Good morning folks. Kirk and Jason are here, with Kirk Giordano plastering,
Today, we want to address possibly the number one concern with everybody who owns a stucco house.
I'm going to give you the worst-case scenario. When we get to the other side, you'll see
something that makes this look like a hairline crack.
What is a hairline crack? It's like the hair on
your head. That's a hairline crack. This is a structural crack. Why did it occur?
well, we got a hundred years home, and these are called expansion joints,
What you do is when you have a wall-like, this and then you have a house, you actually build the wall
close to the house, they should have left one inch leaves a gap.
Or if you're going to connect them, put an expansion joint in there. I got several videos
that we've done in the past, some about eight-nine years ago, that show how we do this;
I'll put those in the description in case you guys are building a house and you want your wall
connected to the house without a see-through thing use expansions. Otherwise, this will happen.
But this can happen anyway, guys. So it's kind of normal it's a 100-year-old house,
it's got parapets and the foundations are kind of different the house is built on one,
that's built on another, so we have constriction going on we have expanding when it rains,
it expands lifts everything when drier conditions occur and they will.
Everything settles, so this is just a settling crack. I'll show you caulking when we get to the
other side. I'll show you several different ways to do it because it's much worse.
Anyhow, I'm going to use more flex caulking for this, and I'll show you how to do it,
guys, because. All caulkings are designed to fill the holes, but they don't flex
as much as that ceiling-expanding foam. So this is the limit this is the absolute limit
of depth versus width that caulking can handle and in fact, I may get some shrinkage. So what
happens if you caulk something and it shrinks? You come back and caulk it again, big deal,
okay so with this now, the prep work I've done already was, I've cleaned everything
with the trowel, and I used a wire brush then, and with the wire brush, I was trying to get
all of the dirt, dust, grime, and crap out of those cracks because it's been cracked
like this probably for oh 10 years now. When we come to an area like this where the
actual paint has come off, we just add some more right there. I'll show you why we do that too,
I'll get back to filling this big old hole, and it's about an inch deep. If anybody understands
caulking as painters do, they'll know that if you go too thick, it will shrink up it'll be sucked
right in. Then uh, you'll have to come back and put another layer on it, by the way, while
we're at it. It's always better to apply to caulk early in the morning. If you get it early morning,
that's when the crack is at its widest, as when the sun hits it, the wall expands. It's not as
large a crack, so you might have to do it twice. I learned that the hard way many years
ago. So what I'm going to do, guys just use this whole tube right here to prove a point of how
important it is to get it. We want it all the way to the back where the paper is. So I can see the
paper, so that just means if I can see the paper, that just means this is cosmetics guys, it looks
horrible, but how bad is it if I could see the paper well the paper is still intact, which means
the wall is not really compromised. If you cannot see the paper, in fact, you
see wood, what does that mean that the rainwater coming down will go in there saturate that wood?
What happens when wood gets wet? It expands, so now here's what I'm doing this part here,
guys it's just like plastering squeeze it in I could use my finger, and I did use my finger here,
but if you really want to get it right and this will avoid the dreaded comeback, meaning, how many
times have I done this and had to come back? A couple times because I didn't realize that
the holes were like two inches deep, so what I'm trying to do does not come back, so I'm squeezing
that caulking in there not with my finger but with the trowel because I get more pressure this way
and yeah I'm using caulking. Why not use cement, guys? Well, cement. Obviously,
this house is lifting and dropping, so when it rains, it lifts, and then drier conditions occur.
They will it settles so if I use cement, when it lifts and then drops, which it will again,
the cement will just pop right off, in how long I'd say about oh
my experience has been about a year or two, but with this flexible caulking you got much
more longevity. It's a lot better because now,
when this moves, it will contrast and constrict and do all that stuff that the house is doing, so
you don't have to worry about putting cement in it, which only takes a minute.
Cement is actually twice as fast as this, but again it doesn't flex, guys.
If it doesn't flex and it's rigid, don't do it, as it may seem easier,
and guys that some stores may say, hey, just put a little cement in there, and you're good.
Not true. See right here, I can see that joint put a little bit more right in there
and feather that joint in. I don't have my water bucket, but I can still do that.
Okay, what we want to do is just feather the joint in so you don't see the caulking.
It's like you can see a lot of things going on here, guys, but
just because some guys made a few boo-boos, we don't want to do that any way we're going to
go to the other side now, I'm going to show you some severe stuff and how many ways to handle it
there's just endless countless ways to handle it now what we have here is we had severe cracking
well structural problems because this is a 15-ton chimney the house and the
foundation were all done at once, but with 15 tons over the first 50 years no problems.
But as the decades go by, what happens is very tops of all stucco houses can get cracks because
a window and door vibration open windows and you shut them water goes in there in cold areas where
we get snow the rainwater will go in there and freeze and when it freezes it expands.
So it pops the stucco off that's an entrance for the rainwater to come in and do its thing.
It takes 10 20 years, but this kind of stuff will happen. We don't get freezing temperatures here,
but the same thing happens, and by the way, guys with regular maintenance,
if you paint every 10 or 12 years with good quality paint, you won't have this happen,
I know because uh I take my own house and I do the maintenance anyway what Jason did was,
Jason came up, and you could stick your hand in the chimney there so you can't uh you say
how you gonna waterproof that with caulking you can't because it's too thick can you put the bead
a lot of people use this backer rod but no. under the circumstances here, you can't there's nothing
there can you put membranes can you put flashing? No, you can't because you've had to remove the
chimney to put something like that, so what Jason did has he filled it up with this expanding foam,
and yes, it's waterproof. What he did also is he took this
Sika-flex caulking nasty stuff here, guys. But that's the strongest caulking
known to me three drops on two bricks, and they're porous. You can't pull them apart
a week later. So that's some strong caulking. So what he did was he put that caulking in there
yesterday because we wanted it to set and today what we're going to do here. After all, that's too
thick this Mor-Flex caulking, and granted guys, how many caulkings are there? Let's try about 50.
So you want something that's paintable, something that flexes,
and there's Mor-flexx caulking, and no, I'm not a Mor-flexx caulking rep.
It just uh it's good stuff. It flex's I haven't had any problems with it
except if you go way too thick. So the fact that you can still see the paper here
and the fact that this chimney is settling because of all the weight it's typical guys.
I'm going to go ahead and do the exact same thing I did on the other side
because this will shrink a little bit, but I don't want it to shrink, where we got to come
back tomorrow or the next day to add more. I'll tell you a little story too while
I'm doing this about 35 years ago I worked for a Danny Smith plastering,
Danny Smith Plastering was the biggest plastering company is probably in the USA, he had about,
oh 15 crews all gun crews that means 15 guys for every crew and about 35 years ago
Danny Smith Plastering, did the theater in Blackhawk I don't know the name of that theater
AMC or something like that and, I was part of that crew I was about 20 um many years ago.
so I was part of that crew, and we stuccoed that whole big monster building in a day because we
used a plaster pump, and there was, of course, 15 of us working for Danny Smith Plastering
at that time now about thirty years later, I got a call from a guy, a
licensed general contractor. He said, hey Kirk, I got a theater here in Blackhawk,
I think there's only one, and he said, we got the weirdest thing going on, and I asked, what's that?
He said, well, if you look at the theater, it looks fine. However, at the very bottom
where the ground is, we have what looks like icicles, those are his words sticking out,
and I was thinking, hmm. I know what that was right off the top what it is.
But it explains what's happening here so what they had happened over there at the theater and this is
it took 30-35 years for that to happen was that as the seasons went by you have to keep in mind
a tractor flattened that land in out to build the theater and the land settled, it rained. It
expanded, settled, and did all kinds of stuff. So what they ended up having and we ended up fixing
it like six years ago they had the stucco walls here they went down then they had
protrusions like this two feet off the ground, and they said, well how the heck did that happen?
But I knew how it happened because we did the stucco work when I was an apprentice working
for Danny Smith Plastering oh, they've gunned it on or shot it on, and we stuccoed it all up, and
so that stucco fell on the ground, and as the decades passed 30 years now, the ground settled.
It rained, and when the drier conditions occurred, it settled and settled,
but it left the stucco, and it was out this far in some places
all the way around the building, and this is like 200 feet this way 200 feet that way,
so all we did was jackhammer that stuff off, and redo it, so that's settling guys.
That story's just to explain or show you what's happening here.
Is it unique? No, it's just settling. So I'm looking for my
trowel and float, and we're going to go through the same process here. I'm going to skip the
same process because, um, I showed it to you on the other side. It's the exact same thing. So
what I'm going gonna do is uh go up top. I'll spare you the five minutes of me doing this,
and Jason will mix me up some cement now. As a rule, guys, I tell people we don't want to cement
cracks because it doesn't shift. However, what we got up there is that expanding foam,
so the expanding foam does move, so what we're going to do is, we put this weld
create bonding agent on it and that's we're gonna mix some plaster right now a quick set of set in
five minutes. We're just going to plaster that because it is too large for caulking.
No caulking will work there. I'm just giving you guys some ideas as a worst-case scenario.
And why, how are you gonna fix something if you don't know why
it's that way in the first place? So anyhow, next time you see me, I'll be plastering that top.
All right, guys, the last tip why not use caulking like this? It's a good product uh it has no sand,
and I've had people email me, and they say, Kirk, well I used the tile sand uh the tile grout,
but that has got super fine sand silica this you gotta have at least it's thicker sand for it guys.
So and like this stuff, here again, I'm no rep for Mor-flex,
but it comes in two colors it comes in tan, and it comes in gray. We were using tan,
but you couldn't see what we were doing. It blended in too well, so we switched to the gray,
so at least you guys could see what the heck we're doing and if you're going to do these guys.
So you put say caulking like that, you can see what they did they went like this and left it now
had they just had a sponge float, you get your kitchen sink float or sponge and just hit it,
and at least it'll bring the sand where it'll match and you don't see the trowel marks like this
they had they had a lot of stuff going on here. But it's a hundred-year-old house.
It's locked into the foundation. It's locked into the concrete,
so something's gonna give guys, especially where you have the rain and the seasons, and lastly,
if somebody says, well I want a thicker grain of sand, you guys could just do this also
well you could take I use stucco there. So I put a lime in it so that it will flex a little bit more.
I put a lot more lime. So you could just use the same stucco, put it on here, and float it
in if you want it even heavier, too, guys, so um, there's a tip for the day as far as how and
why to do caulking on your house and all this stuff it looks horrible. Still, it's not guys.
It's normal wear. Tear remembers painted every 10 to 12 years you won't even have these issues
kind of like our bodies got to take care of it use it or lose it anyway guys my name is
kirk Jason on the camera we thank you for watching and as usual we'll see you guys on the next one.
Hi, folks Jason here, and I'm here to tell you something you probably already know that like
most content creators on youtube, my dad and I are members of the Amazon affiliates program.
What does that mean that means that we can show and link you to some of the most commonly used
tools in the plastering trade on amazons like our hawks and trowels, scoops floats,
and some of the other things our battery-operated tools for breakout and cutting, etc.
now if you buy those tools from those links we earn a small percentage of that that allows us
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Once again, folks, we thank you for watching, and I really enjoy all your comments.
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My name is Kirk and Jason. We thank you for watching,
and from the entire Giordano family, we'll see on the next one.