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CemestO board construction compared with conventional wood framing at InspectApedia.comCelotex® Cemesto Board
History, ingredients, maintenance, repair

History of Cemesto board by Celotex and its ingredients and use as a construction panel in North America beginning in the late 1930s.

Page top: excepted from Robert L. Davison's 1945 patent of building construction methods using a beam and panel method illustrates use of Cemesto panels. Davison's patent was assigned to the John B. Pierce Foundation of New York who, with Celotex, producer of Cemesto board, popularized rapid, low-cost panel-based home construction.

This article series describes Celotex products and panelized construction methods and materials and their history and constituents.

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Celotex™ Cemesto History, Ingredients, Preservation

Cemesto board construction details (C) InspectApedia.comCemesto-Board,1 1/2 to 2-inch thick 4' x 8' or 12' panels comprised of asbestos-cement panels adhered to a vegetable-fibre core (Celotex sugar cane), first introduced by Celotex in 1937 and described here by research articles and U.S. patent disclosures.

Cemesto-Board was the first commercially available sandwich panel board used in home construction in the U.S. A Cemesto-board 4x12' panel weighed 265 pounds and was considered a lightweight structural panel.

These boards did not need painting. All panels, ceiling boards, and structural members were delivered cut to specified sizes by the manufacturer.

Assembly work was done mainly in a field shop. Workers of each team knew only their own specific task, much as a worker on an assembly line repeats a series of work. (Jung 2008)

Illustration: Cemesto, combining asbestos-cement panels and a Celotex vegetable fibre core.

[Click to enlarge any image]

"Cemesto Board" is the proprietary name of the first commercial sandwich board to be used in a house which was built in 1933 using sandwich panels of fibreboard faces and cement asbestos core [or vice versa - Ed.] in America. Many houses of that type were built during World War II due to the demands for cheap, rapidly built houses.

In 1947 a test house was built using sandwich panel in the grounds of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory at Madison Wis. to investigate the long term behaviour of sandwich panels.

The exposure test results over 15 years indicated that the wall panels made of resin-impregnated paper cores and plywood facings have demonstrated excellent performance, based on retention of stiffness and strength. I n this case, the losses in stiffness and strength due to the passage of time are insignificant." (Shendy 1981)

Celotex CemestO board advertisement from the October 1938 Federal Architect (C) InspectApedia.com

Illustration: above: a Celotex CemestO advertisement from the October 1938 edition of The Federal Architect magazine cited below.

Below: CemestO wall construction compared with conventional wood stud wall framing as described in "The Cemesto Future", Time Magazine in a 31 May 1943 article accessible by Time Archive subscribers.

CemestO board construction compared with conventional wood framing at InspectApedia.com

Robert Davison's 1944 "Building Construction" patent given in entirety as a link below was a significant step in the use of CemestO board as probably the earliest "structural insulated panel" or SIPs.

Celotex Cemesto asbstos-cement-insulating-panels at InspectApedia.com

Cemesto board home, R.L. Davison Patent No. 2,359,304, Oct. 3 1944 cited & discussed at InspectApedia.com

Davison's 1945 Building Construction using Cemesto panels, excerpt, Fig. 19 cited & discussed at InspectApedia.com

On 2017-06-26 by Dawn - Cemesto Walls, Oak Ridge TN

I own a Cemesto home in Oak Ridge, TN, built in 1943 by the army.

Most of the cemesto in the interior has been covered over with drywall. However, I have discovered after removing wallpaper in the kitchen that I do have a couple of exposed cemesto walls.

They are not punctured. I am wondering if it would be an appropriate installation to attach tile directly to the cemesto using thinset.

My other option would be to install backerboard, but I am concerned that attaching with screws could potentially create dust. Do you have any insight?

Cemesto homes under construction at Oak Ridge TN in 1943 - discussed at InspectApedia.com

Photo: CemestO homes under construction, Oak Ridge TN in 1943, photo by Ed Westcott, Manhattan Project official photographer.

Moderator reply:

Dawn,

Asbestos is safe and legal in homes if it is intact and can be left un-disturbed. Particularly in cementious form such as in the outer layers of CemestO board, the material, if un-damaged, is not friable.

If the CemestO panels are intact and sound it seems quite reasonable to me to cover them over with ceramic tile as you describe. d a light-weight structural panel suitable for rapid, low-cost home construction.


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