No products in the cart.
The Knauf Aquapanel is an outdoor cement board, designed for the building and decorating of exterior facades. These render carrier boards are particularly strong and are ideal for withstanding even the most extreme weather conditions. If you’re planning on installing a render system onto the Knauf Aquapanel, then keep reading!
Today’s blog post is an installation and rendering guide for the Aquapanel. We’re going to be talking about how to install the boards and then how to apply the EWI Pro thin coat render system onto them.
Installing the Knauf Aquapanel Boards
To start off, Knauf Aquapanels need to be screwed onto vertical timber battens using 42-60ml self-drilling screws. You should use approximately 23 screws per board, and a 3mm gap needs to be left in between each board.
Once in place, a render carrier board joint tape should be applied to all of the joints, or alternatively, you can cut fibreglass mesh into strips of 10cm and secure these using a thin layer of the EWI-225 Premium Basecoat.
Applying Render to Knauf Aquapanels
Now that the Knauf Aquapanels are prepared and ready to go, you can go straight into applying the thin coat render system.
First, the EWI-225 Premium Basecoat needs to be mixed with 6 litres of clean, cool water using an electric paddle mix until it is a smooth, workable consistency. This is our strongest basecoat-adhesive, and therefore it’s ideal for applications onto render carrier board as it will help to resist cracking.
Once mixed, the basecoat should be applied directly onto the boards at a thickness of 6mm. At this stage, you should embed the Fibreglass Mesh into the basecoat. It’s important that the mesh is embedded in order to enhance the tensile strength of the system – to do this you need to cut the mesh into strips and ensure that each strip is overlapping by 10cm on all edges.
Remember that you are applying a thin coat render, and therefore the basecoat needs to be perfectly smooth and flat so that any imperfections are not visible through the final render finish.
Once set, the basecoat will need priming with a render primer. This is optional, although we do recommend the use of a render primer if you have chosen an especially bright colour for the topcoat, as the primer can be tinted to match the render and will ensure an even coloured finish. The render primer should be painted onto the basecoat and then left until dry.
The final stage in the render system is the topcoat. Whether you’ve chosen the EWI-010 Acrylic Render or the EWI-076 Premium Bio Silicone render, the application is always the same. The render needs to be applied at a thickness that corresponds with your chosen grain size – so if you’ve chosen a 1.5mm textured finish then the render needs to be applied 1.5mm thick. Once the render itself is on the wall, it needs rubbing up using a plastic render float.
If you’re looking for an approved EWI installer to carry out the work for you, then fill out the form below and we will be in touch. We upload blog posts every Tuesday and Thursday, so keep up to date with our blog and social channels to find out more!
