Serious Materials: EcoRock

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Author Message Dale Hurttgam, NCARB, AIA,LEED AP, CSI Senior Member Username: dwhurttgam Post Number: 42 Registered: 10-2005 Posted on Thursday, June 18, 2009 - 07:51 am:    Has anyone had any experience with a "green products" company "Serious Materials" and in particular a gypsum board substitute product called "EcoRock". Have been asked to consider its use. Have not done extensive research. Find it interesting that on their website it indicates that its performance is equal to gyp board but that it is 5 times greener - but it does not give details or even basic info about what its composition is. Brett M. Wilbur CSI, CCS, AIA Senior Member Username: brett Post Number: 172 Registered: 12-2004 Posted on Thursday, June 18, 2009 - 10:09 am:    Check the material on www.greenformat.com. This is a CSI website that allows manufacturers to list green products. The products go through a certification process before allowing to be listed. Nathan Woods, CCCA, LEED AP Senior Member Username: nwoods Post Number: 295 Registered: 08-2005 Posted on Thursday, June 18, 2009 - 10:17 am:    Haven't had an opportunity to use it, but received a Lunch-n-Learn presentation from the company a few months ago. Appears to be a very good product. Their manufacturing process is a big part of the "green" element of the product. Their acoustic solutions are excellent. Steven Bruneel, AIA, CSI-CDT, LEED-AP Senior Member Username: redseca2 Post Number: 180 Registered: 12-2006 Posted on Thursday, June 18, 2009 - 01:22 pm:    This is the kind of product, if their claims are true, that our firm wants to use but cannot. We are exclusively institutional, healthcare and university work, and our interior gypsum board wall details and specifications are structured around UL assemblies. I do not see a complete set of tested and listed wall types happening with this product, and I would not want introduce the unnecessary complexity of using this product for non-rated and using tradional Type X for rated to a project. So for now, we can look but we cannot touch. (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, June 18, 2009 - 12:03 pm:    The products listed in GreenFormat most definitely DO NOT go through any sort of certification process. All information is provided by the manufacturer and is NOT evaluated in any way by the creators of GreenFormat. Beware. Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 880 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Sunday, June 21, 2009 - 03:40 pm:    5 times greener? how? most gypsum board these days is made with recycled paper and recycled gypsum content anyway -- I would be very curious how some competitive product could be 5 times greener than that? they use solar power? as for "certification of products", the Unregistered Guest is correct -- all Greenformat information is manufacturer provided and CSI most certainly will not certify anything about any product. That's just asking for trouble. sounds like greenwashing to me... Brian E. Trimble, CDT Senior Member Username: brian_e_trimble_cdt Post Number: 23 Registered: 08-2005 Posted on Friday, July 10, 2009 - 12:04 pm:    Did you hear the story of the Chinese drywall... hmmmm John Bunzick, CCS, CCCA, LEED AP Senior Member Username: bunzick Post Number: 1068 Registered: 03-2002 Posted on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 09:18 am:    Any product where they won't tell you what is is, really, is one I will simply not use. It always makes me suspicious that they have something to hide, even if it is only a self-perceived marketing advantage. One example of that: A well-known foam insulation manufacturer has done this for years. Turns out everyone and his brother makes open-cell polyurethane foam, but if this company told you that they wouldn't be so "special" any more. For all we know Eco-Rock could be ordinary gypsum drywall with flue-gas desulfurization gypsum (I was going to put FGD gypsum, but I'll be seeing Tim Werbstein in a couple weeks and thought better of it) with 5 times the marketing spin as the other guys. William Buchholz, AIA, CCS, LEED AP (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 04:10 pm:    I talked to a sales rep. today, who said the product is still undergoing some final testing and approvals. Production will begin in their Newark, CA plant starting this fall, and their first 12 clients are already committed and pre-sold so they can get any production and installation bugs worked out. He said that sales to the general public should begin during the first quarter of next year as they start to ramp-up their production. Regarding it's composition, it's a blend of about 20 materials, 80% of which are pre-consumer recycled, including fly ash, slag, and gypsum. The greenness is the high recycled content, and the fact that they are not using ovens to cure it. Regular gyp board is oven-dried, using lots of natural gas to run the ovens.