Good evening,
I've been siding some houses for a guy up here in the PNW, fiber cement horizontal lap siding. Long story short is he wanted all the caulking to be struck to smooth it out. When I caulked the siding it really looked great, but the house sat for awhile before paint and we had an interesting summer with some very hot days and then some pretty rainy/cooler days. So although the original installation of caulking looked perfect when the painter rolled through some of the joints had cracked out. I make a point of not just running the caulking over the surface of the crack but actually pumping the caulk down into joints and seams. We're using the OSI "pro series" caulking, a little bit thicker than Quad. So I've worked with crews that don't strike their caulking and I think it looks alright but striking does make it look cleaner I think. So does anyone here pre-caulk seams and joints before installing the siding so it "oozes" out from behind to be sure its filling the whole crack? Also I noticed some excessive shrinkage on field joints too. They call out for 1/8" gaps in the field and yet even when you pump the joint w/ caulking and smooth it flush with the face of the siding, give it a week and it has shrunk to an 1/8" below the original level. I like my stuff looking sharp and clean..but is the only way to avoid this by basically caulking the entire house twice basically? Perhaps if he hadn't let the house sit so long before paint would it had helped out by protecting the caulk from weather? I'm interested in some ideas on this one boys...thanks for the help!
-Joe
I've been siding some houses for a guy up here in the PNW, fiber cement horizontal lap siding. Long story short is he wanted all the caulking to be struck to smooth it out. When I caulked the siding it really looked great, but the house sat for awhile before paint and we had an interesting summer with some very hot days and then some pretty rainy/cooler days. So although the original installation of caulking looked perfect when the painter rolled through some of the joints had cracked out. I make a point of not just running the caulking over the surface of the crack but actually pumping the caulk down into joints and seams. We're using the OSI "pro series" caulking, a little bit thicker than Quad. So I've worked with crews that don't strike their caulking and I think it looks alright but striking does make it look cleaner I think. So does anyone here pre-caulk seams and joints before installing the siding so it "oozes" out from behind to be sure its filling the whole crack? Also I noticed some excessive shrinkage on field joints too. They call out for 1/8" gaps in the field and yet even when you pump the joint w/ caulking and smooth it flush with the face of the siding, give it a week and it has shrunk to an 1/8" below the original level. I like my stuff looking sharp and clean..but is the only way to avoid this by basically caulking the entire house twice basically? Perhaps if he hadn't let the house sit so long before paint would it had helped out by protecting the caulk from weather? I'm interested in some ideas on this one boys...thanks for the help!
-Joe
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