A family friend of ours is the maintenance manager for a leading Melbourne home building company who build around 1800 homes a year. They have had 11 plaster ceiling collapses in the last 12 months and still they don't use battens on their ceilings. The cost of the ceiling battens for an 18 square home is around $1,400 and should be installed in all homes. So, this company saves around $2.5 million each year on not battening their homes. A lot of money you could say but what is the cost of an injured or dead family member? All Berstan homes are fully battened and we would not even consider not battening a home!