Fire Protection
Knauf offers a wide range of lightweight, fire-rated building solutions that satisfy National Construction Code (NCC) requirements for fire protection within hospitals and other Class 9a buildings. These include fire-rated walls and ceilings, fire tunnels and fire protected columns and beams.
Acoustics
Acoustic considerations play an important role in creating quiet hospital environments conducive to patients’ recovery and privacy. Such considerations include sound isolation for privacy or comfort enhancement as well as sound absorption in noisy areas. To learn more about recommended acoustic ratings for health care buildings refer to Knauf Systems+. Knauf offers an extensive range of lightweight wall and ceiling systems providing various levels of sound isolation.
Effective reverberation (echo) control requires treatment of the room surfaces with sound absorbing materials. Knauf offers a number of products for sound absorption, including USG Mars™ ClimaPlus™ Healthcare ceiling panels with NRC ratings up to and exceeding 0.85.
Impact Resistance
Hospital corridors are particularly susceptible to knocks by trolleys and general traffic. Therefore, they require the use of impact resistant lining materials.
Knauf offers a range of lining products offering various levels of impact resistance. Multistop® plasterboard has been specifically designed for use in high traffic areas such as hospital corridors. Available with continuous fibreglass mesh embedded within its core, Multistop® is particularly effective in resisting soft body impact. Fiberock® Aqua-Tough is a paperless gypsum board with cellulose fibre reinforcement that is also effective against hard body and glancing impact.
Infection Control
Knauf plasterboard walls and ceilings have a smooth seamless surface finish that is critical to effective infection control. Mars™ Healthcare ClimaPlus™ ceiling panels exceed JIS Z 2801 standard for antimicrobial performance, and are 3rd party certified to meet the requirements for PC1 and PC2 physical containment facilities.
Radiation Protection
X-ray rooms require protective barriers to shield operators and occupants of nearby rooms from excessive levels of radiation. Knauf X-Block® plasterboard is a lead-free product that can provide various levels of radiation protection depending on the number of layers.
Mould Resistance
Knauf Multistop 5/5HI plasterboard and Fiberock® Aqua-Tough gypsum board offer mould resistance; in addition to impact resistance and moisture resistance properties. Multistop 5/5HI has achieved a top rating of 0 when tested to ASTM G21-09, while Fiberock® has scored a top mark of 10 when tested to ASTM D3273.
