It’s easy to think about wallboard as all being the same. But today’s high-performance wallboard can play a key role in adding resilience, durability, and safety to your designs.
Moisture and Mold Resistance
Due to the increasing intensity and frequency of storms like Hurricane Harvey, the need for building resilience has reached a crescendo among building owners who are urgently seeking resilient building design and greater moisture resistance. Glass-mat gypsum panels are built for resilience and meet FEMA’s Class 4 flood damage-resistant materials requirements for buildings located in special flood hazard areas. Additionally, moisture- and mold-resistant gypsum panels help to protect indoor air quality (IAQ), and improve the indoor environment for building occupants.
Impact Resistance
Highly trafficked areas are especially susceptible to wall damage, wear, surface abrasions, and indentations. This is particularly true of heavily used facilities such as schools, healthcare facilities, and federal buildings, which are exposed to an extraordinary amount of wear over their lifetimes. High-performance wallboard panels with enhanced abuse and impact resistance can have up to five times the impact resistance of regular panels.
Reduced Weight
Some lightweight wallboard panels are made with proprietary core and paper technologies that make them easier to lift and transport. Lightweight panels also reduce installation times, safety issues and environmental impacts. And, with a lighter-weight product, less structural steel support may be required.
Fire Resistance
One of the most basic missions of any structure is keeping the occupants safe. In case of fire, that means more than just meeting the fire code, it means choosing building materials and systems designed to minimize loss and save lives. The chemical composition of gypsum provides natural fire protection in wallboard. But with enhanced fire-resistant panels, you can help ensure the safety of a building’s occupants with a noncombustible gypsum core that can provide up to 4-hour fire rated assemblies.
The Glass-Mat Difference
When it comes to high-performance panels, glass-mat interior wallboard ups the ante. In addition to being built for resilience, its enhanced protection from moisture allows for pre-dry in or pre-rock construction before the building envelope is enclosed. This can keep construction moving, avoid costly delays due to inclement weather and lower the risk of remediation due to moisture damage.
A Specification that Will Supercharge Your Design
Now more than ever, architects are putting more thought into the types and brands of wallboard they specify. Choosing the right high-performance wallboard can help speed up construction, protect the well-being of building occupants, maintain the integrity of the building design over time, and reduce long-term maintenance and operation costs.
To learn how high-performance wallboard can empower your vision, visit usg.com/specialtywallboard.
