More Caulking & Sealing Tips | Secrets Of The Pro's

all right today I'm going to give you some tips and tricks how to apply cocking and get the perfect bead so we've got some new vinyl windows that were installed on this house and we've got to um these windows and then repaint over the cocking I'm going to give you some tips and tricks how to make this look absolutely amazing one thing um you start with you want to start with a good caulking you got to get something that's going to adhere to new vinyl windows and then adhere to your painted surface or whatever you know your windows are buted up against I'm going to be using tower sealant AU One Construction sealant absolutely amazing product you know for doing something like this it'll span the gap of actually 2 in so it'll span large gaps it's going to stick to a multiple different types of surfaces and it tools absolutely amazing so I'm going to be using what I call a sponge cocking method I use a um a painter sponge just like this a cocking sponge and this is what it looks like just like this it's about a 6 in sponge it's an open cell sponge nice and smooth it's great for keeping your hands wet and for tooling and getting a perfect cocking bead I'm going to be cocking with my cocking gun right here this is an ETS 2000 cocking gun it's cocking gun I like and um got my tower sealant and installed so this is a sponge caulking method and it's keeping your sponge wet all the time and keeping your hands wet all the time so you can tul your cocking and what I mean by tooling it that's what you're I'm using my fingers there's a lot of tools out there um that you can use to um you know apply a cofee bead without using your hands but your hands have nerves at them you can feel you can feel what you're doing when you're um laying out the cocking bead with some of these things called cocking fingers and these other type of things you can't feel through what you're actually uh tooling the caulking um bead with so your hands are always the best option caulking sponge this thing needs to be nice and wet I do like inside um I like using lukewarm water and it just keeps my hands warm and um it just works for cleaning the sponge a little bit faster this sponge should be you know nice and wet cuz it's you want your hands to be wet at all times and clean at all times you don't want to get any cocking built up on your hands see I leave a little bit of water in the sponge you can see there's a little bit left cuz I want the sponge to be you know nice and wet and not dry so I'm going to ring this thing out got my sponge I got my um my 2 Gall bucket sitting on a um drop cloth so I don't get anything wet on the floor now I'm going to begin applying my cocking I'm going to cut cut my cocking tube I typically cut it at a 45° angle um I don't want it flat I like it cut at a 45° angle you don't want it cut too big because you don't want to be applying too much cocking and you don't want it cut too small cuz then it's not going to apply enough and fill your Gap so you just got to determine you know I got a really small small Gap around this window that's what I've cut off right here and now I'm going to begin applying my cocking when I apply my cocking I'm going to lay my 45° angle out onto the surface I wanted the 45° angle facing into my Gap or crack and then I'm going to begin squeezing now kind of the art and some of the trick about doing this is not applying too much cocking because then you got a lot to wipe off if you don't apply enough it's not going to fill the whole Gap and then it's more likely to crack in the end but one of the great things about Tower sealant is is it's less likely to crack or separate than any caulking you'll use out there Tower au1 sealant this is a white coughing they got there it comes in a lot of different colors but you we got white vinyl windows we've got some white trim but we're going to be repainting this trim after we're done applying it but I typically I'm going to start off in a corner I'm going to apply a certain amount of caulking you don't want to apply too much cuz if it starts to dry and coagulate it's really hard to tool um down here it's nice and cool in this basement so I can apply you um I can apply the cck on this whole window and begin tooling it if I was the outside I'd probably only be about half of the window and I'd begin tooling it but I'm just going to apply a nice bead right here I'm just going to go slow and steady I'm going to watch the cocking coming out of my tube into the crack I'm going watch that it fills the crack I'm going to go nice and slow keep that your um your angle 45° angle flat onto your crack at all times they come back up opposite direction you don't want to go too fast what people have a tendency to do is go too fast when you go too fast you're not filling up the entire crack so I'm going to continue along nice and steady not too much just like that so I stopped right there now I want to wet my hands my hand already started to dry out I'm going to let my hand get it nice and wet fingers nice and wet and clean I'm going to lightly press down on if I press too much it's going to smear caulking onto the vinyl window and onto the trim way too far so I'm going to be just and this is where your finger is so much better than any type of tool you use cuz the tool cannot feel how much pressure you're putting it can't feel the cocking at all or the ceiling so just nice light touch on it and then I'm con I get into my Corners I'm going to want I call tul it I'm going to continue wetting my finger wiping the excess off until I get that corner absolutely perfect just like that that's what it looks like I'm going to do a little bit more I'll continue on all right so I'm going to now continue from the other side I'll give you another look at this we got a kind of a large gap in the corner right here and then um a really small gap down here so I'm going to start off putting more cocking I want that whole thing to be fill up and then then I'll do a little bit less as I go so I'm going to be watching my 45° angles laid flat into that crack now I'm just cruising right along I'm being very patient laying my cocking bead out getting a nice bead I'm just making watching my angle of my cocking tube making sure that angle is flat go back up I do have some cracks right here when they're installing the window it caused this to crack down here so I'm going to fill that in just a nice small bead now I'm coming down here I've got a lot bigger crack so I'm going to be cruising right along putting a little bit more in to fill that up so show you I'm going to wipe tool this and I'll show you what it looks like on that big gap right there so I begin here just a very light touch I don't want to press too hard I'm just trying to smooth out that bead I'm trying to get it to make a nice um um contact with the window and a nice contact with the trim see I've got a nice speed there's barely anybody anything on my finger as I'm smoothing it out I'm constantly wetting my finger you don't want your hands to get dry at all coming down to these Corners it it'ss a little more off tulle it these Corners I'm going to just continue your fingers got to be really really wet to make that nice and table just like that now I've got I'm going to just continue working this till I get it just the way I want it so this is what it's going to look like here I'm going to get now I can just take my cocking tube I want to make sure my angle is going to be you know wherever my um 45° angle is Will to lay flat on that Gap so if I got to turn my cocking tube to whatever Direction I can get that to be flat and I'm going to turn it that direction I'm going to begin laying out my bead and what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn around go the opposite direction so you can actually see it on this direction too from the camera so I'm laying it out watching it as it fills this crack watching that I'm not putting too much I'm watching that I'm making sure it's filling that whole Gap not going too fast I can stop continue where I was right there so that's what my bead looks like now I'm going to get back I'm going to make sure my finger my tooling finger is really wet and begin where I left off it's going if you press too hard you're not going to have a super nice bead and it's going to pull too much out if you don't press enough it's not going to get a good bond to both edges is once again this cocking method sponge cocking you just have to be patient just takes time if you want it to look really really good so I do have a situation here where I need to get a little extra on here to fill up kind of some bumps right there so I just added a little bit more wet my my finger I'm going to try to get that to smooth out a bump that was there now I just smooth that out feather it out that build it in just a little bit more we'll get back up here to my corner before it dries it starts to dry too much it's going to start to coagulate and your your cocking won't be toolable so I'm going to take clean my sponge I'm getting a little bit of cocking on here cuz I don't want anything anything on my hands anything on my hands is going to make it so I don't get a smooth bead what I like to say is like you what the new guys if they start getting caulking all over the hands it's going to get on the ends of your fingers and stuff and what we call it as caulking boogers and it's going to cause your finger pad to not be smooth and not give you a good coughing be another tip is this is always got to be clean your 45° angle is always got to be clean every now and then if you're caulking a lot you'll start to get a little tag in on the end of your um caulking tube if you're caulking on a rough surface you get that little tag in that'll kind of like mess up your bead too so you can just trim that little tag in right off and then begin cocking again so here we go start to fill in this corner I always want a little bit more my Corners so I can make my Corners nice and round I'm going to start laying it out don't go too fast nice steady speed I'm going to come back tool it let again I can feel the cocking I can feel the pressure I'm putting on it so right here I didn't put enough pressure so I can go back so all those I rewet my hand tool right back over it going begin working this corner now got to get my finger just in the right finger super wet is going to make it look a lot better let try to smooth this corner out right here every time you touch your cocking you want to wipe it off your finger put some up in this corner fill this corner in again working down this direction One the things is you have to be able to see your cocking tube the angle you have to be able to see the cocking coming out of your gun in order to get the correct amount of cocking wipe if you make a mistake just take wipe the cocking as much out as you can with a really wet finger and then recck it and do it all over again you have especially indoors you do have some working time Outdoors it's going to dry and coagulate a lot faster just like that window his sponge coughed looks really nice [Music] he [Music] he he [Music] oh [Music] oh we got some pretty big cracks right here not big enough to put backer rod in but one of the reasons why I do like using tower Tech too is it bonds better than any caulking never ever used spans the Gap bigger cracks of any caulking I've ever used and it tools better than any caulking I've used I really like using tower te too you know it's a lifetime warranty Caulking and I use it on all my exterior repaint had a lot of Success With It least amount of Pops of any caulking I've ever had also used also when you start to get to areas like this that the caulking has been pushed out it's best to cut it out and to Reco it you don't want that bulge sitting there so we got big chunk of cocking right here we can cut that out starting to get borderline where you know you'd want some backer rod going in there to fill that that's a big enough Gap that we should stuff back a rod in there another Spa where expansion and contraction has really pushed out a big beat of cocking that's better to cut it out um this one is probably small enough that it doesn't need back a rod um and this is where it's better to use a high quality caulking that bonds really well but if you don't fill that whole crack it will recck again especially if you use a really cheap culing here's a piece of backer rod right here now you know if you did fill this up with Tower Tech and it would actually you'll bond to both sides it would expand really well but if it contracts it's going to push out a big bulge of cocking which is what it looked like before so it's just best to take stuff in some back of rod in there this will give your caulking some backing I just take my knife cut it off of the end stuff that in there now it's not going to take nearly as much caulking either to fill and your crack is going to have a lot more success you know when it comes to expansion and contraction the and especially our conditions here in Idaho I do like your wearing gloves people ask me you get used to wearing them um caulking you start to learn it's not easy to learn how to caul with it with them on but once you learn it's nice cuz you don't get cocking all over your hands keep my hands clean you know throughout the day always check above doors and windows for cracks a lot of times you got cracks can't see down below I like to COA the tops of the windows too you get water coming down getting behind the windows a lot of times these windows aren't flashed correctly this window is getting replaced because they're doing a remodel so they're pulling this window out don't need to that one all these windows all these vents everything looks good over here um sides of doors looks good this one spot looks like we need to this one thing that gets missed a lot is bottoms of door jams the first several inches right here um you see when I'm training guys this gets missed a lot that little section down there any nail heads that have brok broen the surface of the siding how he's cck them to this house usually that's just about every one of them here's a section of cocking that's really lose people ask me do I you'll cut out all the cocking usually you don't cut out all the cocking unless it needs to be cut out this is a section where it's pretty bad shape so I cut it out just pull it out with my two-edge knife um this is corner board that needs to be riled I always get rid of the extra caulking on my hand like I had any just get rid of it on the siding somewhere you will never see that [Music] ever so a few pointers like when I'm caulking you start to get excess builtup on your glove we also all the nail heads on the house um you can't see them as well here cuz the house is white but I every single nail head if I got excess on my gun pulled off the gun um hit the nail heads and another thing is when you're wiping you're caulking if the grain's going this way don't wipe it um vertical if it's grain's horizontal wipe it horizontal and it'll look just like the grain it's the same on your face yeah if you wipe it um horizontal the grain's horizontal it'll match and it'll disappear once you paint the house you'll never see it cocking the vinyl see where the vinyl meets the trim there's a crack there [Music] also the nail heads if you don't seal the nail heads they eventually what we do we call call it a volcano they swell up around the nail head and and then you'll see the nail head really bad and the swelling you know is the this composite siding swelling up cuz it's basically just glorified cardboard so we got staples Christmas lights makes it really hard to roll the bottom of the fascia if if you don't remove the Christmas like hooks so we require the customer to if they're like cup hooks we require them to be removed cuz you can't paint it with them on there underneath the window what did Chris tell me last time I I went to go C the window what was the reason should I culk it don't do it Luke H exposed nail head do I caulk this or do I not what Chris [Music] do I think I'm going to C it yes Luke you should caul it Thro what the H to call or not to call what did Christopher Barry do CK no C CK no CK CK no c so we're out here today and we're doing a complete resale on a travel trailer right here and I'm going to talk a little bit about how we're going about doing this reseal so the reeal we Dove got some uh potty that's been uh pressing out over time it exposed it's getting dirty looking ugly we've also had the previous owner of this trailer um actually put silicone around a lot of the the fixtures around a lot of the windows cuz uh there was a leaking problem and it wasn't the right way to seal it and so I'm having to do some removal of that silicone so I'm going to be talking about you know some of the tools and products we're going to be doing we're doing a sponge cocking of tower sealants and um the tower sealants I'm using is um a product called au1 We're matching the trailer color we've got a a bronze color of au1 we're going to be using right here we've got um a white color and then a white and then we're using also another color that matches really well to this is a stone color so it's au1 um commercial construction sealant it here is really well it could span large gaps up to 2 in but it's a great product for doing a reseal on this um and it's not a silicone you don't want to use silicone the silicone exposed to um light Sun dirt it gets really dirty looks really ugly over time doesn't do a really good job sealing I'm sponge cocking using a sponge right here a cocking sponge right here and just a bucket of water so this is really important that you have a good uh sponge for the sponge caulking of this so you can get a nice clean bead when caulking because of the silicone and to actually clean everything prior to doing a sealing I really like this product right here it's called remove um just re uh move without an e on it remove silicone and E adhesives it's a great product for cleaning um and getting your uh surface prepped and ready to seal you can see we've had to remove lights there's a silicone behind there remove that walk you around we show you what some of the windows look like and doing the caulking I'm using a um dripless caulking gun right here this is the caulking gun I like and um and just doing the caulking uh to start off the sponge caulking method it's very important that your tip is cut correctly not too large cuz you don't want to put out too much of the sealant um and you want to be be able to put enough out that you're filling these big gaps and cracks I cut it at a 45° angle and just just leave a small hole and then begin the cocking process so this right here I've actually cut out the sealant on this side I've already sealed this side but I'm going to show you what it looks like to sponge coock with this au1 seal in now I'm going to just take clean water I'm going to have my sponge extremely wet want to clean my tip now putting on the right amount of um sealant is really important I'm going to just start off I'm going to start pressing my trigger watch as it's filling the Gap not too much if you do too little you're not going to actually seal the Gap so I'm pressing just cruising right along my Gap and taking a time this is one of those things it definitely takes time and it takes patience you don't want to be in a hurry I want to make sure I fill my gaps if you don't fill your gaps it's going to crack over time once I've gone amount of distance that I'm comfortable with if it's really hot outside surface is really hot it's going to dry coagulate really fast now this is the process you got to have just a light finger a light touch I'm going be pushing my cocking in this is going to be pushing it down in the crack I'm keeping my finger wet constantly all the time smoothing this bead out making it look…