What are my partition walls made of?

[PaulUszak]

I live in a house made by Bellway around 1985. It’s an entry level house. The walls are plasterboard lined, over blocks on the outer walls. But the inner partition walls are mysterious. They’re about 50mm thick and seem to be made entirely of plasterboard without any studding inside. I don’t think that they’re load bearing. I’ve never come across this form of construction, and not had the opportunity to take a section through. My neighbour had some bits knocked out and they look like multiple layers of plasterboard

What are my partition walls made of?

 

[dilalio]

Egg box or fluted cardboard: paramount partition board!

http://www.diy-extra.co.uk/understanding-internal-partition-walls.html

 

[KenGMac]

PaulUszak, hi

Agree with dilalio I built these at about the same time

Timber Stud fixed to the ceiling and floor, slip the paramount in and along, rip out the box fill and tap in a timber stud, slide along the next Paramount panel.

Suggest you Google Paramount?

Ken

 

[PaulUszak]

Holy crap! My house is built of egg cartons?

Seriously, I Googled them now that I know what they're called. If they come in 3' x 4' sheets, how do you manage to stack them end on end and get a vertical and straight wall? You don't do you, because some of my partition walls are well out of plumb..?

 

[KenGMac]

PaulUszak. Hi again

The panels used to come in a larger size, that being 2.4 high and 1.2 wide

When I was installing them you fixed a suitable dimension timber strap to the floor and the ceiling, they were supposed to be vertically aligned, a further similar batten to the side wall.

There were various "options" as to how you formed a partition across the full width of a space, that is a partition without a door, the door was a god send in that you could "feed" the Paramount left and right to make up the partition.

As for the junction between the individual Paramount Panels, that was easy using a Claw hammer simply rip out the core and fit in the timber batten.

Perceived advantages ? ? Cheap, no timber framing. Fast? ? two layers of plasterboard completed with one action?

Disadvantages ? ? unstable, fall against a wall and you can crash through the wall, repeated heavy hits on a wall would deform the wall. No sound reduction. Fixing Skirting s and architraves very hit an miss, glue not used back in the day?

Ken.

 

[dilalio]

Try hanging a shower screen on it