Remember my great debate on a ceiling finish?  Well, I’ve finally come to a decision.  I’ve settled on using rigid styrofoam insulation.

But wait, you say.  Isn’t that flamable and dangerous?

Well, I did a lot of reading.  Almost everything I read said that styrofoam insulation was very flamable and shouldn’t be used as an exposed finish.

However, nothing beats empirical evidence.  I took an piece of insulation that I had and stuck a fire to it.  Guess what?  IT DOESN’T BURN.  It melts.  If you hold a flame to it in a molten state, it’ll flame up a tiny bit for a split second. But even holding it vertically, it will not sustain a flame itself.  I put a butane torch at the bottom of some styrofoam and it immediately melted away from the flame and then … nothing.  The real danger I feared is a fire starting from a short-circuited wire and spreading.  I see now that the styrofoam would just melt away from the hot spot, not catch fire.

I feel perfectly safe lining my ceiling with it.  Cheap, bright white, sound-deadening, great stuff.  The only drawback is that it’s flimsy, I had to run 1″ strips of 1/4″ plywood nailed to the trusses to hold it up.  It’ll also be susceptible to holes if you hit it with something.  But with a 10′ ceiling and it being so cheap, I think I can definitely live with it.

Yes, it’s not fire-resistent.  But if I have flames 10′ off my floor, I don’t think there’ll be much left of the shop anyway.