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Ways to prevent Ceiling Plaster/Skimming Cracking


revelation

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Hi all

 

We have recently plaster-boarded our ceiling in the kitchen, which has a walk-on balcony area on the flat roof above.  My concern is once the plasterboard is skimmed there is a chance that there may be some cracks that form in places, due to the impact from above.  Are there any ways to help minimise or prevent this,  any stuff that's better than the conventional scrim tape? Thank you

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7 hours ago, PeterW said:

Screws … as in every 150mm..!!

+1 and also ensure all board joins are supported (IE Timber behind) and when you get it skimmed have all the joints tapped for additional board2board support although screws should be enough. 

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12 hours ago, nod said:

Taping the joints with paper tape is more effective than fibre tape 

Apart from that There's nothing you can do 

🙄

You can double ( over ) board it. That will deffo help. Joints staggered of course.

13 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

ensure all board joins are supported (IE Timber behind)

+1 

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On 27/03/2022 at 08:39, MikeSharp01 said:

+1 and also ensure all board joins are supported (IE Timber behind) and when you get it skimmed have all the joints tapped for additional board2board support although screws should be enough. 

 

We have timber behind all the joints that go in the direction of the joists.  So two sides of the plaster board will have screws along one end but the other side will only have a screw where the joists fall and those two ends don't have complete support along the joins if that makes sense.

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On 27/03/2022 at 10:15, ProDave said:

Timber behind the joint (surprising how many omit this) and lots of screws.

 

Why would you expect a balcony to be more likely to cause cracking than any other ceiling with a room above it?

 

In our situation, we used pozi joists to span the roof as it was too wide to use conventional joists, and they seemed, to have more bounce than the regular joists we used in the house.  Maybe they will be no better or worse than the others we have used.

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4 hours ago, revelation said:

 

In our situation, we used pozi joists to span the roof as it was too wide to use conventional joists, and they seemed, to have more bounce than the regular joists we used in the house.  Maybe they will be no better or worse than the others we have used.

Most companies counter batten to help with this 

 

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5 hours ago, revelation said:

We have timber behind all the joints that go in the direction of the joists.  So two sides of the plaster board will have screws along one end but the other side will only have a screw where the joists fall and those two ends don't have complete support along the joins if that makes sense.

I think that means you have boards that are butted up against one another but have no support behind the joint, I guess those at 90deg to the joists. This means they are hanging in the air and so they will move relative to one another and there will be cracks eventually - taping should help but I was once, several times really and many years ago, told by a very old plasterer (Henry Cooper's brother actually) that all board edges must be supported so we put battens behind the cross joints as well to make him happy. They don't necessarily need to be anchored anywhere as they just ensure there is no chance of relative movement between the boards. There are no cracks in any of his plastering on our boards 20 years on.

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16 minutes ago, trialuser said:

What about when using resilient bars. The short ends of the plasterboard fall on the bars but all the pictures I've seen show the long sides of the plasterboard just butted together, is this ok?

That’s correct 

They need to be free of nogs or flat plate 

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