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Trusscore: A User-Friendly DIY Sheetrock Alternative

No heavy lifting, taping, mudding, priming and painting required

By Rain Noe - November 5

in Interior Design | DIY

While sheetrock is the incumbent wall and ceiling material, there's a lot of reasons not to like it. It's heavy, difficult to transport and fragile in transit. Cutting it is messy. Installing it is a multistep process consisting of screwing, spackling the screw heads, taping and mudding the seams, priming, and painting. And these headaches are magnified when you're doing a ceiling rather than a wall.

Trusscore is a sheetrock alternative made from extruded, 100% recyclable PVC.

Rather than coming in 4x8 sheets, it comes in 16" widths, in lengths of 8', 10', 12', 14', 16' or 20'. It's lightweight, making it easy for one person to install, even for ceiling applications. The sides are tongue-and-grooved; you screw the panels to your 16"-on-center studs, and the next sheet covers the screws of the previous sheet.

Once the panels are screwed in, that's it. It requires no taping, nor paint. It's durable, abrasion-resistant and easy to clean. It's water-resistant and can't grow mold or mildew. It has a Class A fire rating, and its acoustic properties are essentially the same as sheetrock's.

So what's the catch? There are three. The first is that it has a glossy finish, which might take getting used to in a residential setting.

The second is that it only comes in white or grey.

The third may or may not be a catch, depending on the size of your project. Trusscore costs $2.75 to $3.75 per square foot; a 4x8 sheet of sheetrock at my local big box runs $20, or just 63 cents per square foot.

Where the savings can come in is with labor costs; drywall crews aren't cheap, and installing sheetrock is a time-consuming process. Also, cutting out the finishing steps saves you from having to buy the extra stuff: Buckets of joint compound, taping knives, tape, primer, paint, paint rollers, et cetera. Plus with Trusscore there's little to no clean-up, versus the dusty mess that a sheetrock job brings.

The video below shows both the product, and a side-by-side time comparison of installing Trusscore vs. sheetrock:

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Billy Mack

4 hours ago

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Hideous.

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Redd Haring

2 hours ago

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While technically true, calling plastic "recyclable" is misleading now that we know that so very little of it is actually turned into anything but garbage. At least PLA is recyclable. But I'm sure this could be done as a paper product, which could also be finished like sheetrock.

I'm sure renters will looove it when PVC walls are added to the "landlord special" palette /s.

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Redd Haring

2 hours ago

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Sure, it's technically "recyclable". But it's widely known now that used plastics are hardly ever actually turned into new products. At least PLA is compostable. And you could definitely make something similar, though perhaps less-durable, as a paper product. A paper version could also be finished as sheetrock.

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Curtis Shields

5 hours ago

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That's a nifty one! I'd much rather have installed this, vs. re-taping and floating the drywall in my last house's utility room.

One major consideration, though, is the potential for condensation and mold growth if these panels are installed on the inward faces of exterior walls. In humid climates, where water vapor tends to move through exterior wall assemblies from the wetter outside towards the drier inside, mounting a vapor-impermeable material on an exterior wall creates a surface where vapor can condense and increase mold growth potential. This is very common in schools, for example, when a teacher hangs a laminated poster on an exterior wall, or in commercial kitchen or utility spaces when plastic wall panels are used over drywall as easy-to-clean finishes.

Doesn't have to be an exterior wall, either; any wall assembly with a significant difference in relative humidity on either side will tend to experience vapor movement from the high-humidity side to the low-humidity side. So, spaces like natatoriums, autoclave rooms in hospitals, spaces adjacent to locker rooms, etc. can all experience this effect, and it's exactly these spaces where a PVC wall finish would be most useful (easier to sanitize / keep clean, tends to be waterproof, etc.).

Extensive knowledge on this over for residential at finehomebuilding.com, the Journal of Light Construction, Green Building Alliance, or IIBEC / AABA / ASHRAE for commercial.

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