Is Wood Fibre Insulation Attractive To Pests? – Can I Just Ask? | Ep.18

It’s an intuitive concern — wood fibre insulation is a natural material, and the assumption that it might attract wood-boring insects or other pests follows logically enough. In practice though, the association doesn’t hold up. The manufacturing process fundamentally changes the structure of the wood, and in wet-processed boards in particular, the sugars that wood-boring beetles are actually seeking are largely removed. The fibrous matrix that results simply doesn’t offer the cellular structure that insects like woodworm need to inhabit, making wood fibre insulation unsuitable as a habitat for them.

For flying insects such as wasps, the picture is similarly reassuring. With over two decades of experience working with wood fibre, the view expressed in this episode is unequivocal — there has never been a recorded infestation of wasps or flying insects in wood fibre insulation. Ants don’t appear to burrow into it either, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, but the pattern holds consistently across real-world installations.

The one genuine caveat is rodents — but this is not a wood fibre-specific issue. If an opening is left unsealed and rodents can get in, they will, regardless of what insulation sits behind it. The same is equally true of mineral wool, PIR, or any other insulation type. The conclusion is straightforward: wood fibre offers no particular attraction to pests beyond what any warm, enclosed void might offer, and good detailing and proper sealing of packages — as with any insulation system — is all that’s needed to keep it that way.