Our 120sheets of Fermacell has arrived! The lorry couldn’t fit down the Loke so they got their fork lift truck (they bought it with them!) and offloaded, separately, the two pallets, up on the main Beccles Road and drove down the Loke! They even managed to drive into our garage to dump the second pallet inside!
The Fermacell sheets are 10mm thick and the usual 2400mm by 1200mm metric size! Fermacell is very flat and very constant in thickness. It is fibre reinforced gypsum and compressed to form a level surface, ready to be covered (wallpaper or paint) straight away. Fermacell do not have that paper finish, all edges are square and sharp! Just butt the boards together with a thin line of glue specially formulated to form strong joints.
They supply a “surface” treatment paste (we bought a tub) which you can apply to the board and scrape off using the metal spatula to form a very smooth finish, ready for painting directly. The original surface has very tiny pits as a result of the manufacturing process and even here you can paint the surface using rollers to get that matt finish!
The Fermacell is very strong compared with the old fashioned plasterboards, one screw, once in the board, can hold 20kg all by itself! Even more for thicker boards!
No more need for that highly skilled chore of plastering the walls! So time and money is saved at this point which of course is taken up by the higher cost of the Fermacell in the first place, but they are ideal for us!