Whats this behind my plaster walls? Asbestos?

[Chargin]

Our house was built in the 50's and the entire place has a double layer internal wall. The surface is plaster and behind that is about a 15mm thick fibrous second layer.
Ive attached a pic of it. Could this be asbestos? From what I read asbestos is usually a fairly thin board, about 6mm thick?

I realise you cant ID asbestos by looking at it, but perhaps just the fact that its a double layer suggests something?

If its not asbestos why would they cover it up like they have? All our door frames have packing about the same thickness as this suspect layer either side of them, to pack them out to the moulding, so it would seem this was done after the place was built.

[rat52]

looks like canite with plasterboard in front. maybe for insulation purposes or just didnt want the mess of removal so went over it.

[TermiMonster]

looks like canite with plasterboard in front. maybe for insulation purposes or just didnt want the mess of removal so went over it.

ditto

[rwbuild]

Definitely canite, non hazardis

[stevogq]

The front panel is asbestos be careful

[Chargin]

What do you mean? Its clearly plaster board?

[stevogq]

The fibrous stuff painted blue is asbestos, remove a nail and check if there is no point on the nail

[stevogq]

My guess its in a wet earea

[Chargin]

No not a wet area, the entire house is like this, every wall.
The stuff painted blue is the paper on the front of the plaster board, its less than 1mm thick.
Couldnt be asbestos surely..?

[Chargin]

Could be the scale of the image is confusing you?
That hole is about 50mm diameter. Does look kind of bigger than that in the image, thats 13mm plaster board that you can see. (I think 13mm is the standard wall thickness?)

[Evanism]

Caneite/soft board with gyprock.

I have a sheet of Caneite here used as a pin board. Looks exactly the same.

[stevogq]

Ok then I'll stay quiet lol photo is confusing

[rwbuild]

The blue painted board is standard plaster board, non hazardis

[soundman]

Pretty clearly what you have there is pretty modern fairly recent plaster board over caneite.

There reason why is...that in many modern renovations thay take as many short cuts as they can....sheeting straight over whetever is there is way faster and cheaper than, stripping out and making good with the new material.


As for the why canite....modern mass produced plaster board as we now know it is relatively recent thing.

Currently in australia we have what ammounts to a plasterboard monoculture in the building industry Dominated by CSR and Boral.....if someone is building or renovating something, the interiour walls are better than 90% certain to be plaster board.........but it was not always that way.

As recently as the 70s, there was a lot more variation in interior wall materials.
Fibro ( asbestos), masonite ( hardboard) and Canite where at one time more common than what we now know as plaster board.

CSR..( Colonial Sugar Refineries) came to the building industry thru Canite.

It is a soft board made from pulverised sugar cane waste.

In the 50's and 60's it was everywhere... it was a very common cieling material....mostly it was considered unsuitable for whole interiour walls because it is soft and not very durable at all.....though some houses had everything but the kitchen, bathroom and laundry sheeted in the stuff.

It was very common to see it used for the cielings and the upper section of walls.....a sheet width of masonite or fibro was laid from the floor up then a rub rail and a sheet width of canite from there to the cieling.

Canite is reasonably acousticly absorbent and a pretty fair insulator, which where big selling points..and it was cheap at the time.

If they have sheeted up over canite..nothing to worry about....a sheet of plaster and a sheet of canite either side of a stud frame should prove to be pretty well insulated for both sound and temperature.

cheers