Your view on Kingspan & similar. British Gypsum & similar etc.

Nine_Lives

I work for a place that deals with the sale of building materials & i was wondering how (or even if) products that look and supposedly operate the same, differ.

2 examples that spring to mind...

rigid board insulation - Kingspan seems to be "the" name. 8x4 sheets at 25/50/75/100/150mm is what we stock, as well as cavity board at 40/50/60/70mm.
We stocked this for years before we moved on to Quinn-Therm.

Looks the same. Same thicknesses. We're told it's cheaper to buy in.

Difference in quality?


Then onto the British Gypsum products...

We used to stock plasterboard from BG. We've since moved on to Knauf products. Customers don't like the move, but they have little choice.

We used to stock BG Dry Wall Adhesive bags, which has been replaced with Knauf Bonding Compound.


Supposedly all does the same, but cheaper to buy in.


On the basis of you get what you pay for - is there any real difference in quality?

Just asking out of curiosity.

glubalub

It depends what you man by quality KP_803. The thermal performance of both Kingspan and Quinn Therm will be pretty much the same. They both rely on trapping air in small bubbles and hence their performance is limited by the laws of physics. IMHO Kingspan provide a slightly superior technical back up service (although Celotex is probably even better). I haven't checked but they may have different fire ratings.

I don't think there is any real difference between BG and Knauf. BG was the king and Knauf are the overseas pretender. Both have pretty good technical departments. In most cases, the similarities between branded products are much greater than the differences.

Nine_Lives

Quality - workability as in what it's like to work with/use, as well as how it performs doing what it's supposed to do.

From experience just handling the goods....

I can't really see any difference between the Kingspan & the Quinn-Therm. It looks & feels exactly the same.

However, as for the Knauf plasterboard, it seems to crumble way easier than the British Gypsum product ever did. We have many more damaged boards since we moved on to Knauf products. They feel flimsy compared to the BG boards. Then we had customers saying the same thing, so we knew it wasn't just us.

Have never experienced Knauf bonding compound, but customers have complained about this product too. We've had quite a few complaints about the Knauf products to be fair. I guess some of this is people not liking change, but with the plasterboard thing - i can certainly see what they're talking about with that one.

iamcornholio

I don't think that there is that much difference in the plaster products. Knauf are a massive and experienced German firm and I doubt that there products can be that bad.

As for British Gypsum, well don't buy out of patriotism - its French owned ... as is the other main supplier Lafarge

Regarding Quinn (Irish manufacturer) they do a lot of building products which the UK merchants sell cheaper than competitors, and I can only imagine that there must be some Irish tax breaks or lower costs to enable them to manufacture and import their stuff over here at lower costs

The Quinn board should be comparable to Kingspan/Celotex/Xtralite PIR insulation, and if it has a BBA certificate then it should perform the same, and be acceptable to building control officers

Nine_Lives

If this is all so, then the obvious question to me is...

Why would you pay abc for something which is xyz more expensive than a similar product, yet it does the same.

But then you can apply this to anything. "The Name" will carry a lot of weight.

This tin of beans says Heinz, therefore it HAS to be better than this label that says Sainsburys, just because of the name, nothing else.

Leif

K_P83 wrote: »

If this is all so, then the obvious question to me is...

Why would you pay abc for something which is xyz more expensive than a similar product, yet it does the same.

But then you can apply this to anything. "The Name" will carry a lot of weight.

This tin of beans says Heinz, therefore it HAS to be better than this label that says Sainsburys, just because of the name, nothing else.

Quite often the same company makes products for a range of supermarkets, though big brands like Heinz will have their own factories. Anyway, each supermarket will have its own standards, and the supplier adjusts the product to suit. You might have noticed that some products, such as choccy deserts, from Waitrose, M&S, Tesco, Sainsburys, and Morrisons look suspiciously similar, but the first two have higher standards. and Morrisons the lowest.

But that is a digression ...

iamcornholio

The building industry deals in 'products' exactly the same as any other. There are the same sales reps, promoting the same discounts, and the same offers. Then there are the same manufacturing costs, and the same overheads and distribution costs to be taken into account

I would suspect that similar products made in similar factories with similar iso:9001 quality systems, and conforming to similar standards would have similar performance. The only difference would be name and costs of getting the product to market - both of which would determine retail costs