the invoice has already been printed, and it does not change.
2025 — 2026
Attics and walls of the vale
Six jobs from last season’s book, photographed at the test-out with the gauge in frame where it mattered. Full binders — plates, densities, both door readings — live on the shelf at the shop and go to every customer.
Before the fan arrives
The vale’s fair questions
The five every kitchen table asks by the second cup. The shop line at the bottom runs seven to five, vale-wide, and the shelf of binders answers the rest in person.
Wool, cellulose, or the foam everybody advertises?
Wool and cellulose because they manage moisture instead of fighting it — wool buffers a third of its weight in water vapour and hands it back, cellulose settles into a dense, fire-resistant mass that nothing has to stay perfect for twenty-five years to keep working. Spray foam has its corners, but a vale wall that cannot dry inward is a bet we would rather not place with your timber.
What R-value do I actually need?
It depends on the assembly, and anyone quoting one number for every house is guessing with your money. Walls land around R-13 to R-15 added, cathedral bays R-30 to R-38 within the ventilation, the flat attic R-60 because it is the cheapest hundred millimetres on the building. The survey specifies per assembly, and the invoice matches the specification.
Why test with a blower door at all?
Because insulation without measurement is a rumour. The door reads the house’s air leakage at 50 pascals — before, so the leaks can be found and priced; after, so the promise can be checked and signed. It is the difference between "we did the work" and "here is the number the house achieved", and it costs you nothing extra on any Woolmere job.
Will the house be too tight afterwards?
A house can be too tight for accidents, never for engineering. Where the numbers say the envelope has closed past healthy, we fit an HRV — balanced, commissioned, and recovering most of the heat the stale air carries out. The vale’s damp makes this less optional than it sounds: dry air in February is a feature, not a bonus.
How messy is dense-pack, honestly?
Two holes per bay, drilled inside, filled to a gauged density, plugged and patched flat the same day. Furniture is sheeted, the hose lives in one window, and the crew vacuums behind themselves before the gauge goes back in its case. The dustiest hour your house sees is the clearing day, and the photographs of every bay go in your binder as proof of what got filled.
They found the hole with the smoke pencil — a gap over the kitchen wall cabinets that had been emptying the room into the attic for forty years. Sealed Tuesday, packed Wednesday, tested Thursday: 3,180 CFM down to 1,240, and the binder has both numbers on facing pages. The house is a different animal in March now.
The wool attic is the part I tell people about: the bedrooms under it stopped losing the morning heat by nine, and the rain noise — we live under the flight path of every shower the vale gets — simply left. They dressed the skylights so neatly the builder asked who did the joinery.
I asked for the HRV to be skipped and the surveyor talked me out of it with the door numbers instead of a lecture. He was right: the windows stopped weeping in January, the bedrooms sleep cooler in summer, and the humidity dial sits where the brochure said it would. The re-test hit the contract’s number to within thirty CFM.
The shop, in figures
Twenty-two seasons of gauges
Free door-and-infrared survey anywhere in the vale · (555) 025-8837 · wool@woolmere.example
Get the door read for your house
Send the address and the era it was built in. The survey is free, the plates and both door readings go in a binder with your name on it, and the quote that follows names the R-values, the densities and the test-out target before anyone books a hose. wool@woolmere.example