VIEWPOINT
WOOD WOOL: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Matt Neary, national sales manager at Knauf Insulation.
INSULATION IS FIRST and foremost a performance product. Its primary purpose is to deliver thermal, fire or acoustic performance – often a combination of all three – to achieve compliance and meet client demands. It’s usually the major performance contributor hidden away in the build-up. But that’s not always the case. There are applications where insulation needs to play a more visible role, quite literally. In these cases, customers need insulation solutions that combine form and function – performance and aesthetics – to deliver on the complete specification. Merchants will already be familiar with ranges like Rocksilk® Soffit Linerboard – rock mineral wool slabs with bonded facings designed to be deployed when the insulation is the finishing surface.
In this month’s column, I want to focus on a less familiar solution that you may need to be able to offer to your customers for these applications – wood wool.
What is wood wool and where is it used? Cement-bonded wood wool is a material made from wood shavings, produced by shredding wood into long, thin strands which are then bonded together with a mineral binder such as cement. This results in a robust material that offers several performance benefits. It is most useful in instances
where fire, thermal and acoustic performance are needed but an aesthetic finish is also required. Firstly, ceilings in busy offices and large commercial spaces, where wood wool’s inherent sound absorption properties will help to reduce unwanted noise. Structural soffits are the second primary use case for wood wool products. These are typically seen in basements and undercrofts, including maintenance rooms and car parks. These spaces often need to be insulated to benefit the rooms above. To avoid interstitial condensation, the insulation is attached to the ‘cold’ side of the soffit. Rather than apply a separate finishing surface, the specifier may prefer a product that doesn’t need one.
Wool performance To look at wood wool performance in more detail, it’s helpful to focus on a
September 2024
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specific product as an example. In this case, Knauf Insulation’s Heraklith Tektalan A2 SmartTec. This is a range of panels that combine a cement- bonded wood wool finishing layer (which can be supplied in any RAL colour) with a rock mineral wool insulation slab.
Thermal performance is achieved via the combination of the rock mineral wool (at 0.035 W/mK) and the wood wool (at 0.095 W/mK).
Acoustic performance is primarily achieved via the open, fibrous structure of the wood wool layer, which makes it effective at absorbing sound. On fire safety, Heraklith Tektalan A2 SmartTec panels are non-combustible with a Euroclass A2-s1,d0 reaction to fire classification. The panels are tested as a system with Heraklith DDS Plus fixings to provide fire
resistance of up to 180 minutes – REI (EN13501-2) on solid concrete decks.
Value-added In a competitive industry, merchants are always looking for the right ‘value-added’ products to meet customer demand. While not a universal insulation solution, wood wool has clear applications where sound absorption, thermal performance and fire safety are required, and where a certain design aesthetic is desired.
So why branch out by adding wood wool solutions to your product portfolio? You wood-n’t believe how popular it is! BMJ
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