Model Railway Forum

Hi I was watching New junction today is polystyrene safe to use I remember growing up and hearing tiles should be removed from ceilings can I have your thoughts please thank you.

What do you want to use it for? It needs to be kept away from power wires because it can cause the insulation to become brittle.

One of the problems with having it on ceilings is that people used to paint it with gloss paint and if it caught fire it dripped down in burning blobs.

my father put our ceiling tiles up with Evostick. Next day they had all melted and dripped on floor. Here in france, many ceilings are tiled with them, still.

Good for building hills etc.

neil 60 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 06, 2023 6:07 pm Hi I was watching New junction today is polystyrene safe to use I remember growing up and hearing tiles should be removed from ceilings can I have your thoughts please thank you.

I watched that video too and was appalled at his sculpturing and amount of mess it was leaving, those little balls of polystyrene get everywhere and no amount of hoovering seems to get them all.

As WTD has said it reacts with PVC making it particularly dangerous around wiring. PIR is better and you can get fire retardant versions but you may have to go to specialist insulation suppliers to get hold of those. PIR can easily be carved with a knife and cut with a saw, it can be dusty but I find it is easily vacuumed up.

Richard

It's difficult to get hold of now but Wickes used to sell sheets of pink insulation foam which didn't comprise lots of round balls and could be sanded to shape after a rough cut with a knife.I've recently seen something similar in a branch of Selco which may be ok. These days I tend to use 50mm sheets of grey Jablite from B&Q - it still has balls but if cut with a hot wire cutter it's not too messy.

Steve M wrote: ↑Wed Jun 07, 2023 12:25 am It's difficult to get hold of now but Wickes used to sell sheets of pink insulation foam which didn't comprise lots of round balls and could be sanded to shape after a rough cut with a knife.I've recently seen something similar in a branch of Selco which may be ok. These days I tend to use 50mm sheets of grey Jablite from B&Q - it still has balls but if cut with a hot wire cutter it's not too messy.

That will be PIR foam just the same as Kingspan and Celotex, I believe the pink one is the fire retardant type.

Richard

Tricky Dicky wrote: ↑Wed Jun 07, 2023 9:34 am

Steve M wrote: ↑Wed Jun 07, 2023 12:25 am It's difficult to get hold of now but Wickes used to sell sheets of pink insulation foam which didn't comprise lots of round balls and could be sanded to shape after a rough cut with a knife.I've recently seen something similar in a branch of Selco which may be ok. These days I tend to use 50mm sheets of grey Jablite from B&Q - it still has balls but if cut with a hot wire cutter it's not too messy.

That will be PIR foam just the same as Kingspan and Celotex, I believe the pink one is the fire retardant type.

Richard

That’s the best to use then - assuming you can get hold of it.

Go to any building site the skips are full of it.

Thanks for your views I wont be using polystyrene I'll think of some think diffrent.