Most of the walls and ceilings that you encounter on a daily basis are made of drywall, including the ones in your home. Drywall is a versatile material that has been used in construction for about 80 years. You may occasionally run into issues requiring drywall services in Toronto West, but the material is so durable and reliable that most people do not have any problems with it and rarely think about it. Nevertheless, it may be valuable to know how drywall is made.
wuxing Product Page
Drywall is made of a mineral called calcium sulphate hydrate, more commonly known as gypsum. Typically appearing as a white or grey rock, gypsum forms between the layers of sedimentary rock when water containing sulphates and calcium collects in the rock, evaporates, and is later replenished. Gypsum is mined from the ground. Ontario is a producer of Canadian gypsum, as are British Columbia and Manitoba, but the major producer is Nova Scotia, responsible for nearly three-quarters of all Canadian gypsum production.
Gypsum is known for being very soft, only rating a two on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. It also has binding properties, which is part of what makes it useful for drywall. The raw gypsum is taken to a factory where it is ground into fine particles. It is mixed with water and other additives, such as thickening agents, to form a paste-like fluid.
If you've ever seen a sheet of drywall that has not yet been painted on or otherwise altered, you know that it has a covering made of a sort of thick paper on the front and back. This is called Manila paper. To make drywall, the gypsum paste is spread evenly over one sheet of paper, then another sheet is laid on top. The two sheets of Manila paper with the gypsum paste in between are all placed into a special oven that dries and hardens the gypsum by exposing it to extremely high temperatures. Drywall sheets are typically four feet wide and between eight and 12 feet tall.
Drywall goes by many different names, including plasterboard, wallboard, and Sheetrock, which is a brand name but many people use it generically. Originally, it was known as Sackett Board after the company that developed it in . The term 'drywall' was coined to highlight the contrast between the traditional way to construct walls at the time, which was to paint wooden laths with multiple layers of wet plaster, waiting for the previous layer to dry before applying the new one. The new material came to be known as drywall because there was no need for any wet plaster application.
Installing drywall is much easier than the traditional plastering of walls and ceilings. It takes a much shorter amount of time. Though many homeowners prefer to have drywall professionally installed to make sure the job is done correctly, it can be installed by amateurs. If something does damage your drywall, it is a relatively simple matter to repair or replace the affected section, something that would be much more difficult and expensive with plaster.
One of the biggest benefits of drywall is that it provides a degree of fire resistance. The gypsum used to make drywall contains water in crystallized form. The heat from the fire causes the water crystals to evaporate. As a result, the drywall stays relatively cool, at least for a while.
While drywall is easy to install, it can cause unsightly blemishes to your wall if installed incorrectly, which could also affect structural integrity. Our technicians are trained and experienced in drywall installation as well as home repairs involving drywall. Learn more about the services we offer.
Drywall is a construction material consisting of thin panels of gypsum board. The board is composed of a layer of gypsum rock sandwiched between two layers of special paper. Drywall makes for a much more efficient method of construction than the common earlier technique of applying wet plaster to a gypsum lath.
In addition to being easy to install, drywall provides a measure of fire protection to buildings. Gypsum contains large amounts of water bound in crystalline form; 10 square feet (1.0 sq m) of gypsum board contains over 2 quarts (2 1) of water. When exposed to fire, the water in the gypsum board vaporizes; the temperature of the panel remains at 212°F (100°C) until all of the water is released, protecting the underlying wood framework. Even after all of the water evaporates, the gypsum itself will not burn and continues to provide substantial fire protection.
Plaster made from gypsum has been used as a construction material for thousands of years. In fact, plaster applied at least 4,000 years ago to walls inside the Great Pyramids of Egypt is still in good condition. Today drywall panels are widely utilized in modern construction around the world.
The primary component of drywall is the mineral gypsum. It is a light-density rock found in plentiful deposits worldwide. Each molecule of gypsum (or dihydrous calcium sulfate) is composed of two molecules of water (H 2 0) and one of calcium sulfate (CaSO 4 ). By weight the compound is 21% water, but by volume it is nearly 50% water.
Because the water present in gypsum is in crystalline form, the material is dry. Although ice, another form of crystalline water, becomes a liquid at room temperature, the water bound in the gypsum molecules remains solid unless it is heated to 212°F (100°C), at which point it changes to a gaseous state and evaporates.
Want more information on Drywall manufacturing cost? Feel free to contact us.
Gypsum, called gypsos by the ancient Greeks, is one of the most useful minerals known to man. In its pure form it is white, but impurities often give it colors like gray, brown, pink, or black. Ancient Assyrians called it alabaster and made sculptures from it. Today, pulverized gypsum is used for a wide variety of applications. It is an ingredient in some brands of toothpaste and is used as a filler in products such as paint, cosmetics, and drugs. Automotive window glass is secured in a bed of gypsum while it is being polished. Gypsum is applied to farmland as a fertilizer and soil conditioner. An excellent source of calcium, it is used to fortify foods such as breads. It is even used to create simulated snowstorms in motion pictures.
Gypsum that has been crushed and heated to remove 75% of its water content is known as plaster of Paris. When water is added to this fine white powder, the resulting material is easily molded into any desired shape. Upon drying, the reconstituted gypsum regains its rock-like qualities while retaining the desired shape. Besides its use in making gypsum board, this material is used to make sculptures, pottery, dishes, bathroom fixtures, and casts for broken bones.
Millions of tons of gypsum are mined each year in North America, and gypsum board is the principal product in which it is used. Besides the newly mined material, up to 20% of the gypsum used to manufacture drywall can be recycled from waste generated at the manufacturing plant or at construction sites. Gypsum produced as a byproduct of the flue-gas desulfurization process at electric power plants provides an economical, environmentally sound raw material for making high-quality gypsum board.
Two types of paper are used in the production of most drywall, and both types are made from recycled newspaper. The ivory manila face paper, when properly primed, readily accepts most paints and other types of wall finishing products. The gray back paper can be laminated with aluminum foil to produce a special type of drywall that resists the flow of water vapor in environments like bathrooms. Specialized varieties of gypsum board might be made with different types of paper; for instance, some papers are made to be moisture resistant to various degrees, while another type of highly absorbent paper is designed to accept a thin coat of plaster veneer after installation.
Fabrication of drywall consists of placing the gypsum core material between two layers of paper, drying the product, and finishing it into panels of standard size.
Since the invention of gypsum board at the turn of the century, there has been gradual progress in making it lighter in weight while improving its performance characteristics. In the late s, standard gypsum board (not fire-rated) weighed 2 pounds per square foot (9.8 kg per sq m); the various kinds of standard gypsum board now average about 1.6 pounds per square foot (8 kg per sq m). This not only makes handling and installation easier, but decreases shipping costs as well.
Fire-resistant and moisture-resistant gypsum boards were developed in the late s and early s. Another innovation came in with the development of controlled density (CD) ceiling board. In this product, the core is compressed in such a way as to create thin, dense layers of gypsum on both sides of a standard density core. Although CD board is 0.5 inch (12.7 mm) thick, it is more resistant to sagging than conventional gypsum board that is 0.62 inch (15.7 mm) thick.
Another area of investigation involves better ways of disposing of wallboard waste. During building construction drywall scrap is generated, both as trimmings from panels cut to fit required shapes and as damaged panels that cannot be used. An estimated 1.7 million tons (1.5 billion kg) of gypsum board waste material was deposited in land-fills in the United States in . Research has begun in the area of pulverizing this material and using it as a soil treatment rather than simply discarding it. It appears that the effects are very similar to those achieved with gypsum products manufactured specifically for agricultural use.
"TU Electric Pioneers FGD-Gypsum Production for Use in Wallboard." Power, April , pp. 33-34.
White, Edwin H. and Mark E. Burger. "Construction Drywall as a Soil Amendment." BioCycle, July , pp. 70-71.
Standing, H.A. "The Story of Gypsum." Domtar Gypsum Company, 1-800-DOM-TAR1.
' Loretta Hall
If you are looking for more details, kindly visit Gypsum board factory cost.