hi folks Kirk and Jay here with another tip of the day in regards to caulking, we're gonna do is we're
gonna do is caulk this, crack right here, looks real bad but actually it's somewhat typical you figure
house is about 80 years old it doesn't have a weep screed at the bottom, and most houses don't
have a weep screed they're not they didn't come in a code until 1975, heck we didn't even use them
until 1980 anyway, in order to fix the crack you shouldn't kind of have an idea what causes a crack.
this is a two-story house, we're in the Oakland Hills and it's one one-story in the front and it
goes to two in the back now what causes cracking like this is it's just natural guys what we have
is it's seasonal say the rains come and guess what? when the rains lift this house and move it
stucco does not flex you know, It'll hairline crack and usually stucco will start the hairline cracks a
1/64 like a hair on your head and then in a got a 30 seconds of 16 and 8th and so on over five
years now this one it took he says 10 years it's been starting and I noticed he put some kind of
caulking in here so what we're doing guys this first thing is I'm gauging it out now this this
parts a bit of a drag it's boring time-consuming but you just gouge it you take it and you open
this crack up and what I want to do is I've been here generally I have a three in one tool that
the painters type of and I just put it in here and pull it and it works real well but I can't
find that tool so I just make do with what I have and what I'm doing is I'm removing an old
caulking that he put in he said ten years ago I don't know what he used but I've got a great
product that I've been using for Oh more than 20 this stuff here it's a polyurethane caulking
now this what when I get this all cleaned out I'm not going to show you that on video I'm gonna go
ahead and scrape this and clean it out and when I get it done I'm going to apply this your thing in
there and I'm gonna use a trial at first and get it right in the crack I want it to go deep deep
in that crack as far back as it can go and can you grind this you could but that just makes a lot of
dust and then you got to hose it all down and you can't put in most caulking on if you have a wet
wall, I'm gonna gouge it then wire brush it then I'm gonna install this when I get to that stage
where it's all clean I'll show you how I do it okay guys now we got a pretty good crack going
on there what also causes cracks vibrations this door here of course it's new but it used to have
the wood door where you open it and shut it in that no no no no no shakes the house it cracks
it you ever noticed you got an older house with the lead in the windows got the lead weights and
you lift it and you open and shut it vibration, those houses always crack big time underneath
and above all of those windows vibration we okay I'm gonna put this particular caulk in here I'm
kind of partial to it I've been using it for and as long as I can remember over 20 years and what
I'm gonna do first is I'm gonna squeeze it in there the excess I want to take a putty knife
and just get it in there then I'm actually going to take in the old days we'd put some sand over
that just from our truck throw some sand and float it in but I have actually what I'm gonna
do is mix some of this up with sand afterwards after I get it squeezed in here I'll tell you
about vibration guys we did Sears Point Raceway oh like 25 years ago I stuck on the fellas house who
owns that place and he called me said Kirk we've just built a watch tower you and you guys want to
stuck away that was when I was big time guys I had a lot of guys like 14 guys so we did it our
reward was we got to go around the racetrack and got the [ __ ] scared out of us I thought that
car is gonna flip but anyway he had an area where they called me back it's a Kirk I got a hairline
crack here it's big and I said well let me take a look at it so I drove all the back down there
and I looked at I said well it's the vibration crack he says well what do you mean and it had
a wheelchair lift right there now that wheelchair lifts I said open that gate so he opened the gate
and when he shut it shut the gate what happened was that that gate just it was a solid steel gate
it just when it shut you can hear it you'd go in it and that's what cracked the crap out of
that one wall so vibration will cause cracking guys now what we want to do is that's in there
I could use my finger but this stuff is nasty it gets everywhere good caulking but it has its side
effects meaning you don't want to get it all over you what I'm gonna do is just that right there now
this is the best caulking that I'm aware of some of you folks might say man Kirk I got some better
stuff than that well if you do that's groovy but this stuff actually works for me I'll take
a couple bricks and it doesn't come apart a few drops I've rebuilt my buddies my neighbors big
chunk of like 20 bricks fell off I put some of this on 20 years ago it's still holding and kids
are climbing on it anyway I don't recommend you guys do that but I'm trying to prove a point and
will this caulking solve this problem no but it's a good 10-year fix it'll start again like a hair
go to 30-second sixteenth and a and it'll restart the process again but this is a cheap fix rather
than tear the whole wall off and that's what he originally called method dude you don't need to
do that I'll do it if you want but you don't need to do it I'm gonna give this a minute and
then I'll throw some sand on it I'll show you that too okay guys I mixed a little bit of sand
in this stuff and this stuff is really nasty they got latex is a acrylics that are easy and washable
but they don't they're not as effective trust me I've tried them all but what I'm gonna do here now
is since I mixed a little bit of sand here and it kind of made the color the color of sand I'm
gonna hit it real fast just to give it some grain and float it and I'll be done with it now I've
got to move fast guys because this stuff is not water clean up you got to choose you want water
cleanup where it's easy the caulk is not gonna last as long alright guys so now I'm going to
take a little bit of this nasty stuff here with the sand okay go tight tight alright now what
I'm gonna do here lastly is try to feather this in real fast because this stuff uh in another minute
it won't be floatable or another ten seconds it's a real drag to float this stuff and that's about
as long-lasting a finish as you can do guys and again the reason I put some sand in it is because
this has sand in it and the reason I use that Sikaflex is because it is the best caulking I
know any of you guys got some comparables send them to me I know there's the rain buster and
there's quite a few other ones but this stuff really works well there's a lot of caulking I
can use it save me a lot of time but I choose this one anyway guys my name is Kirk I'm with
Kirk Giordano plastering and as usual we thank you for watching we'll see you guys on the next one.