Howdy folks kirk and dan here with kirk Giordano plastering.
Today i'm going to show you guys how to avoid something like this this is a parapet
it's a cap many houses have these caps and these caps usually when they're first built
will last easily 50 to 60 years after that what happens the sun bakes it and if you get a crack
on it because the wood expands when it bakes it water goes in there rain water rain water sets and
eventually it will deteriorate the membrane whatever membrane you got if it's two layers
of paper whatever membrane it will deteriorate in time but yet there's a simple way to keep on
maintenance with this and have it last hundreds of years but what they've done
here in the past is i'm looking at it i'm thinking well you can do that you can spray
styrofoam in here and once it mushrooms you cut it off and then put it back together
what they did also was they put a fiberglass mesh tape fiberglass mesh tape guys is for
a brown coat when you're getting ready to do your color coat you put it over your brown
coat and those cracks are not supposed to reappear when you have a crack this big that's structural
fiberglass mesh tape will do nothing except re-bust what we're going to
do is i have a caulking which is sick of flags this stuff here is incredibly strong
we're going to tear this all apart and i already started tearing it apart and what they did is they
they stuck that styrofoam in there and again it expands and then cut it off
then they put on an acrylic finish an acrylic finish is um we're prepared to do this too if
it's brittle like this it's not really a quality acrylic skin a quality acrylic finish should flex
more anyway so we're going to break this out and we're going to put it back together and
i'll show you how we do that to match this finish here but i'll show you how to avoid
that that's much more important than me showing you how to put this back together up here yeah
now dan's on this cell phone where the second time i'm using this cell phone listen hollow solid
so we got to remove this and we're going to remove all this loose stuff it's going to create a lot
of dust we don't want the dust on the camera so I don't want to inhale so I'm going to wet this
but I'll show you how to avoid that guys there's a lot of types of coffee you got more flex which
is basically rubber and you got sicker flex which is even stronger than this now if you have cracks
guys this you see this crack right here what we did is we took a wire brush and we cleaned it out
because nothing adheres to a dusty surface. nothing, dust dirt moss nothing adheres
to it not even the strongest caulking. so you get your caulking in that hole and
push your hand down. I get to use the magic glove guys put your hand up
just go over it you don't even have to look down the other way but just get it in there deep put
it in there now you paint that every five years. it depends on the house every two years every 10
years when it re-cracks put some caulking in it. It doesn't really matter if the brand
get exterior caulking that says it will last at least 60 years or get Mor-flex this is actually
excessive even stretches like rubber and it really does and the Sika-flex is even stronger than this
but that is not water-soluble. meaning once you get it on you.
it's on you forever it's like luggage man, it never goes away anyway.
I'm going to tear this apart and show you how we put it back together but this is all-important
you'll never have to redo this if you just keep all your cracks caught whether they're
on parapets window sills walls keep them caught guys we'll have to go through this all right guys.
I'll show you the quick fix on this what I did is I took a couple tubes of Sik-a-flex polyurethane
and I put it in here I'm strong a sick flex put three drops on two bricks and they're
porous bricks it's very difficult to seal them unless using a poly bomb they won't come apart
and I can go into why they won't come apart. but anyway this flexes now, if I were to just put
cement in this right here the first minute it starts to flex and this is going to flex.
it's a hundred-year-old house on a big mountain and it flexes.
so what we did is we filled that up with the polyurethane Sika-flex
caulking now that'll flex when it's hard. I mean nothing's gonna hold a hundred-ton
building together but it'll do much better than the fiber mesh tape so now all I'm going to do
is apply the same acrylic finish that they had there are like three really really good acrylic
products I like to dry-vit, stuc-o-flex, BMI, Carson's anyway now this I'm just gonna fill it up
how many different ways guys can I do this?
I can think of about 20 different ways there are many ways to skin a cat guys.
Now when this dries, of course, it's going to be like, a little, I can see a tint of green in here.
They're going to paint the entire top, if they want this to last a
thousand years put a metal cap on it and some of you might say why not tear the whole wall off?
When I was first here, I suggested that, she almost had me arrested!
So all we're doing is the quick fix guys and how long will this last I
assume it will last about another 20 years. I won't even be here anyway my name is kirk dan
on the camera we thank you guys for watching and I'm curious how that's going to come out with this
cell phone he's using we thank you again for watching we'll see you on the next one
all right folks as always thank you for watching another Giordano stucco video if you like what we
do please like and subscribe so we can keep making them and as always we'll see you on the next one.