Natural insulation - wood fibre any good?

[Beesandthings]

Does anyone have experience with natural insulation, particularly wood fibre insulation?

I have to re plaster walls in a few rooms in a mid terrace. I’m hoping they’ll add sound and heat insulation, with a decent flow of moisture to preemptively prevent damp (on the external facing walls). Also redoing a freezing bathroom - can they be used there or should I stick with the more usual plastic based products? I’d prefer a natural product if possible.

If anyone has any thoughts, experience or advice I’d be very grateful!

I used it a lot in my last house.

It worked fine, and we never got any issues with mould where we used it, but I can’t say what would have happened if we had used synthetic!

Thank you! Do you think it helped with sound at all? I have nothing along one wall (I assume) as I can hear every single movie my neighbour watches. From what I’ve read it’s decent at muffling sound as well?

Sorry, my house was in the middle of nowhere so there were no sounds to muffle!

You can get a fair amount of info from suppliers - they do have some incentive to see their product s used safely dor their reputations.

Re bathroom - it would probably be recommended that you also install good ventilation (but you should have that anyway!). Also important that all the walls it goes on are sound, all gutters good, no rising damp etc. If there is rising damp its sometimes possible to use another product at low level that is mineral-based but also quite solid. Can't remember the name it looks a bit like thick plasterboard but without the paper iyswim

Thanks Candy. Everything I've read so far seems quite positive, its nice to hear others experiences before I rip everything out though. I am hoping that the wood fibre will solve both my sound and thermal issues.

Sadly the bathroom doesn't have any real ventilation - hence the plaster ceiling collapsing not long after I moved in! I've been stalking PigletJohns posts and I'm sure I have the right fans/window vents etc lined up for that, I need the insulation though, I may be better off sticking with standard insulation there. Thankfully outside of the bathroom I've had minimal damp issues which I believe I've sorted. I'm trying to fix things with the least amount of plastics/synthetic materials as possible and let the house breathe!