Just between you and me and the drywall… Secrets of National Gypsum’s future reside in SouthPark office

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SOUTHPARK ─ We pulled into the parking lot on one of those late-July days in Charlotte where you can see undulating waves of heat and humidity rising from the asphalt desert.

There was the office-park building, a bastion for busy business bees, a squat box clad in pebbly stucco and dark glass, indistinguishable from all the other office-park buildings as far as the eye could see, but for this intriguing blazon: “National Gypsum Technology Innovation Center.”

The sleek door whooshed open, the corporate cool of industrial air-conditioning enveloped us, and the idea that life might be worth living again began to dawn.

As the fog on our specs cleared, it also became clear that this was not just another business journalism assignment.

We were onto to something big.

Our waiting corporate contact, Michael Blades, who looked as sharp as his name, hinted that secrets were waiting to be revealed: “We call this CSI Charlotte.”

We were in, and in the steady hands of Blades, whose business card says he is the director of product development and innovation for National Gypsum, I was in a position to glimpse the (possible) future of drywall.

Blades played cagey: “It’s all 90 percent gypsum and paper; it’s the other 10 percent that makes the difference.”

Our tight-lipped guide to the inner-workings of the Charlotte-based National Gypsum Services Co., the second largest wallboard manufacturer in the country, wasn’t about to spill the gypsum molecules on his bread-and-butter.

Our job: Play dumb until the right moment.

So we let him explain all the latest innovations in the privately held company’s “Purple” line of products, a line that has recently gotten a lot of publicity thanks to the signing of DIY Network star Anitra Mecadon as the company’s celebrity spokeswoman.

Innovation, Blades explained, has been the MO of National Gypsum since it was founded in 1925.

It didn’t invent the idea of sandwiching gypsum plaster ─ calcium sulfate plus two molecules of water, the extra water being the reason wallboard is so fire retardant ─ between two pieces of heavy paper. That was done back in the 1880s in England.

Nor was it the first national drywall distributor. That title belongs to U.S. Gypsum Corp., founded in 1901 with the conglomeration of about 30 small outfits.

Nor are National Gypsum’s Gold Bond-branded products the country’s best-sellers. That distinction goes to the Sheetrock-brand held by USG.

But National Gypsum is No. 2, with a 23 percent share of the market, which is pretty big. It owns and operates the world’s largest open-pit gypsum mine, in Nova Scotia, has a small fleet of ocean-going ships, and has paper and wallboard plants across the country, including one in Mount Holly that uses synthetic gypsum sourced from filters at Duke Energy plants that burn high-sulfur-content coal.

The company got where it is, Blades said, by trying to make better and lighter drywall ─ and joint compound, tile backer-board and on and on.

“This company was founded on the premise that while we didn’t make the first or the most drywall, we could make it stronger and lighter,” Blades said. “We built the business on that.”

In the modern era, National Gypsum’s first big technological breakthrough came in 1991 with the invention of half-inch ceiling board stiff enough to hang upside-down. Before that, thicker, heavier plasterboard had to be used on ceilings to prevent “deflection” ─ a fancy word for sag.

After that, National Gypsum introduced drywall and tile backer-board that flexes, drywall that reduces sound, mold-retardant drywall, fire-shield drywall that is 30 percent lighter than standard Type-X drywall (an industry standard for extra fire resistance), and fiberglass-backed drywall so tough you can bash it with a baseball bat and leave only a small, easily reparable dent.

One trick, Blades let slip, lies in the ratio of air-bubbles-to-gypsum molecules in the mix. Another is building the strength of the wallboard into the paper, not the plaster. A third is putting other stuff into the drywall other than gypsum and paper.

Like “goo.” That’s a technical term Blades used to describe beads of waxy material injected into the gypsum used in an energy efficient drywall product the company sells.

The wax is made to start getting gooey at 73 degrees. As it gets gooier with the rising temperature, the drywall absorbs heat from the room, keeping it cooler. When the temperature falls and the goo begins to solidify at 73, the plasterboard releases heat into the room, warming it up.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Blades said.

Laughing at his pun to loosen him up, we persuaded Blades to take us on a tour of Technology Innovation Center, a warren of hallways and labs where about 20 technicians ─ four of them with doctoral degrees ─ do their things.

The labs are packed with all kinds of high-tech machines to measure tensile strength; chambers for subjecting products to heat and humidity; and microscopes ─ including a very big and very fancy electron microscope ─ to look deep into the hearts of gypsum crystals and air bubbles.

But there are also about a dozen commercial milkshake mixers for whipping up gypsum slurry, as well as a commercial pasta-maker to extrude it.

“Could you please not mention the milkshake makers and the pasta machine?” Blades asked hopefully.

It was becoming obvious that Blades was ready to ditch us. So he ended the tour in a warehouse-like area for the testing of products the company already sells and (eureka!) experimental products the company is playing with.

That’s where we spotted what we came for: Secrets. Two of them.

One is a new version of National Gypsum’s five-eighths inch SoundBreak XP Gypsum Board, the decibel-dampening effects of which Blades demonstrated earlier in a sound chamber meant to emulate a head-banging 16-year-old’s bedroom.

Although there are some proprietary elements involved, SoundBreak appeared to be made by gluing two panels of thinner drywall together.

The newer experimental SoundBreak appeared to have less paper on the inside, where the two thinner panels meet, but Blades wouldn’t comment on how it would be different from the existing product.

“All I can say is that we do quality testing here on existing products and products in the pipeline,” Blades said cautiously. “We’re working on a new version of SoundBreak board that our customers will find easier to work with. That’s all I can tell you on the record.”

Then our attention was drawn to a box about two feet square that had the depth of a standard two-by-four wall. Upon examination, it was in fact made of two-by-fours covered on the front by drywall that looked standard except for the shiny, silver-colored, perforated-foil lining on the back, similar to the film insulation contractors use to reflect heat away from attics.

On the opposite “wall” of the box was a two-inch or so layer of foam insulation sprayed onto a substrate, leaving a two-inch or so gap of air between the foam and the perforated-foil backer. Cutaways in the box allowed viewers to look inside what is essentially a mockup of a small section of the exterior wall of a house.

At first, Blades didn’t want to talk about box. But then he admitted the system the box displayed was already patented and “out there,” if not yet reported on.

So we kept pressing. And we did some research back at the office.

Building codes in colder parts of the country are starting to enforce an insulation factor of R-20 in exterior walls. Using regular paper-backed fiberglass insulation in a standard two-by-four wall will get you an R-13 at best.

Builders now have to fill the entire wall completely with foam insulation to achieve R-20. While that gets you the R-factors, Blades noted, it is expensive, creates heavy walls, takes a lot of time, and makes fishing wire through the wall post-construction dang near impossible.

The box, it turns out, is a demonstration of a system that National Gypsum believes can create an insulation factor of R-20 that is quicker, cheaper, lighter and more convenient for fishing, using the radiant effect of the foil plus the insulating quality of the foam.

“I wish you’d just say that we’re not going to stop after we innovate a product or a system,” Blades said. “We’re always going to keep innovating to make a better product that is easier to install.”

We shook hands with Blades and promised to write in the paper that he didn’t give away the family farm. He didn’t. We figured stuff out based on what we saw. So nobody should mess with him.

And we stepped back out into the haze ─ it must have gotten 5 degrees hotter and 80 times more humid since we parked. The car was an oven. Getting out of the office park was a maze the smartest rat couldn’t escape.

But it didn’t matter. Mission accomplished. We had infiltrated the National Gypsum lab and got what we came for: a (possible) future for drywall.