Donnacona Fiberboard Identification & History

Donnacona Building Wall & Roof Sheathing, Insulating Board properties

Identify Donnacona Board Sheathing & Acoustic Panels

Donnacona is a rather soft wood-fiber based insulating sheathing board that ranges in color from light gray to nearly black depending on its intended application.

Dark Brown or Black Donnacona Board

if your Anaconda board is dark brown, almost black, like the Donacona bootblack fiberboard shown above, it's an asphalt-like coated board that was designed to be water resistant and would have been used as exterior wall sheathing. (Photo courtesy of InspectApedia reader John Vere).

Light or Grey Donnacona Board

If your Donnaconna board is light coloured or grayish it is the non-water-resistant version of this insulating board typically used indoors at interior partitions, ceilings, or the interior side of exterior walls;

Photo below: Donnacona board installed inside a building in Australia. Interior-use Donacona board like this may have been painted but if you examine an edge of the material or an unpainted side it will be more light gray in colour.

Donnacona board was sold in 1/2-inch and 1-inch thicknesses and in textured, rough-cast, and what the company called burl (sanded) finishes.

Precautions During Demolition of Donnacona fiberboard

About removing or breaking up Donnacona board or any fiberboard sheathing, in my OPINION it's smart to avoid any high levels of construction demolition dust as often, even if the material itself doesn't contain a popularly-scary ingredient like asbestos, fine particulates of wood material, insect debris, or occasionally mold all can be respiratory irritants and can occasionally be more seriously harmful.

So steps to keep dust down are always smart.

With those caveats made, in my experience, most fiberboard insulation products do not shed a lot of fine dust or particulates during removal or breaking up as long as you are not attacking the material with a power saw, grinder, sander, etc.

When we're talking about wood-fibre or paper- based sheathing boards, asbestos is not normally a likely ingredient. See details

at SHEATHING, FIBERBOARD ASBESTOS CONTENT

Shown above: one of several examples of Donnacona insulating board installations given by H. Beecham & Co. in 1939 and cited in detail below.

Gerry, I would be grateful to see photographs of your material showing its texture, back-surface colour (since the front has been painted, the material edge, and importantly, photos of any stamps or markings that identify the product.

Do keep me posted, and thanks for asking.

Other readers: Watch out for nantou . co and also ufazonu . info at their subdirectory /donnacona-board/ are counterfeit websites pretending to offer information about Donnacona board and in some cases offering also to sell a modern version of donnaconna board but actually marketing modern foam board insulation.

Those websites have plagiarized a number of our InspectApedia.com fiberboard photographs and is cited at the Web Theft Hall of Shame found at webthefthallofshame.com

Safety Concerns if Demolishing Donnacona Interior-use Board?

Reader question: We are renovating an over 50 year old home here in Newfoundland Canada.

The interior walls do not have drywall but instead have what is referred to as Donna Cona board mounted onto fully walled horizontally installed wood planks of what is referred to here as wall board. The board has been painted over many times.

The Donna Cona I believe falls into the fiberboard sheathing category. It looks very much like the photo in the "What is Fiberboard Insulating Sheathing?" topic however without any darkened damage.

Given the age of this product should we be concerned about dust from its removal, breakup or cutting? - Gerry

Reply:

Gerry,

Yes your Donna Cona board, properly-spelled Donnacona, was a fiberboard type product, often used for soundproofing or as an insulating board.

Donnacona insulating board was also sold by H. Beecham & Co., Pty., Ltd., 624-660 Lonsdale St., Melbourne AU selling in Victoria and Tasmania and cited below.

Sound Absorbing Properties of Donnacona Board

The acoustic or sound absorption properties of Donnacona board were given by Beecham, cited below.

You'll see that the sound absorption coefficients for this fiberboard product vary a bit by board thickness, who performed the test, and the sound frequency range being measured.

Notes to the table above:

• Original source: Donnacona INSULATING BOARD [PDF] for Building, sheathing, insulation, sound absorption, decorative finish, catalog, (1939) H. Beecham & Co., Pty. Ltd., 624-660 Lonsdale St., Melbourne, C.1, Australia.

Does Donnacona Board Contain Asbestos?

Does Donnacona Board Contain Asbestos?

Check out the image attached.

The D is not visible but guessing this is the non-coated version of donnaconna

My concern was and still is possibility of asbestos in Donnacona board products. - On 2024-08-13 by Jim -

Reply by InspectApedia Publisher (mod) - Donnacona board is plant-based, made from wood, not asbestos.

@Jim,

Excellent photo, I agree with you, that this is an example of brown Donnacona fiberboard; thanks for the image. We will keep it with this page.

And about your Donnacona asbestos question,

Donnacona Insulating Board was made in Canada from wood fibres.

So it is not an asbestos product, it's plant-based. That's almost the whole story,.

At FIBERBOARD SHEATHING ASBESTOS CONTENT we explain that while plant-based fiberboard sheathing is definitely not an asbestos-based product, there may have been exceptional cases in which this non-asbestos product was manufactured at the same facility where other, different asbestos-containing products were produced, so for those cases there is at least a small chance of cross-contamination of the product from asbestos dust and debris at the site or in some equipment.

And at that article we list companies whose products deliberately contained asbestos, such as some ceiling tiles or panels.

In my OPINION that's not justification for heroic measures nor for removal of insulating fiberboard used as wallboard or ceiling panels such as Donnacona.

More about asbestos in certain fiberboard products is

at ASBESTOS in FIBERBOARD - RESEARCH

Donnacona Board History & Research

Photo of Donnacona blackote Fiberboard from a British Columbia home built in 1965, provided courtesy of InspectApedia reader John Vere.

Early in the history of Donnacona board, W.E. Hale's wallboard patent described using fiberboard in construction (Hale 1870) and in the very next year, Cobb's patent described using a soft board made of straw in place of wood lath as a plaster base (Cobb 1871).

By 1910 in the U.S., the manufacturer of fiberboard made these products available to builders and homeowners for use as a sheathing product that was used on wall exteriors, wall and ceiling interiors, and even as roof sheathing.

In my personal experience, low-density fiberboard roof sheathing was a very bad idea as in its ordinary 1/2" thickness iit was much too fragile and soft to hold roofing nails or to walk upon.

• Donnacona INSULATING BOARD [PDF] for Building, sheathing, insulation, sound absorption, decorative finish, catalog, (1939) H. Beecham & Co., Pty. Ltd., 624-660 Lonsdale St., Melbourne, C.1, Australia.
  
  This document and the illustrations above were digitized by the Association for Preservation Technology, International, Australasia Chapter, Building Technology Heritage Library, from the collection of Miles Lewis Melbourne and funded by the Vera Moore foundation, Australia.
  
  Retrieved 2019/10/10 original source https://ia800902.us.archive.org/15/items/H.BeechamCo.Pty.Ltd /H.%20Beecham%20%26%20Co.%20Pty.%20Ltd.pdf

Historical notes [About Donnacona Board]

Donnacona was one of several Quebec towns built by and/or named for the Donnacona paper mill established in that province. Donnacona's first paper mill was built at the mouth of the Jacques-Cartier River where that river joins the St. Lawrence.

The Donnacona Paper Co., at one time a subsidiary of Price Brothers, was later purchased by Howard Smith Paper Mills, Ltd. (1953). Smith continued to market Donnacona Insulating Board Products. The company's insulating board was described as "non-inflammable" (perhaps through chemical treatment?).

The company and its mill passed through multiple owners until owner Bowater, already in debt, merged with Abatibi-Consolidated in 2007. The mill closed in January 2008, ending the employment of 240 people who had produced commercial grade paper and at least earlier, Donnacona board as well.

Chief Donnacona (died c. 1539 in France) was the chief of the village of Stadacona, located at the present site of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. French explorer Jacques Cartier, concluding his second voyage to what is now Canada, returned to France with Donnacona. - Wikipedia 2019/10/10

In 1535 Cartier and his crew made their maiden voyage from Brittany, France, to the St. Lawrence River.

The Iroquois Indian Chief Donnacona, leader of the village of Stadacona, first met Cartier with open arms but became suspicious and ultimately mistrustful of Cartier when he observed that Cartier and his men went heavily armed while the Iroquois did not.

Cartier wished to take a native chieftain back to France to exhibit him at court and in France and Spain as "visible token and proof of the reality of his discoveries; and he had fixed his mind upon Donnacona as the most suitable person for this purpose." (Abbott pp. 258-262)

Chief Donnacona was kidnapped and carried to France by Jacques Cartier ca 1535. Donnacona died in France ca 1539.

• Abbott, James, American History, Volumes 1-2
• Greene, Meg, Jacques Cartier: Navigating the St. Lawrence River, The Rosen Publishing Group, 2004 - Canada - 112 pages