Compare plywood and chipboard

The lev­el of qual­i­ty of floor fin­ish­ing depends to a large extent on the type of fin­ish­ing mate­r­i­al cho­sen. Ply­wood and chip­board have been hold­ing the palm for a long time. How to assess the rel­e­vance of the use of a par­tic­u­lar mate­r­i­al? To do this, you need to have an idea about the fea­tures of each. What is bet­ter? Our experts are ready to answer this ques­tion.

Features of finishing materials

Chipboard

Chip­board or chip­board is a mix­ture of wood chips and syn­thet­ic resins obtained by the hot method (by expos­ing the crushed raw mate­ri­als to a press and high tem­per­a­ture). Most often, this mix­ture is a waste of expen­sive lum­ber or culling of valu­able wood. DPS can be rep­re­sent­ed by 2 options: with a smooth edge and with a tongue and groove fas­ten­ing sys­tem. The lat­ter option is most often char­ac­ter­ized by increased mois­ture resis­tance and is often used to dec­o­rate the sur­face of the sub­floor / fin­ish­ing floor.

Chip­board includes many vari­eties, among which the most com­mon, per­haps, can be called lam­i­nat­ed. But if we are talk­ing about lev­el­ing hor­i­zon­tal sur­faces, the best option would be raw chip­board (with / with­out sand­ing). Despite their rel­a­tive­ly low strength, chip­board sheets are suit­able for rough floor­ing, as they have good sound and heat insu­la­tion per­for­mance and exhib­it sur­pris­ing­ly good bend­ing strength.

ON A NOTE. Strict pre­cau­tions must be observed when work­ing with chip­board. In the process of saw­ing them, tox­ic dust is formed — the use of a res­pi­ra­tor is manda­to­ry to avoid an aller­gic reac­tion.

Plywood

Com­pared to DPS, ply­wood is more nat­ur­al, since much less adhe­sive is used in its man­u­fac­ture. The mate­r­i­al is char­ac­ter­ized by a mul­ti­lay­er struc­ture (veneer sheets), made of inex­pen­sive tree species (pine, birch, etc.). The num­ber of veneer lay­ers used deter­mines the thick­ness of the sheet.

The emer­gence of var­i­ous types of fin­ish­ing build­ing mate­ri­als has led to a sharp decline in the pop­u­lar­i­ty of ply­wood, dis­plac­ing it from the fore­front. Nev­er­the­less, it is still a demand­ed mate­r­i­al, which is dis­tin­guished by its strength and resis­tance to var­i­ous kinds of exter­nal influ­ences.

Choos­ing the right ply­wood is a seri­ous task, if only for the rea­son that this prod­uct has sev­er­al vari­eties:

1. 
   1st cat­e­go­ry - com­plete­ly defect-free. The most expen­sive vari­ety, the least used. It is used exclu­sive­ly for fine fin­ish­ing, if it is nec­es­sary to cre­ate a per­fect­ly even coat­ing for var­nish­ing.

2. 
   2nd cat­e­go­ry — ply­wood with minor defects. It is used as a fin­ish­ing sur­face with­out fur­ther fin­ish­ing (suit­able for house­hold premis­es).

3. 
   3rd cat­e­go­ry - prod­ucts with vis­i­ble, but not pol­ished defects — knots, chips, bumps. Used as a rough fin­ish.

4. 
   4th cat­e­go­ry — the low­est qual­i­ty grade of ply­wood (has many defects). Not used for floor­ing.

When choos­ing a suit­able type of ply­wood, you should pay atten­tion to its appear­ance only if it will be used as a fin­ish­ing coat­ing, in oth­er cas­es, the choice of the 1st and 2nd grades is not crit­i­cal.

Feature Comparison

To com­plete the pic­ture, we have com­piled a list of sig­nif­i­cant char­ac­ter­is­tics of prod­ucts used for floor­ing and com­pared them.

Strength

Chip­boards are impres­sive­ly thick and quite strong in bend­ing, so they are ide­al for lev­el­ing sur­faces with voids. A lay­ered ply­wood board can with­stand sig­nif­i­cant mechan­i­cal loads, but only if the tech­nol­o­gy for lay­ing this mate­r­i­al has been observed.

Installation subtleties

The process of lay­ing wood-based lam­i­nat­ed boards is not con­sid­ered some­thing com­pli­cat­ed, how­ev­er, there are cer­tain nuances that should not be for­got­ten. Chip­board is very easy to cut and also fix­es to the floor with­out much effort. Work­ing with ply­wood is a more labo­ri­ous process. Due to the pres­ence of nat­ur­al wood in the struc­ture of the mate­r­i­al, fit­ting the prod­uct to size will take a lot of time. But the method of fas­ten­ing chip­board and ply­wood is almost iden­ti­cal — on the adhe­sive com­po­si­tion or logs.

Environmental friendliness

Ply­wood is an absolute­ly envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly mate­r­i­al, since nat­ur­al com­po­nents and harm­less com­pounds are used in its man­u­fac­ture. This option is best suit­ed for fin­ish­ing res­i­den­tial premis­es.

Chip­board is a mate­r­i­al that is very con­tro­ver­sial in terms of envi­ron­men­tal safe­ty, since tox­ic bond­ing com­pounds (based on formalde­hyde) are used in its pro­duc­tion. The safest prod­ucts are labeled E1, E0.5.

Dimensions

The length and width of chip­board and ply­wood are, in gen­er­al, iden­ti­cal, so the thick­ness of the prod­ucts should be tak­en into account. For sur­faces with a sig­nif­i­cant mechan­i­cal load, chip­board plates with a thick­ness of 16–22 mm are used. Ply­wood has a very wide range of sizes, so you can choose the best option for rooms of any size (prod­ucts with a thick­ness of 12–15 mm are suit­able for the floor).

Price

The dif­fer­ence in price of the con­sid­ered fin­ish­ing mate­ri­als is not par­tic­u­lar­ly large. The final cost of prod­ucts is formed by a num­ber of fac­tors: the method of pro­duc­tion, the raw mate­ri­als used, the pres­ence of addi­tion­al pro­cess­ing, the size of the prod­uct, etc. In order for the final repair bud­get not to turn out to be pro­hib­i­tive­ly large, it is nec­es­sary to care­ful­ly con­sid­er the scope of a par­tic­u­lar mate­r­i­al for inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion.

Helpful Hints

Final­ly, a few valu­able tips that will help you decide on the choice of a suit­able fin­ish­ing mate­r­i­al:

1. When choos­ing a fin­ish for a sub­floor, the aes­thet­ic prop­er­ties of the mate­r­i­al are not par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant, so it’s bet­ter to stay on chip­board — it’s sim­pler, cheap­er, excel­lent noise and heat insu­la­tion prop­er­ties.

2. When choos­ing a fin­ish­ing mate­r­i­al for rooms with high humid­i­ty (with the excep­tion of the bath­room), one should take into account the fact that, unlike chip­board, ply­wood is more resis­tant to con­tact with water: it dries quick­ly and returns to its orig­i­nal form.

3. Ply­wood is per­fect for cre­at­ing a raised floor — this is the best option for res­i­den­tial build­ings with weak ceil­ings.

4. After choos­ing the right mate­r­i­al, it is impor­tant to pay spe­cial atten­tion to the instal­la­tion process: improp­er instal­la­tion of both chip­board and ply­wood leads to the appear­ance of a char­ac­ter­is­tic creak, which is not easy to remove and often quite cost­ly (both in time and resources).