The Glue That Keeps it All Together

 

Andrew Pace: This week on Non Toxic Environments, we’re going to be talking about the glues and caulk materials that keeps your home together. These small bits of material that are used in various applications that could mean a huge indoor air quality problem if you use the wrong materials. So sit back and listen to this episode of Non Toxic Environments on caulks and glues.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Non Toxic Environments. Jay, today we’re going to caulk about, excuse me, we’re going to talk about caulking and adhesives.

Jay Watts: We’re going to because it’s a sticky time of year, isn’t it?

Andy: It’s a sticky time of year.

Jay: It’s as humid as humid out here on the West coast and it is, I guess it’s not so humid where you are, but that’s okay. And you need a break from the humidity we do.

Andy: Yeah. It’s been a wild ride this year with the weather. Yeah.

Jay: There’s a lot of talk about glues and glues are a pretty important building product. It’s used every day, all over the country, all over the world. I’m sure.

Andy: Well, you know that, that the old saying, the glue that holds this together… think of a house, think of your office building and really look at the products that you’re surrounded by and you start to realize that boy, there is a glue adhesive, a caulking material, a sealant on a lot of these materials.

Jay: Yeah. And I can’t see it, but I know it’s there.

Andy: It’s there. Right. And unfortunately it’s also off gassing for quite some time. You know what folks, we’re not going to talk about every single glue that’s used in your house today. We wanted to kind of hit the high notes because glue is… let’s face it folks, it’s not very sexy. It’s kinda boring. Kind of boring. It’s kinda boring.

Jay: But they tried to get us to try to give an interesting, they tried to give it really cool names, right? They call it like liquid nails, liquid nails. Right. That’s a really good name. I have to admit that it’s a great name. That’s one of the better names that I’ve ever heard.

Andy: It is. It is. So we thought we’d talk about the materials that we know best. AFM, Chemlink. Some other brands… there used to be a brand called Eco Bond. They are no longer in business.

Jay: What about Bostick?

Andy: Bostick is still around. I think they’re owned by a company- Franklin adhesives. And so we’ll even talk about things like Elmers glue, you know, why not?

Jay: So I’ve got an interesting use for Elmers glue I’ll share.

Andy: Okay. Alright. Alright, so let’s talk about, let’s talk about caulk first. Caulking is kind of a generic term that’s usually used a liquid, gunned in or tooled in flexible material that’s used to fill gaps inside and outside. Where do we use it in our house? Well, we use it around doors and windows. We use it in bathrooms around sinks and sometimes faucets and showers and toilets and things like that. It’s also used quite a bit in painting because it’s used to fill in the gaps between woodwork so that it can be smoothed out and painted really nice. Yeah.

Jay: It’s why it’s one of the last things you do.

Andy: Yeah. It’s a finished product, right?

Jay: Yeah, it’s a finish.

Andy: Exactly. So I recall years ago, my background actually in architecture commercial construction, one of the first jobs I had was selling a brand of high-performance industrial caulks and sealants.

And the term sealant is actually more of a term that means a higher performing caulking material. And so a lot of times people use those two terms interchangeably, but the term sealant really is used for exterior situations where you need a lot of movements, glass wall panel systems, large masonry units where you need that flexibility.

Jay: Yeah, I think just the idea pretty simple in when you have different materials laying side by side with each other and you need to seal that, does that seam in between, there has to be enough inherent flexibility in the material. So that when those surfaces are moving around, which they will do at a subtle level between we know with heat and cold contraction expansion, that material has to be flexible enough so that it doesn’t break that bond between.

Andy: And so one of the key points of this is understanding the the dynamic of that crack or gap that you’re trying to fill. And what I mean by that is, is this a gap that is static? So it’ll always remain that quarter inch wide, or is it dynamic? Is it moving? And so when you know  what it’s gonna do, you can choose the correct product and make sure you have the right flexibility. So let’s look at something like, you know, Safecoat has what’s called their multipurpose caulking material. Safecoat as it says, it’s neither fish nor fowl. It’s not a latex caulk, which means it’s not made with acrylic. It’s not a silicone, it’s not even a polyurethane, it’s actually a technology called polyether.

It’s another type of resin folks. It’s not a term, it’s just a resin. And the beauty of this particular resin that it can be used in a material like this without the use of solvent. Right? And so when you, if you have a quarter inch gap that you’re gonna be gunning in a bead of caulk. If you put down a quarter inch, it stays a quarter inch. It doesn’t shrink. And why this is so important is because years ago, Safecoat had a multipurpose caulk that used a latex and acrylic base resin. Right? And as a cured, it’s shrunk a little bit. And that threw some people for a loop. Well, as of how many years ago now, you guys switched over to that new technology, right? And it has made a world of difference.

Jay: Oh yeah. It’s incredible. You know, the other thing too about it is because it’s what’s called moisture cure. You might, you might explain that a little bit, but moisture cured. Well, anyway, my point here is that, people worry about VOC content and everything and it’s zero though, and it’s zero, unless you were to bake it at 220 degrees or 230 degrees or something like that, which is never ever going to happen. And at that point, I think it really would release like 19 grams of VOC.

Andy: That’s actually a really good point to make Jay because every once in awhile people will say, well, what if I bake out my house? Won’t that I’m get rid of the off gassing? Well, no, it actually causes new chemical compounds to form and this is what’s occurring in that test. If you get it up to 270 degrees, this new VOC comes off because it’s not supposed to be at that temperature.

Jay: You’re right.

Andy: You had mentioned moisture cure. What this means is that moisture in the air actually activates the curing process. So unlike a traditional water-based caulking compound, if it’s really high humidity, it actually cures faster, right?

Jay: Which is kind of counterintuitive to everything else we talk about where we don’t like a lot of humidity because what is is, water-based products take a long lot longer when there’s a lot of moisture in the air. But in this case you want that moisture cause it helps that coalescence process for it.

Andy: And it’s a right and trick of the trade here folks is if you want to get it to cure out faster in more of a cool dry situation, spritz it with a little bit of water.

Jay: I was going to say mist it, mist it with some water.

Andy: So what’s the downside of this? Well, water makes it sticky. Water makes a cure faster, which means that’s not water cleanup, right?

Jay: It’s alcohol. Isopropyl alcohol. Okay.

Andy: And so usually in the trades, whoever’s doing the caulking would lick their thumb and then run that down the bead of caulk to smooth that out. If you tried that with this product, you’d have a lot of choice words.

Jay: Or your contractor. If he’s this type of guy will actually spit out a little vodka he’s been drinking during the working process and the alcohol vodka will actually take care of it. No, I’m kidding folks. None of our contractors do that.

Andy: Not anymore. But if you want to smooth out the surface of the caulk bead, you have to use that isopropyl alcohol. Not on your thumb, but on a tool. There’s tools specifically for this. And so I love this material Jay because it really is, it’s multipurpose. We use this inside and outside around doors and windows. Can it be used in bathrooms? People ask this question all the time. Here’s my standard answer. If you’re looking for the least toxic caulking material that you can use in your home, this is it. If you’re looking for caulking material that is really more mold resistant and it performs okay, this is not it.

Jay: Okay. We’ll talk about that. Well, let me share this. I do use our caulking compound in my showers, yes, twice because I have two. Working great. It’s working great.

Andy: That’s great to hear. And it’s working great. Well and I say that because the question we get all the time is, is it mold resistant? And folks, no, it isn’t. It’s not mold resistant, but it’s mold resistant naturally because of the resin. The resin is not a food source for mold the way acrylic is.

Jay: Here’s what I say about that. Folks, if you have a mold problem in your bathroom, shower, you are not paying attention. I’m sorry, I have to be blunt, but you’re not paying attention. You should be able to…. these things don’t happen unless you’re not paying attention.

Andy: That’s true.

Jay: Especially when you can see it. I mean, it’s the mold that we can see that’s the problem we need to worry about. But when you can see it, you should not be able to see mold in your shower. It’s either you’re not paying attention or you’re not showering enough in either case, change that up a little bit because you should not have a mold problem.

Andy: And so here’s the thing, and I know it’s a technical way to describe it, but the resin that that’s used in this particular caulk is not necessarily a food source for mold. However, as Jay put it- soap scum, dead skin cells are carried in the showering process and it sticks to the mold or sticks to the caulking material. And then if that’s not cleaned off on a regular basis, you can get mold forming on that material.

Jay: Correct. That’s the food source. That’s the food source. It’s not the caulk, the caulk isn’t the food source. It’s all those things. Organic contaminants you just mentioned. That’s the food source.

Andy: Exactly. And so we make this distinction because there are caulking materials in the market that actually use mildewcides that actively help to keep that caulk joint clean, even if you don’t clean the surface very well. And those are inherently toxic to humans, right? Because they will release formaldehyde. So that’s why I say if you’re looking for something specifically that’s going to kill off mold, and you don’t have to worry about cleaning the surface as Jay put it, then this is not the part for you. If you’re looking for the least toxic that’s out there, this is it.

Jay: So what’s the one you were talking about that’s got other inherent mildewcitic properties, what are those ones that you like?

Andy: Well, I don’t like any of them. And that’s the thing. Because of that, I would rather just do a better job cleaning the surface and being diligent. And if for some reason I miss something and mold does start to grow in the caulking material because of how that penetrates in, I’ll cut it out and replace it. I’m not going to take the chance and surround myself with all these formaldehyde based mildewcides.

Jay: No. You know, folks, I have a walk in shower in my bathroom and my home, so I’ve got a ton of tile. It’s enclosed. That’s a steam shower so I can really get the humidity up there. So what I do is I have a little bottle of hydrogen peroxide I keep, I have a little bench so I can sit on it in my shower and maybe you don’t have this, but what you can do is you can keep a bottle of hydrogen peroxide very close by. So you just spray everything with a little hydrogen peroxide. It’s so simple. It’s a sterilizer. It works really well. It’s nontoxic, easy to do. Buy it at the drug store, keep a little bottle near your shower. Once or twice a week after you’ve showered spray everything with hydrogen peroxide.

Andy: Great idea. All right. Let’s move on to another brand that we like. It’s called Chemlink. Chemlink is cool because they actually use very similar technology, the polyether, but they also have a wide variety of other materials. We refer people to the Chemlink products when… the AFM product is available in white, and it’s available in 10 ounce tubes. There’s an awful lot of it that gets used every year. But sometimes you need something clear or another color or the Chemlink line is a good second choice. And, they make a product called Durasil, which is actually a silicone replacement. And I like this in situations where you need more flexibility, the Safecoat products going to give you about a 35% elongation. The silicone will give you more, close to 50%. It just has some different technical things about it that make it useful in different applications and more commercial situations.

Regarding caulk, what else do you have out there with caulk? There’s what’s called polyurethane caulk. Polyurethane caulk is also a water-less caulk, but it contains the polyurethane resin, which means it contains an isocyanate and not necessarily safe. I don’t know of a safe polyurethane caulk on the market.

Jay: I don’t think there is one.

Andy: All right. Then there is what’s called just acrylic latex caulk. There’s a number of brands of this. The downside with acrylic latex caulk is that acrylic latex, because it’s a food source for mold, they have to put mildewcides in it. You just gotta be concerned with that. I started mentioning this earlier, Jay, when you are choosing the caulking material for the situation and you’re looking at the size of the gap that you’re going to be filling: rule of thumb is anything that’s over a quarter inch wide, you need to use what’s called a backer rod. Now I know folks, nobody ever does this in a house. People just, they see a gap. If it’s an inch wide, where does it start to caulk it? We’re going to fill it. What happens is you lose performance, and I won’t get too wonky with this description because I used to sell these things and so I could talk about this idea for 10 minutes, but anytime you get over a quarter inch, if you use a backer rod, it’s a soft foam rod that gets pushed into the gap and ideally you’re leaving yourself with a gap that’s a quarter inch wide and a quarter inch deep.

Andy: If that gap was a half inch wide and it was a half inch deep, well you’re going to make it now to only a quarter inch deep. With that backer rod.

Jay: Where do you get the backer rod? What are you buying things at?

Andy: Any hardware store. Sold in bags of a 50 to a 100 lineal feet.

Jay: Man, that is a cool, cool thing.

Andy: And you’re going to save yourself material and you’re going to improve the performance because as we know with just about everything we work with, if you put things on too heavy, too thick, they take longer to cure. They don’t cure as hard. And it’s the same with caulk. You want to make sure that it only cures to about that quarter inch deep.

Jay: So, when you’ve got a moisture cure product, is there shelf life issues? I mean, once you crack that baby open and you start using it, what can we expect from the tube once it’s open, Once you’ve opened the tube and you started using it, okay, now you’ve stopped and you haven’t used the whole tube up yet. What I try to do is seal that sucker up. I don’t have any way that moisture can kind of get into that, into the end of it.

Andy: Yeah. I mean to two to six months at the most. Even even unopened folks, because Safecoat doesn’t use preservatives and it’s a moisture cure, once you buy it- six to 12 months at the most, yeah.

Jay: Chemlink doesn’t do it either. They don’t.

Andy: No, they don’t. They don’t know. Here’s the other thing too. Another trick is, when you get it, and if it’s in the colder months, specifically put the tube in a bucket of warm water before you use it, it’ll actually loosen it up and make it easier to gun out.

Jay: That’s an excellent recommendation.

Andy: Now, contrary to that, I had a contractor call up about a month ago and he had a box of these in his truck and he said he opened up the tube and it just started squirting everywhere. And so I told them to actually ice it down, put it in a bucket of ice water.

Jay: It was that hot and it just started going? Oh man.

Andy: Yup. And so he put it in a bucket of ice water. It’s slowed it down at work. Great. Yeah. So it has little tips. So you know what else we got with for caulking?  In general, it’s going to be painters caulk, painters caulk is usually an acrylic latex. The reason for that is it’s easily sandable. You know, acrylic latex caulk or painters caulk is not designed to be high-performance. It’s not supposed to keep up moisture or water or fill a gap that stands ahead of pressure. It’s supposed to just almost be like a more of a flexible, easier to install wood putty. And it dries fast at sands easy and you can paint over it. Yeah. All right. So I think that kind of hits it for caulking materials. Jay, let’s jump into the glue. So where else do you use glue in your house? Well, you, you said it right away. Liquid nails, right? Liquid nails is what’s called a construction adhesive. Construction adhesives come in very similar caulk tubes. They also come in a larger, what are called the quart size, the contractor size tubes. You use these in various locations where you don’t see, so you’re using a construction adhesive underneath your sub floor when you’re building a new home or remodeling is when you what’s called glue and screw the subfloors. And so Chemlink’s got a product we use called Wall Secure for that. I know it says wall, but trust me, it works. It’s essentially a less toxic to nontoxic version of liquid nails. We use construction adhesive when we’re installing doors, exterior doors, because you have to glue down the thresholds. We use construction adhesives a lot exterior when you’re installing brick work around your house or doing retaining walls made of masonry construction adhesive is used for that. Countertop glue down for sure.

Andy: We love an AFM product called Almighty Adhesive for this. We sell a boatload of this product. It works wonderfully. Almighty Adhesive was a name kind of a blast from the past. You guys had this 20 years ago and you came back out with it, but in a tube in that gun-able version. It’s a wonderful formulation, right?

Jay: Yeah. We had it in a can before and yeah, this is a better iteration of it for sure.

Andy: Right. And so other adhesives around the house… wood glue is another adhesive that’s used. And AFM doesn’t strictly have a wood glue, although people can use the 3 in 1 Adhesive mixed with water and that does work. But a lot of times people use something like Elmers glue, right? Elmer’s is a classic what’s called a PVA adhesive. What that means folks that’s made from polyvinyl acetates.

Jay: So this is a good time for me to share my little tip. About Elmer’s glue or glue like this, a PVA glue. So I was talking to an old contractor one day and we were talking on the subject of dealing with knots, wood knots in pine. Wood that have knots, the knots themselves folks, and it’s different. Pine is probably a good example. That knot is loaded up with a terpene and terpenes are very water reactive. So when you use a wood species that had a lot of knots, if you don’t seal those knots correctly, those knots will bleed through and it can bleed through dramatically. And I know this from personal experience because I have pine in the ceiling of my bathroom, which I mentioned earlier, which has all that moisture. And guess what? I didn’t seal it properly and the paint job looks good, but I’ve got about a dozen knots that are just like black eyes sticking out, man. You walk in, you look up and you go, holy moly, what is that? So the old guy tells me, Hey listen, I got a simple fix for that. And I go, yeah, what’s that? He says, seal those up with some Elmers glue. This really just spread some Elmer’s glue over those knots and then paint it and you’ll problem will be solved. And I thought, really? I’ll go for it. I did it and it worked. It worked well.

Andy: So now that you say this and I think about it, it makes perfect sense. Boy, that’s a great tip. Yeah, it makes sense because it’s a PVA. Right? All right. Polyvinyl acetate. Now you gotta be careful with PVAs because PVAs can be problematic if you’re applying them in high moisture situations or high humidity and you don’t give them ample time to cure. Correct. They can be a food source from mold, just like a current, some water-based paints can be, right.

Jay: Generally people are working pretty quickly here though. It’s atypical that you would wait, you’re doing something and you’re going to follow it up with whatever. And step two is exactly, but the good point made, it’s like if you’ve got the situation, we’re going to use it. You don’t want to let it sit there for like a week or two or something like that. And, you know, right. Stay away from that.

Andy: But I’ve used Elmers glue myself in a number of applications where just nothing else really would work or it would just be too toxic and it works wonderfully. And you know, so that’s a great all-purpose product. The real wood glue that’s used in a cabinet shop is also a PVA, but it’s usually modified with other ingredients.

Jay: Is that Tite Bond?

Andy: Tite Bond is one of them. Yeah. One of the things that you get with Tite Bond is really good moisture resistance, much better moisture resistance. The downside is it releases just a ton of formaldehyde.

Jay: Yeah. I’ve tried it sometimes and I guess the other thing about this and people get, I think sometimes folks, it may look a little scary out there. Glue is one of those things that I’m always a little bit… I don’t want to talk about it like I do some of the other things that are out there that are, or things we need to really worry about. But glue is something where in essence the glue is gone. And what I mean by that is once you glue something together, the glue is not there.  I mean, you don’t see it anymore. It’s not like, it’s not like a coating that’s topical where it’s actually off gassing and you can actually put your hand on it, you can touch it, you can’t really touch glued together surfaces. So I try to relieve the anxiety a little bit by saying, let’s pick the safest product, but let’s not overreact to what potentially is not a problem as you think it might be because he surfaces are bonding together. So there may be other bigger fish to fry when we’re talking about, home improvement and what we’re doing at trying to do to create a healthy home. W’ve talked about this in other podcasts where he’s trying to reference, what’s the most important thing we need to do here? Where do we need to spend the smart money? It’s always about spending the smart money. So that’s just something I want to add too.

Andy: I really appreciate that Jay, because how often have we said the biggest offenders in the home floors, walls, cabinetry, and furnishings and finishes? You can have a product and I’ve tested some of the Tite Bond products. I’ve tested some of these. One thing we haven’t talked about a wallpaper adhesives. That release just unbelievable amounts of formaldehyde. But in the grand scheme of things, how much of that actually gets into the air? It actually becomes problematic? If you had a 20 foot by 20 foot area releasing 4,000 parts per billion of formaldehyde, like some of these things I’ve tested, we’ve got a problem. But if the wood glue, the surfaces that actually have the glue are sandwich together, and so what’s actually exposed to the actual elements of the surface are 1-64th of an inch wide. And then it gets coated with four or five coats of AFM Acrylacq yeah. Folks that as not going to get into your air. And if it did, it’s at such a minute level that there’s probably a higher level of formaldehyde in the outdoor natural air. So that you’re exactly right, Jay, you really need to look at this, kind of step back and say, yeah, maybe it’s a high level if I tested that one surface, but in the volume of air, unless you are extremely sensitive and I know there’s a lot of you out there that are, and I’m please, I’m not belittling the situation, not at all for the majority of customers who are just trying to live in a healthier home. This is not an area where you really need to be super concerned of and less there’s a specific health issue where we’re dealing with.

Jay: Yeah. And then the other thing that I think about here, and we’re talking about this and folks, we understand that getting our type of products is not always the easiest thing to do. They’re not widely available. We wish they were, but they’re not. And so you’ll many times you face a situation, you’ve got a timing situation with a contractor. You’ve got a budget situation. I think if you can stand back and say, okay, the contractor needs to do it now, the contractor can only get this, this product and it’s the product he’s comfortable with. I think there’s some times when we don’t want to, but we can we can compromise a little bit and we can say, okay, you know, it’s not the best decision but maybe we have to use that conventional product because we need to get this done. We need to go forward. The contractor is comfortable and we can’t wait. And so Andy and I both agree. I think we agree. Andy, I know you do that. Sometimes you have to go into that what I call the other side, the dark side, if you want to call it that, the conventional world, you got to go into the conventional world. But with your eyes wide open.

Andy: It’s the take a step back to take two steps forward mentality tackling.

Jay: You what you’re looking at the risks. And what we’re suggesting is in this particular case, the risks are probably fairly minimal. All things being done correctly, right? If the guy slopping glue around and you see glue or caulk hanging out outside the whatever he was supposed to do, then there’s some different story that, right, different story. But if things are done properly and those things are done where the material that we’re talking about is being hidden away. Caulks not that way. Caulk is widely exposed and we’d already talked about that. You don’t really make any substitutions with caulk. You pick the safest one. But with glue it’s a different story because glues are invisible. They should be.

Andy: So on that note, let’s talk about two other areas for adhesives. You really set this up perfectly for what I was going to say about these other areas. Installing something like a natural linoleum like Marmoleum. We get this call at the time. Do you have a non toxic glue that I can use to install Marmoleum? Well folks, I actually rather side on caution here, err on the side of caution. I want to use something that’s going to be fully warrantied by the manufacturer. If I’m spending a lot of money on a really nice floor that’s going to last 50, 60 years, I want it to be warranty properly. So I’m going to use what the manufacturer provides.

Jay: Correct.

Andy: And I will say it’s a very safe product. We’ve had very little issue with it over the years. It’s underneath the floor. It doesn’t off gas, it can’t off gas cause it’s completely covered. But it also maintains the warranty. So that’s another issue to take in consideration. You want to use something that the manufacturer and the installers all will appreciate and can use and will maintain the warranty.

Jay: Yeah, perfect point.

Andy: And the last area would be installing wood floors. Again we get the call: do you have a water based adhesive that I can use to install my wood floors or my bamboo floors? Now quickly, Jay, tell a story about when somebody tried to use a water based adhesive to install a bunch of bamboo floors.

Jay: Oh my, what a horror story that was. So the problem with the water based adhesive, when you’re using a very porous material that can actually actually absorb water, what can happen with those types of glues as there’s enough moisture in that glue that it wicks into the flooring, which means it’s going up in, the flooring is like a sponge and it sucks up the moisture. And when moisture hits that surface, the wood starts to move. And typically what it does is it expands. And so we had many years ago we had an installation where a bamboo floor was installed and it was installed over a concrete sub floor. So there was no place for the moisture really to go into the concrete. It had to only go pretty much one direction, which is up. And it went into the bamboo and the bamboo basically started to swell. When they walked into the room, it looked like a little mountain was in the middle of the floor, a little mountain where there’d been so much moisture absorption into the bamboo, it had just kind of went up and everything and they had to rip it all out.

Andy: Well that’s the exact story that I thought you’d tell, because I remember that one too. Well, and so folks, what Jay is saying is when you’re installing wood floors, you cannot use water based adhesives if you have to glue it down. So you’re stuck with having to use what works and what does work? Polyurethane glue, you have already talked about this. It’s not the safest thing in the world. They do make them low VOC. Doesn’t mean it’s actually healthy, but that’s kind of what you’re stuck with. And so I guess what I’m saying is that if that is your only choice, then you might want to reconsider your installation method and look at maybe a floating floor or something else. Because sometimes you have to use what is going to work and if that means you’re going to be adding a lot of toxicity to the installation, I would strongly look at something else then.

Jay: So I’m hearing it right now. One of the clients has gone guys, what about carpeting? Am I going to glue down my carpeting? Wait a minute. Carpeting’s it’s not like linoleum or wood. It’s, more open. I mean, can the glue that I’m gluing my carpet down come through the padding and come through the carpeting? Will I be exposed to all that glue? I mean, they’re going to glue all this whole thing down.

Andy: Well, yeah. And so first off, carpet is only glued down in a small percentage of applications.

Jay: Typically it’s usually tacked around.

Andy: Correct. Typically glue down carpet is reserved for commercial application. Whether you use a foam back, a built in pad, and maybe some other applications where they use what’s called a pressure sensitive adhesive. It’s more commercial, again. So in residential application, you’re doing a what’s called a stretch and tack method that can be done on either a wood sub floor or a concrete sub floor, but if you have to consider an adhesive, AFM’s 3in1 Adhesive works wonderfully actually for a carpet adhesive.

But you use as little as humanly possible because you don’t need a lot of adhesive to stick down carpet, but what you need is a little bit of tack, right. And traditional carpet adhesives that you find in a regular big box are a horribly toxic, fullest solvent. And they flash off really quick. They get sticky really quick. The Safecoat product is water base and so you have to let some of that water evaporate. And so you have to let a tack up. Yeah. And that could take 10, 15 minutes depending on the temperature and humidity. Once it starts to tack up, then you can apply the carpet and roll it out and make sure it sticks properly.

Jay: When we’re doing a tack strip around the perimeter of a room, are we using the Almighty Adhesive underneath the tack strip to glue that to the sub floor

Andy: If it’s been done on concrete, yes. If it’s being done on a Woodson floor, those actually just get nailed down. So without belaboring the points here, there are a healthy alternative just about any type of caulk or adhesive used inside the home. I hope we touched on enough of them that made this show interesting for you. And we really appreciate Jay, your insight, from the manufacturer’s perspective. It’s a really, really good stuff.

Jay: Yeah. The fact that you’ve got your experience and being able to deal with all the other products that surround us. I think that’s so helpful. And like we said, folks, Andy and I are all about making sure that you’re clear about your best options. And they may be from companies like mine or companies that Andy represents or maybe other people out there. And so if you have a question about that, you’ve got some specific questions you need to forward to us. We were open to that and he’ll tell you how to do that right now.

Andy: You got it. Send me an email, andy@degreeofgreen.com. Otherwise go to the website degreeofgreen.com and hit the Speak Pipe app and leave us a voicemail message. And as always, we would appreciate any ratings and reviews you could leave us, especially the good ones will be awesome. We’re still growing fast and appreciate your listenership, your loyal listenership and please tell your family and friends about the show because, there are so many more topics we have to talk about. We’ve got a whole list of topics coming up in the next few months that are just going to be absolutely fantastic and so look forward to presenting those to you every week people. Thank you so much, Jay. We’ll talk to you and everybody next week.

Jay: Sounds good. Andy.