What is Fibercement?

HekimBoard Fibercement Boards

Ever since human beings made transition to stationary and social life, an evolving culture of common life spaces, structures and buildings has developed, and structural preferences have began to form. At the end of this historic process, towns and town culture has developed, crowded life spaces in towns as well as versatile structures have began to form in line with the developments in technology and architecture.

As a natural outcome of this structural evolution and structure culture, construction industry in particular is led to a search for structural elements allowing faster construction, structures that are more resistant against atmosphere and nature’s conditions, structural elements that make life spaces more safe and comfortable such as fire and thermal-sound insulation as well as visual aesthetics.

In line with the developing technology, miscellaneous structural elements are introduced into the structure industry in addition to the classical structure components. The boards developed by Hatschek of Australia in early twentieth century and produced by method named after him have been widely used in many areas of application for nearly a century. Cement board reinforced with cellulose fibers only which is referred as fibercement board today were developed through the studies carried out in 1990s. In addition to the boards produced as roof material, fibercement boards that are produced from cellulose fiber only using autoclaved method are now being released to market in plain board form with a variety of surface appearances to be used particularly as interior and exterior façade coating.

Upon latest innovations made in this field, cement based boards with natural fibers that are hardened in autoclave, having many surface patterns including plain, wooden, natural stone, widely used on any interior and exterior façade coatings of structures referred as fibercement are being produced. Production of these structural boards known as fibercement is made by Prefabrik YAPI A.Ş., the technology leader of prefabricated structure industry, for the the first time in Turkey in year 2001 through installation of a new factory and technology transfer by Hekim Group, partnership of Özge YAPI A.Ş. and Hebo YAPI A.Ş.

Fibercement products manufactured by Hekim YAPI A.Ş., a Hekim Holding company, are released to the market under Hekim YAPI A.Ş.’s Hekimboard plant in 2001.

Fibercement boards which can be briefly described as “fiber reinforced cement board” are produced from a raw material containing mixture of natural fiber, micronized silica and cement given the form of board in a special machine and autoclaved afterwards.

Environmentally-Friendly Fibercement Boards

Fibercement boards are human end environment friendly materials. They are free of any substances that may be harmful to humans and environment. It does not result in gas emissions in time or due to atmospheric conditions. Fibercement boards have long life thanks to the material content. There is no pre-determined service life for cement or silica. Since the boards are exposed to high temperatures and pressure during production, they are resistant against the most harsh conditions. They are not impacted by ultra-violet rays. Fibercement boards demonstrate a good resistance against chemicals (apart from anti-scaling agents). They have a good resistance particularly against alkalines.

Water-Resistant Fibercement Boards

Fibercement boards are not impacted by climate conditions. Elongation - shrinking amounts are significantly lower than similar materials. Fibercement boards are not impacted by water or sea water. Therefore, they can be perfectly applied to buildings having this type of problems. They are absolutely water-proof. Water absorption rates are lower than reinforced concrete buildings. Undoubtedly, fibercement boards alone are not an insulation material. Although, they have a quite good thermal and sound insulation values. A very good thermal and sound insulation can be obtained when they are used in conjunction with materials having high insulation value.

Class A1 Non-Combustible Fibercement Boards

Fibercement boards have full resistance against fire. It has aan international class A1 anti-flammability certificate. Fire resistance tests of walls made of fibercement boards officially certify 120 minutes of fire resistance known as F120. Fibercement boards has an approximate density of 1300-1400 kg/m. This means approximately 10 kilograms load per square meter on façade coatings depending on the application type. Cephe kaplamada ortalama 10 mm. kalınlığında fibercement kullanılmaktadır. Oysaki fibercement yerine sıva yapılsa idi yaklaşık 30-40 mm kalınlığında yapılması gerekmektedir. Ayrıca sıvanın özağırlığı 2000 kg/m 'tür. Fibercement cephe kaplama sıvadan daha hafif olmaktadır. Sıvanmış binalarda ise deprem riski açısından ihmal edilebilecek eser bir ağırlık artışına yol açmaktadır. Sadece ısı izolasyonu amaçlı yapılan mantolama işleminde de 2 kat sıva yapılmakta ve sonuçta cepheye gelen yük fibercement kaplamadan daha fazla olmaktadır. Özetle fibercement kaplamada binalara deprem açısından ilave bir risk eklenmemektedir. Fibercement levhalar her türlü su bazlı akrilik boya ile rahatlıkla ve istenirse birden fazla boyanabilmektedirler. Fibercement levhaların emsal malzemelere kıyasla; uzama – kısalma katsayıları çok azdır. Doğru bir uygulama ile ek yerlerinde sorun yaşanmaz. Fibercement levhalar 125 cm eninde, 250 – 280 ya da 300 cm boyunda üretilmektedirler. Desenli levhalar 8, 10 ve 12 mm kalınlığında, düz levhalar 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 ve 20 mm kalınlıktadırlar.

Where is Fibercement Board Used?

Fibercement board can be easily used as any type of interior and exterior surface coating for any type of building and in every detail of structures. Boards can be used as a whole or can be sized in various dimensions or applied with joint gaps. Application with joint gaps are layered in various line widths to achieve different appearances. The most common application types are as follows:

As interior and exterior façade coating material,
As partition wall element in the form of sandwich panel,
As decorative interior and exterior façade coating material using joint gaps,
As false ceiling element (6 mm),
As flooring material between floors in multi-storey prefabricated structures (16 mm),
As a supporting element underneath floor coating materials (instead of OSB),
As tile-base material in wet areas,
As a flooring material over floor concrete (eliminates need for trowel application),
As decorative coating element for indoor areas to provide wooden appearance (wainscot application),