Weather barrier boards also increase acoustic performance at Erskineville buildings

Park Sydney is a new apartment development in Sydney's inner west suburb of Erskineville. Designed by WMK Architects, Botany and Cascade are the first buildings in Stage 1 of the development for what will be almost a new suburb.

The project needed a rigid weather barrier for use behind the ventilated rainscreen constructed of compressed fibre cement and aluminium cladding that was capable of withstanding higher wind loading.

Since the building was not sprinkler protected, all external walls were required to have an FRL not less than -/60/60. This was easily achieved using 13mm Weather Defence board and FR internal plasterboard. In addition to enabling a weathertight building, the use of rigid board provided increased acoustic performance over pliable sarking membranes, while still being highly vapour permeable to control interstitial condensation risks.

Over 10,000m² of board were supplied for the compartmentation project, which was the first major project for the Weather Defence board in Australia. Promat Australia and their distributors were available at any time for technical support and back up. Onsite training was also conducted at the beginning of the job for fixing, taping and sealing of the boards and fixtures. The training also ensured a robust QA was put in place before any cladding was applied. This service will also be available for future projects.