silver foil backed plasterboard and wireless devices

[Fergus McMenemie]

Hello,

How common is silver foil backed plaster board? Almost every wall and ceiling of my house seems to use it and it generally causes havoc with any of the wireless systems that are all over the house. WLAN (especially 802.11a/b, g seems better), DECT phones and now the Central Heating.

We recently had our central heating system modernised and as part of doing so we have the house zoned with Siemens RDJ10RF wireless thermostatic controllers for each zone. They are proving to be unreliable. Speaking to Siemens they seem to imply that foil backed plaster board was unheard of, and that I cant expect their system to work in such a house.

But then again kingspan insulation etc is also foil backed and I guess that is increasingly common?

Regards Fergus.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Foil backed plasterboard's use has changed over the years. Originally, the foil was used as an insulation layer, having a lower emmissivity than the bare board face. Its insulation properties no longer come close to anything required nowadays, and it's now used as a vapour barrier (and has turned into a sheet of aluminised plastic).

However, in either case, use on internal walls would be unusual and not normally meritted. It may be that your builder had a job lot of it for some reason, and needed to use it up. I use it where I need a vapour barrier, and sometimes the off-cuts will be used where foil backed board isn't required, but that would be just partial sheets.

TBH, I personally would tend to avoid wireless for things like heating controls. If you do use them (particularly for things like frost protection when you're away on holiday), make sure you fit new batteries before you go. The old ones may well stop working as the temperature falls, just when you need them most.

[Slider]

Why don't you move to home plugs?

[Fergus McMenemie]

The "house" is a colletion of very old farm buildings that were converted into a house. Almost all of the internal walls are original with no damp course etc. So I guess vapour barriers were an important part of every wall.

Insualation is generally poor. The original walls seem to have had some kind of tough paper laid against them, followed by upto

2 inches of rock wool or fibre glass then a sheet of plastic and the foil backed plaster board.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. The short answer is that foiled up houses are increasingly common, and WiFi is a bunch of crap mostly.

I have occasional issues with a radio stat as well.

Just 20 meters via brick walls and plain stud..

[YAPH]

Though even wired progstats generally(?*) use batteries too.

• certainly the few I've played with do - anyone know of progstats that don't?

[Alistair Robert Harley]

if the wireless router is in a room with foil backed plasterboard.......... will it work in that room?

url:

[The Natural Philosopher]

[John Weston]

Agreed - unless the signal can get in through the door, window, floor or ceiling. The PC in another room to the wireless source is often found to work well only in certain places and when people weren't walking about. (standing waves?). You could use a powerline wireless access point in the room, such as:

- but be careful of the amateur radio brigade complaining about powerline networking interference... :-)

My preference would be to install a wired system, as I've done a few times in a similarly constructed houses. The plasterboard walls over insulated cavities make for a very easy installation, using a Bosch PMF

180E and Maplin N86CU or equivalent cable draw rods.

[Chris Hogg]

Can you still get 'silver foil' backed plasterboard? I was looking for some a couple of years ago and all I could find was aluminised plastic film -backed stuff. The aluminium layer on the film is presumably very much thinner than foil. OK as a heat reflector at ambient temperatures and as a moisture barrier, but not necessarily flame resistant, which is what I wanted. But does it still act as an RF shield?