Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Sheet Rock Added To Pond

I think I have seen on this forum in the past that some people have placed sheetrock in their pond to help clear a muddy pond with suspended clay.
Is that accurate or does anyone have an experience of doing this? How did you do it?
I am building a house and will have quite a bit of material leftovers?

Any thoughts?....

See this link for a list of sheetrock threads here.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...true#Post120886

My neighbor added sheetrock to his pond and it cleared up. It may only take a little to reach the tipping point where the clay settles out. OTOH, it may take a lot, depending on your situation. The finer you can pound it, the quicker it will work.

Old sheetrock contained gypsum. I'm not sure about the modern stuff, and the paper can be problematic.

Rain:

It's all gypsum-based, by definition. I added quite a bit to my first pond when we built it...seemed to make not a whit of difference...didn't hurt anything, though, either.

My last boss is on the board of USG (sheetrock) and he told me that when he was there for board meetings he would go to the dock to see the gypsum being unloaded. He's stupid rich.

Matt, true that it is gypsum based BUT many sheets now contain toxic additives for plasticizers, fireproofing, etc. It not just our grandpa's dry wall anymore.

Fortunately for pond owners, OHSA and the EPA would throw a hissy fit if there were any toxins in Sheetrock. MSDS sheets I have read show nothing remotely toxic or carcinogenic.

This is "cut & pasted" from Wikipedia on drywall in the North American market.

North American market
North America hails as one of the largest gypsum board users in the world with a total wallboard plant capacity of 40 billion square feet per year.[2] Moreover, the home building and remodeling markets in North America have increased demand the last five years. The gypsum board market is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the housing boom as "an average new American home contains more than 7.31 metric tons of gypsum."[3]

The introduction in March 2005 of the Clean Air Interstate Rule by the United States Environmental Protection Agency requires power plants to "cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 73%" by 2018.[4] The Clean Air Interstate Rule also requested that the power plants install new scrubbers (industrial pollution control devices) to remove sulfur dioxide present in the output waste gas. Scrubbers use the technique of flue gas desulfurization (FGD), which produces synthetic gypsum as a usable by-product. In response to the new supply of this raw material, the gypsum board market was predicted to shift significantly. However, issues such as mercury release during calcining need to be resolved. [5]


Waste
Because up to 17% of drywall is wasted during the manufacturing and installation processes[citation needed] and the drywall material is rarely re-used, disposal has become a problem. Some landfill sites have banned the dumping of drywall. Therefore, used drywall and gypsum are often dumped into the ocean where it may cause harm to sea life. The EPA regulates this ocean dumping by permit. Most manufacturers with an environmental concern take back the boards from construction sites and burn them at high temperature to eliminate the paper and bring the gypsum back to its initial plaster state. Recycled paper is sometimes used during manufacturing. More recently, recycling at the construction site itself is being investigated. There is potential for using crushed drywall to amend certain soils at building sites, such as clay and silt mixtures (bay mud), as well as using it in compost.[6] However, drywall that is composed of non-biodegradable or persistent toxic additives -- including EDTA, most plasticizers, and some mildew and fire retardants -- presents a challenge, in that it cannot be safely returned to soil or reclaimed by industry without compromising human and environmental health.

Rainman, I don't know anything about the composition of drywall, but I can add something about wikipedia in general. It is not an encyclopedia in the normal sense and anything found there is suspect and should be confirmed from other sources. It doesn't matter much in a friendly discussion about drywall, but it's good to know in general.

If you're bored you might find one of my blog posts about wikipedia interesting:

http://blacksoldierflyblog.com/wikipedia-wrong-about-black-soldier-flies/

GW wikipedia is reviewed for correctness by viewers and staff. They often take out text and ban people from adding text and comments that are wrong or without merit or conjecture. Is good to read it , just as with anything you read , with an eye for correctness.

I agree with your comment ewest, my main point is that people shouldn't confuse Wikipedia with an encyclopedia. They are different. If you read the post about my experience with the Wikipedia black soldier fly entry you'll see why I said what I did.

Besides what I mention in my post I also caught one case of a hooligan changing numbers around for fun. You can see what changes have been made to any entry by clicking the "history" tab at the top of the page. You can see in these two examples what the vandal did to the BSF entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hermetia_illucens&diff=242953040&oldid=242952140

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hermetia_illucens&diff=prev&oldid=242952140

Yes I have seen that GW. Most times they try to ban people that do that. Sometimes there are notes by the writers that warn about crazy stuff added.

Thanks for the Feedback!!

I'm not trying to say that the drywall is harmful. Most is NOT. Some however IS toxic, especially those used in many commercial buildings as firewalls and most "improved" types. Common "White Face" drywall is mostly gypsum and is harmless, often beneficial.

Like roofing shingles, drywall was not banned from most landfills, and it's disposal regulated by the EPA, because it is full of good things........

Seems like it would make more sense to just buy bags of it.