How much does lead lined drywall cost per sheet and installed in Mesa, AZ?

A 4 by 8 sheet of lead lined drywall costs a few hundred dollars from a shielding supplier, and installed in a Mesa x-ray room it runs $9.50 to $24 per square foot, which is $300 to $770 per sheet once the battens, box backing, lead handling and documentation are in. The lead thickness on your physicist’s report sets which end of each range you land on.

Most pages that answer this question quote a per sheet number with no thickness attached and no idea what happens after the board leaves the truck. Here is the sheet price by lead thickness, the line items that turn it into an installed price, what a finished room totals in the East Valley, and how to read a supplier quote and a contractor quote side by side. The installed figures are the ones we publish on our cost guide and quote from every week.

How much is a sheet of lead lined drywall?

Roughly $150 to $600 a sheet, and thickness is almost the whole story. Lead lined gypsum board is a standard 5/8 inch sheet of drywall laminated to a sheet of lead, and lead is sold by weight. A 1/16 inch lead sheet weighs about 3.7 pounds per square foot, so the lead on one 4 by 8 board is close to 120 pounds before the gypsum is counted. Step up to 1/8 inch and the board carries about 240 pounds of lead, which is why the price does not creep up with thickness, it jumps. These are typical supplier list prices in the Phoenix market, and they move with the lead commodity price.

Two things the sheet price never includes. Freight on a pallet that weighs two tons, and the lead batten strips and sheet lead you need to make the board into a barrier instead of a wall with lead in it. A supplier quote that is only sheets is about half of what the room will cost in material.

Why is the installed price about double the sheet price?

Because the sheet is the easy part. Hanging lead lined drywall so that a physicist’s survey meter reads clean at every joint and every outlet is what the rest of the money buys. Here is where it goes.

1. Lead batten strips behind every joint. Where two sheets meet, a strip of lead at least as thick as the board’s lining goes behind the seam. Miss one and the survey finds it.
2. Sheet lead around every penetration. Each outlet, switch, data drop and plumbing stub through a shielded wall gets a lead backed box or a wrapped lead shield. Ten boxes on a wall is a real afternoon.
3. The screw schedule. Lead board hangs vertically with screws at 8 inches on center, and every screw head gets a lead disc or tab. On 24 inch stud bays, common in new East Valley shells, that means adding blocking first.
4. Lead handling. Cutting and hanging lead sheet on a crew falls under the OSHA lead standard, so containment, gloves, cleanup and no other trades in the room are built into the labor hours.
5. Doors, frames and glass. A lead lined door with a wrapped frame installs at $2,500 to $6,000 and a lead glass window at $1,200 to $3,500. On a small room the door can cost as much as every wall around it.
6. Certs and photos. Material certifications for the lead and a photo of every assembly before it is closed up. The physicist and, where applicable, the ADHS Bureau of Radiation Control want to see them, and a room without them can be opened back up at your expense.

Add it up and the installed range of $9.50 to $24 per square foot is where it lands: the low end is 1/32 inch board into open studs with one door and no window, the high end is 1/8 inch into an occupied clinic at night with penetrations to remediate.

What does a whole x-ray room cost in Mesa once the door goes in?

A dental operatory runs $2,000 to $6,500 for the walls, a single radiographic room $6,000 to $15,000 with the door, a veterinary room $4,500 to $12,000, and a CT suite $15,000 to $30,000 and up once ceiling or floor shielding enters the picture. Those are the installed totals from our cost guide, and the biggest swing inside each one is not wall area. It is the door and window count, the number of penetrations the plan puts through shielded walls, and whether the room is open studs or a finished, occupied suite. Shielding into open framing is the base price. Working inside an operating clinic adds containment, night work and refinishing, typically 30 to 50 percent on the affected walls.

Should I buy the lead lined drywall myself and have my drywaller hang it?

You can, and for most practices it is the expensive way to save money. The sheet price is about the same whoever orders it, so the saving is the labor difference between a general drywaller and a shielding installer, and that difference is small on a two wall operatory. What you give up is the person who has read the shielding report, knows what NCRP Report 147 means by a secondary barrier, backs every box, and hands you the photo file. The NCRP 147 design values your physicist worked from assume the barrier is continuous, and the verification survey after installation is where a general drywaller’s first lead job gets found out. A failed survey means opening finished walls. Owner supplied board makes sense for a GC who already runs a shielding sub, or for a practice with a physicist willing to inspect before close up. It does not make sense for a dentist finishing a shell suite on a deadline.

How do I compare a supplier quote with a contractor quote?

1. Put both on a per square foot basis. A 4 by 8 sheet is 32 square feet. A $300 sheet is $9.40 a foot in material alone, before battens, backing or labor.
2. Match the lead thickness to the report. A cheaper supplier quote is often a thinner sheet. The physicist’s report names the thickness per barrier, and nothing below it counts.
3. Find the door and the glass. They are usually missing from a material quote and usually the largest single items in a contractor quote.
4. Ask what documentation comes with it. Certs, photos, and who meets the physicist for the survey. The full list of what to ask is in our guide to the questions to ask a lead lined drywall contractor.

Searching lead lined drywall cost from a Gilbert or Chandler buildout?

New shell space sits at the low end of every range above, because the studs are open and nothing has to be demolished or refinished. Our Gilbert page breaks down lead lined drywall cost in Gilbert for the Melrose Professional Park and Celebration Medical Center tenant improvements, including the 24 inch stud detail that catches new shells. Every room is different, so send the shielding report or the room drawings and you get a per square foot price and a room total in writing, or call (623) 232-0273 and we will run the numbers on the phone.