Sunday 11 April 2010

A Question

This is going to be a short post for now, we just need a little question answered. We're about to order the wood for the floor in the bedroom/bathroom area, and someone suggested that instead of using WBP Ply we could use P5 Moisture Resistant Chipboard. Now this appeals to us as this chipboard is half the price of WBP Ply but even though it's suitable for use in Bathrooms etc is it suitable for a houseboat. Any ideas or experience will be gratefully received.


6 comments:

Andrew Tognola said...

Hi

I saw a fishing boat in Scotland that had been converted using mdf , and the whole lot was warped and sagging ,and it had gone mouldy !! The mdf seems to suck up moisture so I would steer clear and use the ply .

Andrew

Loz 'n' Moz said...

Hi, Thanks for the comment, that's why we were looking at moisture resistant chipboard, we know that untreated it will swell up like a soggy weetabix.

steve said...

We used a type of chipboard in our roof, to be covered up with fibreglass. After we did it we had some teeth sucking comments with dire warnings of disaster cos we hadn't used marine ply, but it has been absolutely fine. If it's moisture resistant I would have thought it'd be fine. Make sure it's thick enough though, as chipboard doesn't gave the strength of ply, as it's made up of smaller chunks of wood...

Loz 'n' Moz said...

Hi Steve, thanks for your comment, I think we're going to go for the chipboard now, just got to get it ordered :-)

Anonymous said...

Hello Chaps.
A: Marine ply's not what it's cracked up to be unless you go for the really real stuff which costs significantly more than the BS1088 standard.
B: you could pay over £100 a sheet for something exotic like Kauri ply.
C: My local travis perkins is currently doing some really good far eastern hardwood WBP, hardly any voids, good veneers. I boiled a test cube for an hour and it was still in one lump afterwards. Beginning to wish I'd made Wendy's roof out of this rather than basic marine ply that I plumped for (see above).
D: But it's expensive. With trade discount about £23 a sheet plus vat for 18mm.
E: Steve's possibly right, have you considered the idea of sealing the hidden face and particularly the edges of the OSB/sterling board with some sort of heavy oil based paint before installation to further dissuade the ingress of moisture. Any gloss paint'd probably do. Or you could go mad and tank both sides with fibreglass. But a layer or two of west system epoxy would be equally good.
F: Then again, Andrew's right too. I've seen this sort of thing too. Take extra measures to keep whatever use dry both sides, especially if you've chosen a particle board.
G: the boil test mentioned above is a time honoured method of testing plywoods and other glued joints. I wonder what would happen to chipboard/OSB etc?
H: where did I leave that saucepan?.....

Kind regards,
Seb and Wendy Ann 2

PS, sorry this says it's from 'anonymous'. I am not anonymous, I'm at work.

Loz 'n' Moz said...

Thanks Seb, we've used WBP for all that we've done so far having investigated marine ply and found the only real difference is it's proofed against marine bugs and the like. We've decided to go for this Moisture Resistant Chipboard just for the floor area, especially as it's also used in freezer rooms and that's got to be a pretty humid environment. Good idea treating the hidden side, we'll probably do that.

*/ Analytics */