I was asked today, to check a new house out,
that the occupants, reckoned that, not long after they turned the lights on in the Kitchen, they smelt a burning smell, and instantly turned them off again.
These lights are ELV 50Watt Halogen Dichroics
and are manufactured in China, but this is not the worst part of the story, I hopped up into the roof void, to make sure the wiring was OK, I found it hard to find the wiring or
the rear of the light fittings(which are open-backed), because some silly person had filled the whole ceiling void up with a 7 inch layer of Insul-fluff(macerated paper).
How stupid could you get?, some of these Insulation installers should be rounded up and shot, they never check before they blow all this stuff into the roof.
What are your thoughts on these people?

Argh! I hate that stuff! We live on the 2nd floor (1st for most Europeans), and when they finished the attic 2 floors above we had insulation 2 cm deep in our flower pots! It was just everywhere!
Mixed up with electricity that stuff is even worse.

I don't think I've come across macerated paper, but I've lost count of the number of times I've seen lights covered/totally enclosed with fiberglass insulation.

Another point is that in some cases cables have been installed in free air ("clipped direct" is the IEE term, although they often aren't clipped!) on a somewhat marginal rating, then the insulation installers cover them up and the result is that those cables are then operating in excess of their rating.

Does that mean that you follow U.S.-style numbering in Austria, or were you just expressing it that way for our American friends?

No, I was just speaking in terms of our American friends. In Austria we count cellar, ground floor, sometimes mezzanine, 1st floor,...
There was once an inner-city building code limiting houses to four floors. However it didn't object to splitting up the ground floor into several sub-levels like mezzanine, high-parterre,...
Germans don't do that, they'd probably locate our appartment on the 2nd floor. (mezzanine below)
I rember reading though that some parts of Sweden use US terminology.

Paul,
Macerated Paper, is used as a retro-fit insulation system over here, in tight roofs, where it is "not possible" to crawl in to install Pink Batts(fibre-glass).
The thing is though, these installers, would fill the whole damn roof space up, if they had their way, they just blow this stuff anywhere.
I think that they work under the proverb "Any
insulation is good insulation!".

Has anyone seen anything like this, in their
country?.

isn't paper a huge fire hazzard?

Usually they use fiber glass here in Ireland although it's not all that cold, double glazing is quite optional and you'd survive with very minimal insulation as long as there are cavity walls.

Attic / Roof insolation is still a bit of a new fangled thing. Houses pre-1960/70s (later as you move towards the south coast where frost is extremely rare and palm trees even grow [not kidding!]) were all retrofitted with fiber glass

Temp here is like 5-10C all winter, 10-15 C autumn and spring and up to about 26 C in summer (30 is RARE but happens) (south coast of ireland)

I knew Ireland is known as the Green Island but like this? How do I find a work in this tropical paradise?

(The temperature here is 5°C +/- 25°C. Brrrr...)

On the insulation: It was once popular to do foam insulation of old houses here. Holes were drilled in walls, ceilings and floor and foam injected.

Check this link for some info on blown-in cellulose insulation. http://www.fpl.com/savings/hes/contents/cellulose_insulation.shtml#TopOfPage

Stamcon,
Yeah, mate, that's the stuff, I never new they treated it with Boric Acid.
It says that this is used for fire resistance, I beg to differ, with this.
The Fire Safety division, of the Fire service over here, ran some tests on this stuff, about a year ago, they concluded that it was rather hard to extinguish if it did ignite and it did not take a flame to cause ignition, either, just conducted heat from an overloaded transformer, was enough.
I personally would use only Fibre-glass Batts,these have a lot higher Ignition temperature.
C-H,
I remember working next door, to a house, where some of that foam insulation was being installed, long story short, I'm not sure if the guy mucked up the injection pressure,
but, man, this stuff was oozing out all over the place and fast too, it was funny to watch.

That expanding foam used for house insulation expands at a 60:1 ratio. Sprayed on at 1/16" thickness, it expands to 3½". No fooling around with that stuff when applying it.

Same in parts of Cornwall (southwest extremity of England). Falmouth is quite well-known for the palm-trees which seem to flourish there. It's a result of the same Gulf Stream which keeps southwest Ireland mild, although in either case if you arrive expecting a sub-tropical, Florida-like climate, you're in for a BIG disappointment!