The Pros and Cons of Insulated Plasterboard

Insulated plasterboard comprises of a standard drywall plasterboard pre-bonded to an insulant. The different grades of insulation can vary from fibreglass up to high performance phenolic foam insulation. Also different thicknesses of plasterboard are used dependent on the grade of insulation bonded to it. So lets start with why you would use this type of laminated plasterboard. Most of the time these boards are specified to upgrade insulation values on existing properties. By using them on the internal side of an external wall this can usually achieve this. Many old properties have none or very little insulation in them so these boards can be an ideal solution as an insulant.

All types of pre-insulated plasterboard can be and are usually fixed to a wall via ‘Dot and Dab’ method along with a few mechanical insulation fixings. With ever increasing ‘u’ value targets that are required to meet on new builds sometimes its not feasible to get the necessary insulation into the cavity wall construction. Again quite often laminated plasterboard is specified for the internal construction to help achieve the target ‘u’ value.

Different grades of thermal insulated plasterboard

As stated before insulation backed plasterboard can have various grades of insulation bonded to it. We can provide boards from the top manufactures as follows:-.

• Thermaline Basic – this has an expanded polystyrene backing for use where minor increases in insulation are required.
• Thermaline Plus – with an extruded polystyrene insulation bonded to 9.5mm plasterboard it is the next stage up from Basic.
• Celotex PL4000– Celotex version of Thermaline PIR insulated plasterboard.
• Thermaline PIR – a PIR foam board similar to Celotex or Kingspan standard insulation board laminated to 9.5mm tapered edge plasterboard.
• Kingspan Kooltherm K118 – a high performance board with Phenolic insulation backing
• Thermaline Super– The best Thermaline insulated plasterboard again with high performance Phenolic foam

Now Something you might find useful…

Now the Pros and Cons are quite straight forward with this product. The ability to install this insulation quickly as its a two in one solution is a huge advantage. The disadvantage of this insulation is that it is very expensive. This is due to the process involved in bonding the two types of material together. Another advantage is the face on the insulation is paper so it can be dot and dabbed for speedy installation. So what can you do to avoid the hefty costs involved with this board ?. The answer can differ depending on the cost of your labour mainly. This is down to the fact that one of the alternative methods of construction involves using two separate sheets.

This method requires mechanical fixing all over as it cannot be dot and dabbed. Interestingly there are quite a few variables to take into consideration when assessing the costs. These include cost of labour, fixings versus dot and dabbing, actual cost of materials. Having sold insulated plasterboard for many years there have been people who stick with it and as many who opt for the separate sheets. All we can say is that we have been able to save many of our customers lots of money by having this discussion.

So if you have a particular type of insulated plasterboard on your specification give us a call and we can try and help.