One of the most useful people you can possibly know in this lifestyle is a builder. Not so they can do the work for you (where would be the fun in that?), but so they can provide you with FREE materials on a random basis. Like this polystyrene insulation I’ve just stuck in our bathroom ceiling:

free insulation

I’ve been wondering how we were going to insulate the ceiling for a long time. I’d considered sheep fleece and heard about a place where loads were being stored in a polytunnel and could be given away for the price of a two-hour road trip. But I was hesitant about the insects that might come with it. I’d also considered raiding the local dump for polystyrene like I did for the bathroom floor. But I never got round to it – and it usually takes a few trips to pick up odd-shaped packaging that’s not very easy to work with, anyway.

Turns out, all I had to do was wait and the insulation would come to me, in large flat sheets, in the back of a transit van. Freshly ripped out of someone else’s house. If the man won’t go to the waste mountain, the waste mountain will come to him.

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