Vermiculite

[Alison]

Hiya
I was wondering if anyone could help. I have just bought a unit with vermiculite ceilings in the bedrooms (2) and lounge. Does anyone know the best way to get rid of it - paint over it, drop the ceiling etc? Any if anyone can recommend someone in the Nth Sydney area that has experience of it that would be great. I was thinking of putting a suspended ceiling in with downlights, although this sounds expensive and im not sure that my budget will stretch to this. Any ideas??!!
Thanks

 

[Tools]

Building a false ceiling is the best way to go.If you paint it, you need to spray it and you will still have a vermiculite ceiling.

Tools

 

[FrankGrimes]

I did some research about this last year, one of my units has it. Most people seemed to recommend just attaching plasterboard straight over the old ceiling, then paint, install lights etc.. You will only lose a few cms

 

[geoffw]

There's some ideas here.

 

[Norwester]

Hi Alison,

If you go down the path of a new ceiling, make sure that you allow enough clearance to fit the downlights in.

Don't get caught by looking at LV lights and presuming that you only need *X* amount of distance based on the depth of the light fitting, or the thickness of the transformer

The transformers need to be pushed back up and into the void...........the longer ones sometimes just don't fit through the angle of the dangle in relation to the size of the cutout..............

And from personal experience it ain't pretty when they don't fit.
ciao

Nor

 

[Merovingian]

Is vermiculite the stuff that looks like painted Coco Pops glued onto the ceiling?

 

[FrankGrimes]

Is vermiculite the stuff that looks like painted Coco Pops glued onto the ceiling?

Yep thats it, its horrible. Don't know who came up with such a stupid idea! Seems common in older units

 

[Alison]

Thanks everyone
I am getting two quotes for the job! I think I'll have the false ceilings put in, with downlights. Another question....Has anyone used Fluroescent downlights?