Flood condition: Aquapanel instead of gypsumboards?

I have found a product called 'Aquapanel' http://www.aquapanel.com/index.php?lang=en&page=products&view=interior which is a substitute to gypsumboards in house isolation. This product is water resistant (gypsum isn't), and would be useful for me, as my recording studio is close the river, and may be flooded one day ! The only thing is that it is made with cement, and while it may be ok for isolating a house, i really don't know if it's good or not for acoustic purpose, compared to gypsum.I don't know if it would affect the Mass-Air-Mass system (made with mineral wool), compared to regular gypsumboard. May it cause strongest reflection, for ex.? Should i add some extra textiles on it? [My original MAM design conception was : Stretched textiles-Gypsumboard-Sheetblok-Gypsumboard-Mineral Rockwool-Air-Original (cement) wall , and i would now just change the gypsumboard by Aquapanel.]

Hi Nightmusic, I'm probably one of the most sensitive people on the forum when it comes to flood-related issues... Perhaps second to forum member Andrew McMaster, who sustained major flood damage from Hurricane Katrina a year and a half ago. I live in what is arguably the most at-risk floodplain in all of the United States. :evil: (Don't even get me started on how that came to be! :roll:) The product to which you are referring is ideal for some scenarios, like tile... But it's a real pain to work with as a total substitute for drywall. It's extremely heavy, is much more difficult to cut than regular drywall, and it's a lot more expensive. I personally would not recommend its use as a wholesale drywall substitute in a studio build. Others may disagree, but that's my take. --Keith :mrgreen:

Keith, Well, sorry for my poor english translations (i am from France), but i suppose 'drywall' stands for 'plywood board'? Anyway i was aware of the difficulty of installing that kind of cement board, i just took it as the downside of the solution. I also thought about using drywall, but it didn't seem to be as effective as gypsumboards, in terms of mass density.(Following MAM rule as possible). Well, I didn't look at the prices yet, i just found the products recently, but if it is too expensive, or too difficult to install, i also have the solution to put it up to something like 2 feet high, and add gypsumboards/drywall above, up to the ceiling, which part shouldn't ever be flooded. If i suffer one day from any flood, it won't be as hard as your situation, if sadly one day it could happen to you.I am not in the same kind of risk as you, or even as Andrew McMaster (What a disaster Katrina!), as it would just be the river growing slowly, due to too much rain in a season, but no hurricane situation at all. But when it comes, i wouldn't like to rebuild all my studio.Even if the water has never come more than 1 foot inside that building, just a few inch on gypsumboard would lead humidity up to the ceiling ! Here's the installation that i intend to do: - Choose the best adapted wall (Drywall? Aquapanel?), - Put rockwool in protected plastic bags, - Strong metallic frames fixed between floor and ceiling, as the support for panelboards, - Ventilation system, between the original wall and the isolation wall, that i would activate after flood has gone: - all audio and electric cables, fixed more than 2 feet above the floor, That list may be helping, or any suggestion about it? For Ex., is the idea of putting rockwool in plastic bag a good solution? Would the plastic isolation let the rockwool board the same effectiveness as without?

Actually, it might not be such a bad idea for you to use the product for the bottom two feet or so, if that's the extent of the water level you'd experience. However, you'd have to do more than that -- you'd somehow have to have framework that could withstand the water, a way to air out the moisture so that you don't end up with mold (sometimes toxic! :shock:) in the walls, and of course your wiring would havle to be kept safe... :roll: :!: I would actually recommend that you consult with a water damage remediation specialist/contractor on this issue. They deal with the situation day-in and day-out. They can give you a clearer picture of what typically has to be done after a flood to make the space habitable again. What you don't want to do is use the product, falsely thinking that you're assured of no damage, only to find out after you get hit by a flood that you'd still have to gut it all out and start over again. :roll: FYI, mineral wool insulation, I think, can withstand a lot of moisture and not get damaged. I don't know if it would survive a flood though... :roll: ...You do not want to put it in plastic bags though. It has to "breathe" in order to function as "air" in your mass-air-mass system. There are other reasons as well (e.g., trapping vapor inside the bags) that make it a bad idea. In a way, I'm jealous of you. ;-) If you get flooded out, you'll be under water by a foot or two? Dude, if the levees are compromised in my area, my entire house, peak of roof and all, is completely underwater within a day. :evil: Hopefully the half-billion dollars we will be spending on levee fortification over the next three or four years (or more :x) will make such a thing very unlikely to happen in my lifetime... :roll: Yes, we have flood insurance.... But it's expensive and it does not make you "whole" again. If it happens to us, we'll probably take a hit of about $100,000 to $150,000, out of pocket. (And, no, our pockets do not go that deep! :cry: By the way, I also bring to the discussion an experience of having a plumbing disaster in our home three years ago -- only about an inch of water throughout half our home, but it was a $75,000 hit (covered by the builder, thank goodness!), and we were forced to move out of the house for three weeks while the repairwork was done. :roll: What an experience. And that was an inch!! :shock: --Keith :mrgreen:

drywall in french is plâtre http://www.knaufinsulation.fr/accueil/index.html

Sorry... "Drywall" is the term we use here in this part of the world, which translates to gypsum wallboard, gypboard, etc.

Sharward wrote:

However, you'd have to do more than that -- you'd somehow have to have framework that could withstand the water

1) The idea would be to use steel frame for that. Here in Europe one always uses steel frames, for building regular wall isolations, we rarely use wood frame for that, as most of us people seem to do. 2) I have to put ventilation inside the cavity, plus a way for the water to get out, and not be caught there 3)Electrical cables should stay up the floor mini 3 ft.

it might not be such a bad idea for you to use the product for the bottom two feet or so

The hardest counterpart, is that i have to find a way to avoid humidity going above the 2ft line, by indirect contacts, as the capillarity from the mineral wool, that may lead the humidity to the gypsum boards above. So I may need to decouple the whole upper layer (gypsum + rockwool), from the bottom layer (aquapanel+rockwool), by a kind of humidity resistant 'diaphragm', without causing any sound transmission thru it.(i am thinking about an horizontal sheet of vynil material glued on top, all along the bottom layer, for ex.) The question here is: Is that possible? Would the sheet vynil would act as an horizontal sound transmission thru the wall layer?

Nightmusic wrote:

2) I have to put ventilation inside the cavity, plus a way for the water to get out, and not be caught there

In that case you'd probably run into a problem reconciling that requirement with code requirements to have a draft/fire break. I wrote about this in my thread (somewhere ;-)). Having those breaks in place makes it (I think) impossible to ventilate the area. Typically, the way the area is "aired out" after a flood is (I hate to say it, but it's true...) gutting the walls... :roll: --Keith :mrgreen: