It’s easy to take modern construction methods for granted. If you’ve ever built a house, you might have noticed how quickly the build goes from a timber skeleton to looking like a real home. Understanding what is Gyprock is the first step to understanding what makes our modern buildings possible.
What is Gyprock?
The internal walls in most modern homes and buildings are clad in plasterboard. Gyprock is simply the brand name of Australia’s most popular plasterboard manufacturer.
For thousands of years, we’ve been building homes and finishing the walls with different mixes of plaster. Typically made from limestone dust and sand, plaster is a good way to create smooth walls that can be painted over much more easily than materials like stone or timber. Australian homes were mostly finished with these traditional wet plaster mixes up until about the 1940s. But the construction industry took a huge leap forward when it developed the technique for creating plasterboard.
The Difference Between Gyprock and Plaster
While lime plaster is great for applying to walls as a wet mix, it’s not the best choice for making plasterboard products like Gyprock. To develop plasterboard products, manufacturers developed speciality plaster mixes made from gypsum rather than limestone dust. Ground to dust and baked to a high temperature, gypsum produces a type of plaster that dries quickly – making it perfect for setting between two sheets of paper to form plasterboard.
The process for making plasterboard was steadily developed from the late 1800s into the early 1900s, and Gyprock was the company that brought plasterboard to the Australian market in the 1940s. The product proved so popular that it almost completely replaced lime plaster work in just a handful of years.
What is Gyprock Used For
These days, plasterboard products like Gyprock are widely used in all residential, commercial and industrial construction projects. The uniformity of Gyprock boards makes them perfect for covering even the largest wall and for any Sydney ceiling repairs with little effort. Especially compared to traditional wet plaster methods, Gyprock’s plasterboard products save huge amounts of time.
In a new build, the time and labour involved with each process is the expensive part, so Gyprock products are one of the reasons modern buildings can be produced so affordably.
Gyprock is so good as a wall covering that it has been continuously updated and improved over the years to make it suitable for a range of applications. You can now get Gyprock products that are suitable for:
- Standard Installation. Plasterboard can be used to cover pretty much every indoor wall or ceiling surface in your home.
- Wet Areas. Gyprock makes plasterboards that are suitable for use in wet areas like bathrooms, laundries and kitchens. Waterproof plasterboard tends to cost a little more, but it only needs to be used in rooms that are frequently wet.
- Fire Proofing. Especially for commercial construction and buildings like apartments, Sydney’s building codes often call for the use of fireproof plasterboard on boundary walls. Standard plasterboard isn’t quick to burn, but it does disintegrate under heat. Fireproof plasterboard will stand up to the heat for longer and help slow down the spread of fire in dense areas.
- Sound Proofing. Plasterboard can also be found in soundproof varieties and is often used for soundproof ceiling installation. Soundproof plasterboard is usually designed to either completely stop or absorb soundwaves. These products are great for dense apartment buildings where there can be lots of noise from the surrounding apartments.
Looking For Quality Plasterboard Installations? Contact Sydney Metro Plastering Today.
Sydney Metro Plastering operates all over the Sydney region, working on both residential and commercial projects of all shapes and sizes. We use products like Gyprock extensively, and we can tailor your installation to suit your particular building requirements. Our team can assist with wall repairs, commercial plastering and everything from standard plasterboard to more complex products like sound and fireproof Gyprock walls. Get in touch with us today if you have any questions about our services or if you’d like to make an appointment with our friendly team!