Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

[joseph]

Not sure if Bill was really bothered but i figured to change from the ext details forum to here .From what i gather the polyurethane caulk bothered not only the client but others which surprises me being I was not aware it had a smell .The acrylic/latex +silicone I can imagine with an offensive odor that it bothered a trades person on the jobsight surprises me ,generally i figure trades people ignore such things but acturally Got Sick .What is the connection to offgassing .why would being sandwhiched or sealed in a wall be worse then exposed /offgassing to the interior .
So with this knowledge about chemicals are you inclined to change building practices ?

[joseph]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Dick ,I have a product called DOES IT ALL ,phenoseal ,has an odor but was sold to me as safe for chemically sensitive people . i acturally used to adhere panelly to a wall in a clost without any noticeable problems ,so does not seem to bother me .Are your clients reacting to the smell of things? or are they acturally having physical reactions .
Can YOU smell the smell of what is being called the cauking .?

[MarkNov]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Dick is not kidding about the danger of caulk fumes and peoples reaction to them. I know two GC that got sued just for that reason. One case involved a seniors residence, the other a child.
According to the label, polyurethane caulk contains xylene, and other assorted garbage. Xylene is proven to cause brain damage.

I have a strict policy that no tube of caulking is even allowed inside. Caulking is only applied after the windows are installed, insulated to prevent air infiltration, and CLOSED.

Personally I don't ignore health warnings and follow safety rules to the letter. I am not getting paid to kill myself or damage my health.
Mark

[Dick Seibert]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

I wonder why Bill doesn't want the dangers of sealants discussed on his forum? It seems pretty irresponsible to me to advocate the use of products proving to be harmful to people, and are causing damages to homes and the potential of litigation against the contractors who use them. Maybe JLC ought to be brought into this?

Joseph:

The people have all been treated by doctors, even the dog was taken to the vet and all have had physical reactions. The sheetrock taper was the first to becomes ill and I don't know whether he was taken to a doctor but I'll ask tomorrow when the air quality people are there. I should know a lot more went he tests come back, but I am checking for formaldehyde as well, on the chance that OSB and Particleboard were used in the recent addition and those chemicals could be compounding the problem, although I doubt it.

To answer your question about me, the answer is no, I can't smell a thing and don't suffer any ill effects from being in the affected rooms, and I've removed the receptacle plates and stuck my rather ample nose right into the duplex receptacles and don't smell a thing. But I'm an old Kraut who loves Limburger cheese, other moldy cheeses, and can walk right through moldy houses while everybody else's noses are turning red. I probably can't smell any better than I can hear any more.

What the manufacturers are telling us is that their products shouldn't be encapsulated within walls, at least until all of the chemicals have off-gassed which could take years inside walls. That means no sealant behind window fins, but it doesn't mean no sealant between the window and stucco on the exterior! If you want to put that stuff behind window fins you better get a manufacturer to approve it in writing, even then you could suffer some huge damages in a lawsuit.

Good contractors don't need caulking to waterproof their houses or fill holes in their work!

[m beezo]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Dick,

I still cannot think that you still believe that good contractors do not need caulk. It is a long accepted practice to use the stuff in places and I feel that without it is a dangerous proposition. For instance on wood siding where the end grain of a clapboard meets the cornerboard. End grain always soaks up water more. And I cannot believe that a 3 mil layer of paint is going to cover as well as a correctly caulked joint. Just my point of view.

I know that my example is for caulk for the outside work but I can also think of areas inside of houses. Just about everyone talks about wavy walls that are encountered when installing baseboards or crown molding. I have yet to have a customer who is doing this after living in the house for years as an upgrade want me to float out the high and low spots so the baseobard or crown will sit without the gaps you get. But none have objected to a line of caulk installed to fill the gaps and make the piece look seamless.

My thought is how much caulk are you talking about that is causing the problems? We just did a 2500 sq ft addition and used about 10-12 qt tubes of subfloor adhesive and maybe 10 tubes of siliconized caulk for taking care of gaps around baseboard, door and window trim, crown and other areas. In a 2500 ft addition with 10 ft ceilings throughout that is a lot of cubic feet which has to make the parts per million pretty small. So how much caulk was used on this house? Makes me think of the Saccrine causes cancer in mice-but they were eating the equivelent of 100 lbs a day which none of us do. So is it going to cause cancer in me? It might but who knows for sure.

Only thing else that I can say about the issue is that almost all of my houses that I work on are near 80 years old or more. Even if I left an opened tube of caulk in the room most have at least one air change an hour or more so I doubt that you would ever get enough smell to actually make someone sick unless they were extremely sensitive. And if they are that sensitive I want to know how they function in the world, are they haveing symtoms at work, at a reaturant, at the hotel they stay at on vacation? Is this a real problem or something they are doing to get one over on a builder and manufacturer of building materials?

[joseph]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Mark ,are you saying you use no caulk of any kind on the interior trim .
are there some that are acceptable .

[always-learning]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

M,

I think what Dick is referring to (forgive me if I read it wrong) is the over-usage of caulk on todays homes.

For example...caulk on a new construction window installation...I personally agree with Dick that No caulk should be used....Period.....

The flanges are to be counter-flashed with peel & stick membranes similar to ice & water shield & cap flashed with a drip cap. I've been installing windows in the same way for years & I've never had a window leak. Same procedure for doors.... There's an article in June 2005 JLC with Carl Hagstrom where he shows the proper procedure for installing a window & it's the same way I've been doing it for years.

Another for instance is on roofs. I personally feel that a roof is a place where not under any circumstance should caulk be used....Period. Average caulk life on a roof in the NE if your lucky is about 4 years. I have no idea what Arizona would do to caulk on a roof, but I bet it wouldn't last a year. Proper flashing techniques rule here & I wouldn't use caulk on a roof ever unless it was under a shingle to fill a hole where the roof jacks were attached. Even then, roof cement is usually used there.

Caulk has it's place....agreed just as you had mentioned (not to fill miters) I always use your choice Phenoseal because of durability & versatility. I don't smell Phenoseal- just a light odor similar to latex paint curing, but I do smell someone smoking cigarettes in a car ahead of me at 40 mph, so I guess I can say that I can still detect odor at the age of 40

If anything about caulks I've learned over the years is that I cannot use them without gloves. My fingernails would immediately get infected if I spread caulk with bare fingers...Just me I guess, because I've known others who it doesn't affect at all.

[Dick Seibert]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Caulking is a painters' tool, not a carpenters. I won't let a carpenter use caulking for several reasons, not the least of which is that it looks bad. If you start letting them use a little, they could be covering up bad workmanship in no time, plus I want to be able to constantly monitor their work and I can't have their miters covered up with caulk. I once got a house to build because the owner checked out my work then went to my competitors' jobsites and saw caulking in the back of their carpenters' pickups and immediately gave me the job (I asked him why he chose me and that's what he said).

As to sealants, professionally sized and applied sealants are one thing, those guys really know what they are doing. I've never seen a carpenter who knew how to size a bead of sealant and properly apply it, I called Sika and Schnee-Morehead once and asked them both to size the bead of sealant behind a Milgard Vinyl window, the Sika engineer flat out told me that they don't recommend any of their products be used in the installation of vinyl windows, the Schnee-Morehead engineer (this guy sat on the ANSI committee which wrote the ANSI rules on it) couldn't come up with an answer in about 15 minutes and wanted more information from Milgard on the co-efficient of linear expansion of their vinyl, I called him back with the additional information and he gave up.

As Always-Learning has said the caulking dries out in a few years anyway, my experience here is that it lasts an average of 7 years on the weather side exposure, and the sick family here was 6 years before the windows started leaking. The common thinking is to properly flash your windows then to use caulking as a backup. The problem with that is all windows should be water tested prior to stucco or wood siding, and the caulking can temporarily mask any flashing leaks, I want my windows to leak now if they are going to leak, so I can fix them now, not 7 or 10 years down the road. Crooked manufacturers want to try to seal their windows to get them past the statute of limitations!

On heavy duty commercial projects where the architects specify sealants I used the Chamberlin Company in the past, but they retreated to Texas when all the caulking and sealant lawsuits hit California.

One of my best friends won $19 million when the sealants failed in the curtain walls here, the building was completely re-clad so that sealants weren't necessary after the award. I actually heard a Simonton executive testify in a leaking window case that sealants had to be replaced "periodically", believe me juries don't buy the defense that homeowners are supposed to remove and re caulk their windows "periodically".

Why use it if you don't have to use it, good contractors don't need it to waterproof their windows, all they do is lap their paper properly! What do you think we did before the chemical companies invented caulking?

[m beezo]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Joesph,
I do use caulk for interior and for exterior work. Not the same types of caulks for both areas tho. For interior one of the ones that gets a fair amount of work out from me are the siliconized latex caulks. These are usually water soluable and flo nicely for work on trim such as baseboards, crown and door and window trim for interiors. They have little smell at all and are paintable.

For exterior work I have used a variety of items and I will have to look for the brand that I use for most exterior work. It is a sealant used for lots of siding work, hard to tool so you have to put it in nicely when you gun it in. I have used some butyl caulks but the problem is again tooling and you have to wait for it to skin over longer for it to be painted.

Exterior places I would consider using caulks are in corners where clapboards would meet a cornerboard, on the top of a plinth block on a column, open joints that have occured over the years and you want to keep not just water out but bugs and weather of all kinds. It is amazing how much draft you can sometimes feel around a door or window trim on some of these older houses and how much you can seal out if you caulk the outside areas.

Dick, as far as what did you used to do when you did not have caulk? I believe that caulk of some form has been around for centuries. Log cabins were "caulked" with mud and straw, I have seen glazing soumpound used as caulk. And the other thing is the houses that used to get built had no insulation, no electricity, no central air or heat, no plumbing. Now that we are a little more refined and not sleeping in log cabins or useing the blue tick hounds to help keep us warm in the winter caulk can be used to keep the heat or cold in or out whichever is the case.

If you are against over use or misuse of caulk that is one thing. To say it is not to be used by good construction workers is another. I think what you are saying is it is good (maybe alright is a better word) for the painter to use, just not the carpenter.

[Allan Edwards]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

If you are against over use or misuse of caulk that is one thing. To say it is not to be used by good construction workers is another. I think what you are saying is it is good (maybe alright is a better word) for the painter to use, just not the carpenter.

Beezo, as usual I think Dick has taken a perfectly valid point and gone to the extreme level. Caulk used properly is beneficial and a necessity, if my painter didn’t caulk and prep surfaces properly, he would be history with me. I hope Dick isn’t myopically looking thru his carpenter’s eyes on this. I mean why wouldn’t a contractor use caulk? Windows should be flashed properly, and you shouldn’t rely on caulk unless it is your only option. I’ve used deep set windows where there is no flange and really no way to flash, you have to use caulk. I always use sill pans in these applications as a precaution, never had a problem or callback.

[Dick Seibert]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

We've got one contractor who replaced the windows 6 years ago using caulking, the windows leaked. Okay, that's all caulking is good for, so we hire another contractor to remove and do the periodic replacement of the caulk on the windows, he uses polyurethane and makes the taper, and the entire family sick, Poison Control moves them out. He removes the whole assembly and replaces it with DAP acrylic latex+silicone caulk, the family is sick again and DAP tells the lady that the caulk should be used inside walls, everything should be removed and the windows reinstalled without caulking. This picture is after the polyurethane after they were moved out (note the caulking smeared all around the window and even between the paper and the old stucco, also the falling grids in the new window Milgard gave them). Who should be sued here? BTW, this lady is very intelligent, she is all over the Internet compiling information, talking to experts all over the country.

Here is a statement from her of her symptoms:

Our symptoms w/Polyurethane: It affected all of us with a strong smell, and a strong chemical taste and sores in our mouths and my youngest son and I were also dizzy, dog had puss in ears

Our symptoms w/Acrylic/Latex/Silicone: Burning in eyes, nose, throat, very slight chemical taste in mouth but only in the upper mucus area behind the nose, it has a light smell, and I am very nauseated. Youngest son gets burning in eyes, nose, throat after 45 minutes watching TV but symptoms clear after getting fresh air and staying away from room. Oldest son, not much symptoms other than eyes bothered him slightly after 30 minutes in room, and did taste the chemical in upper nose area after 1 hour. Husband, not bothered after 1 hour, except that he can smell the chemical.

[Allan Edwards]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

I've never seen chicken wire used on a building (except for a chicken coup!). Looks like EIFS too (something I've never used or really seen much of around here). And I didn't see sill pans either. I would suggest if you have to caulk between the stucco bead (#66) and a wood window (which you should), use something like NP1.

All in all, that picture doesn't prove much to me.

[Dick Seibert]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Allan:

Original house has paperback lath, which is a crummy two layer Grade D paper with the wire embedded into the mess. You don't have that down there? When they tore the windows out they found the leakage had destroyed the paperback lath below the window, so they tore it all the way down and installed two layers of #15 asphalt felt with paperback lath on top of that. I haven't seen the flashing, this was what it looked like when I was called in. This was torn out subsequent to these pictures, and replaced with the DAP in place of the polyurethane.and it is now stuccoed up and painted. Tomorrow the thousands of dollars worth of lab tests start to determine what the cause is. From the woman:

Let’s see what the air test reveal, either way, we have to get that chemical out that is making us sick, I guess by removing the walls one at a time time. Thank you for all your help, I can’t believe I found you. After the tests, let me know what the lawyers can do. Homeowners and contractors need to be aware that caulk is for around the outside of windows and what can happen when used inside the walls (if this is the case).

She's being told that some caulking is for the insides of houses, and other is for the outsides of houses, but no caulk is for the insides of walls. Do any of you guys who use the stuff have tubes that you can read the warnings on? I'll stop by a lumber yard tomorrow and read some of the tubes.

[phillip]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Hold on dick!

The sheetrock taper was the first to becomes ill

Don’t you think there is a higher chance that the sheet-rocker got sick from the construction adhesive that hold the sheet rock on? Or the sub flooring? www.osiliterature.com/Image/PDF/sP20105.pdf

I would think that there is a lot more off-gassing that comes from other things than the little bit between the window and the sheathing
Xylene is a solvent in paints, glues and carpets as well as polyurethane
Look here at a partial list of product that contain XYLENE also Known as Benzene
http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov...NE&prodcat=all

I would think you would have to build quite a different house to insure Indoor air quality is acceptable to “sensitive people” what would you have to do build a house out of solid wood? Just as long as the wood is not toxic… http://old.mendelu.cz/~horacek/toxic.htm every type of wood is toxic to some person whether it is common, rare or uncommon

Seems to me that people are getting a little to lawyer happy


Maybe I should sue the farmers because of the pollen from their crops effect my allergies…

[always-learning]

Re: Dick Seibert/caulk fumes

Dick,

I'm no expert in the caulk field, but it seems mighty fishy that the dog would have puss in his ears from a caulk used on a window installation. My dog has constant ear problems, but it's caused by moisture due to her hears not being erect. Her "floppy ears" need constant cleaning to keep free from infection & it's more to do with her genetic make-up that she's pre-disposed to it. I agree with phillip that there may be underlying intent in this & you are being called in to help the case against the previous contractor.

I'm not saying that it's not possible that these people couldn't be affected by it, just a little difficult to believe that ALL of them are. Ususally sensitivity isn't that widespread especially that the caulk is on the exterior of the building.

Bet that there's something else going on here...maybe the house was a meth drug lab prior to their owning....or they have gasses backing up into the house from some other source..maybe it's toxic waste from a dump located nearby...(oh, that would be here in NJ..Sorry!) ......just guessing,of course.

I guess the contractor also didn't believe in drip caps & exterior sill pans to let the water out ....

JUNE 2004 JLC shows the same materials being used in Dick's picture in an article by DON THORVUND....Chicken wire & paper with a membrane flashing.

FYI, My insurance carrier won't let me even look at a house with EIFS, nevermind working on one. My policy states that I have NO coverage for any work done to a home with EIFS in relation to any repairs of the exterior of the house. I won't touch a house with EIFS...

STUCCOMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!......Where are you??????????????????????????

lol