Protecto Wrap shatters in cold weather

[greentree]

Little heads up. I'm doing window and patio door installs in jobsite temps ranging from -20F in the morning to our install temps of 0F to 10F temps once mr. sun warms things up around 11am.

I left some Protecto Wrap out in the cold and while bringing the roll inside to warm the loose end I grabbed shattered in my hands, I mean litterally it shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces leaving me with just the plastic exterior film. Needless to say I was a bit alarmed at such a drastic product failure, so I got some DOW weathermate I had as well but was not using and cut equal lengths of protecto wrap and the blue dow weathermate and applied them to a 2x6 out in an unheated garage. After an hour or so I crumpled each in my hand, the weathermate did not crack, the protecto again shattered into tiny pieces.

Further I took another strip of protecto and put it in the cold and bent it over which created a crack across its width, then brought the piece inside and warmed it up and it quickly regained its usual properties including its tackiness however the crack remains.

I will not, cannot, use protecto wrap anymore after seeing this, thought I'd pass this along. I haven't checked their website to see what they say about cold weather tolerances but they sell it here, I assumed wrongly it would perform here, obviously not.

[kawendtco]

i havent ever liked protecto wrap. it doesnt stick well unless it is 70 or above. probably the best tape i have ever used is the pella tape. it works hot or cold. we can buy it from pella, however they would rather us use their windows also. their tape works on anderson, marvin,etc...

[Mark Parlee]

A good bit of the tapes will do that and most do not adhere well in the cold.

I will second the Pella tape

[wormdriver]

Great....I had the same experience with WINDOWRAP brand tape two years ago and switched to Protecto Wrap. This makes me wonder what the thousands of feet of window tape that I have installed now looks like, especially after cold snaps like the one we've just had, -40s.
If the products perform consistently wouldn't that mean that all of it is essentialy shattered and therefore useless?

[Mark Parlee]

No It still may be performing fine if when you applied it, it was put on with good adherence. Just because it gets brittle in the cold and breaks when it is flexed in half does not mean it is just cracking apart in its stuck state on the wall.
I have checked a lot of these tapes out after the fact, a couple of years later and the ones that stuck well in the warm weather and held up for a couple of days while the siding was being applied are generally still adhered.
I have had my problems with a lot of the different brands of tapes over the years as I test them and that is why I have come to favor the Pella tape and the new DuPont Straightflash.

[NW Architect]

I haven't checked the product specs, but I believe what you are seeing is brittleness occurring in tapes made with modified asphalt compounds. To avoid that, use tapes made with butyl rubber compounds.

StraightFlash is one. Protecto has a newer product line that is butyl based. There are a couple of others - and the price difference between butyl and asphalt products is coming down as more producers start to make them.

If, however, you want the ultimate in tapes, look into Eternabond products. The composition is a trade secret, and the price is not small, but they work in the wet, and the freezing, and the scalding. When I am marketing the expense to owners I take a piece of sheet metal out of the freezer, dip the tape into a glass of water, then stick the tape on the frozen metal, rub, and let sit for 5 minutes. finally, let the owner try to remove the tape from the metal. Fun stuff