How to PROPERLY Re-Silicone a Shower?

not the most pleasant job in the world i'm afraid today but i am going to show you how to properly re-silicon a shower screen hi folks welcome back to gosford handyman i'm andy mack and over the years of running a handyman business i did a lot of resilient jobs and it's one of those jobs that it looks like it should be easy but it's not and it's also one of those jobs where if you do all the preparation correctly then the final bit of the actual re-siliconing will be pretty quick but it's a prep that takes a long time and if you don't do it properly then it'll fail very quickly and you'll have wasted all your time so you might as well do it properly this shower screen here is a real horror show of pretty much everything that can go wrong with silicon over the years has gone wrong with this it's an absolute mess and really it's an example of what happens if you just do kind of piecemeal repairs over the top of each other we've got all sorts of horrific problems in the shower on the inside edges i mean literally it looks like it's been applied with a spoon it's really really bad on the outside edges here it's leaking in various places on the inside edge along here someone's had a bash it's sealing it up with cork as well and by the way never use cork in a shower tray it's silicon that you need to use cork will not do the job but yeah someone's attempted to use cork and it's kind of half come off and then it's half wrist up itself back onto the shower we've also got a bit of a problem with lime scale around a lot of the joints as well and the lime scale is probably what's causing a lot of the silicon to fail as well because the lime scale's kind of grown around and it's pushed the silicone away from the joint so before i get on and fix this let me quickly explain how shower screens work and which bits you should silicon and which bits you definitely don't want to silicon so first of all all i would say is all shower screens are different so if you can try to find the original instructions for your particular shower screen if at all possible now i understand in the vast majority of situations that's just not going to be practical so i'm going to explain how 90 of the shower screens that i've installed and repaired and worked with have worked over the years and 90 of them work this way some don't work this way try and find the instructions but if you're having problems with showers leaking or mold building up in strange areas and things like that then just bear in mind what i'm about to tell you first of all generally speaking you should always silicon all of the back corners of your shower so your bottom two edges against the wall between the tray and the wall should be siliconed and up the back edge now on this particular shower for whatever reason they've stopped halfway up and it just looks awful i'm gonna do it properly and silicon all the way from floor to ceiling and that'll look much better then in terms of your outer edges these should all be siliconed as well so down both sides of the uprights and along the front edge ceiling between the enclosure and the shower tray should be sealed along this outside edge now this is the important bit that you need to remember when you're having a shower water can run into all sorts of little gaps and nukes around the edge of the shower screen and that water needs to be able to get back out and flow down into your shower tray for example down this edge here you've got the main upright that attaches into the wall and then you've got the kind of adjustable bit which um attaches into the upright and water can easily get in between those two bits of aluminium and if it does it needs some way of flowing down inside the aluminium cavity and then out and into the shower tray now what people often end up doing is they'll seal all the way around this bottom edge here and water can't escape and what happens is stagnant awful minion water builds up inside this upright or inside the gaps in this bottom section here and then it'll just start overflowing in weird places normally it'll end up overflowing outside of the shower and you'll get bizarre leaks because of this as i say not all shower screens work like this so you do need to check your instructions and read them really carefully but i would say 90 of the ones i've come across tell you do not seal the inside door edge of the shower screen for that exact reason so in this situation this bottom edge here would be sealed this side edge would be sealed but this front edge wouldn't be sealed likewise over on this other corner the left hand edge here should be sealed the join between the upright and the wall should be sealed but this edge where they've tried to cork it along this front edge that shouldn't be getting sealed anyway that whole edge there should be left clear so that water can run back down and into the tray if you keep that in mind as a general rule of thumb for doing this kind of job then everything should be fine let's have a look at the sort of tools you're gonna need so don't panic i know there's a lot of stuff here but you're not gonna need all of this but i just wanted to show you all the stuff that i would generally take on a re-siliconing job with me because there's a lot of kind of problem solvers here you're gonna need first of all some sort of silicon remover i've generally found just like the no-nonsense type sealant removers work pretty well i've tried this unibond stuff and never had much joy with it apparently you can use wd-40 i have tried using wd-40 and it does work the only trouble is it does leave a kind of oily residue and you need to get that oily residue off before you can resilient and that can be quite tricky to get off you're also going to need a selection of scrapers to get the silicone off now what i like to use is just a bog standard utility knife i've also got a kind of handled knife a big what's that about four inch knife that holds a four inch razor blade in the top there that works really really well and i've also got a selection of plastic scrapers as well you're probably also going to need some sort of mold and mildew remover or bleach or something like that the hg mold spray works really well sometimes just that all you know mold and mildew remove mold and milk sometimes just a bog standard mold and sometimes just a bog standard mulder god damn sometimes just a bog standard mold and mildew remover will work perfectly well as well some sort of plastic scrubbing brush is very useful especially like a thin one like this is very handy you're going to need egg as of blue roll and you're going to need some old cloths as well i also like to use methylated spirits to clean everything down before finally applying the new silicon so there's just a couple of different types of methylated spirits we've got the pink one and we've got a clear one for whatever reason i'm not sure what this is called in the states but i'll include it down below and let you know what methylated spirits is i also keep a little portable hair dryer in my silicone bag as well the only use i'll ever have for a hair dryer it just means that if you've got all the joints like quite wet and the if the grout is wet after you've cleaned everything out you need to get it absolutely bone dry so having a little hair dryer in your kit kickback to sort that out is handy or ask your wife very nice oh no i wouldn't dare use my wife's hair dryer wouldn't it wouldn't even cross my mind to do that pain i did take your iron yeah and and your measuring jug and yeah okay and then finally we get to your actual silicon and i personally like to use the dow 785 bacteria resistant silicon i've always had really good results with that i've heard good things about the forever white silicon as well i don't even know if that is silicon it's much much lighter than the dow stuff i don't know if that is silicon but it says that it's got a 10-year proven protection against mold and discoloration so i don't know i've never used it if you've used the forever white let me know thank you very much to sealand wholesale who sent me this and that is not sponsored they just sent me a few tubes of various different sealants to try out obviously you're gonna need a sealant gun not the best sealant good in the world but i've had this for years and years and years so i know where i am with it i've got a bunch of spare nozzles that i carry around as well just in case and i've got spare blades for that scraper in there as well and probably most importantly i've got the fuji kit or fugi kit which is the silicon kind of uh what do you do the silicon former and you use this to drag along the joints and get nice clean silicone joints it's worth the investment they're not that expensive i'll include a link in the description below if you want to pick one of these up other things you're probably going to need as well you're going to need a dust sheet lots of dust sheets because it is a messy job you're going to need a bucket or a bin to put all of your leftover blue paper in because there's going to be a lot of paper covered in silicon and things so make sure that you've got somewhere to put it and obviously as we're dealing with kind of strong chemicals here you might want to wear gloves i personally don't but it's up to you if you want to wear gloves wear gloves if you want to wear any other protective equipment then feel free to do so right let's get sorted and get this done and dusted i would give yourself a good half day to get this done if you rush it you'll just be coming back later to redo it so you might as well spend your time do it properly give yourself a good half day of work also i would say don't fix what ain't broke if the joints are fine then leave it for example the joints down that edge there and that edge over there are absolutely fine so i'll not be touching those all the other joints so along that back edge here and all the way up that wall i'll be redoing and i'll be doing the full edge along the front outer side of the tray and by the way i would suggest you do this when the shower is dry so i would say try and give it a good kind of 12 hours since the shower was last used on your last shower use give the whole shower a good kind of dry out with some blue roll and just let the whole thing dry maybe open the window in the bathroom and it just means that then you're working on a dry shower rather than a wet shower it'll be much easier doing this repair if the shower is dry to start off with so the last time i used this shower was yesterday evening i dried it all out we're now at the following morning we're ready to start the job and then i'll not use it again until tomorrow morning so i've brought all the bits up that i need ready to start and i've also already tackled the lime scale i'm not going to go into the lime scale in a huge amount of detail all i did was i've got some toilet paper and just lined it up around all the edges soaked it in vinegar left it for about half an hour or so and then came back and scraped the lime scale off just check it every now and then that it's not causing any damage to the actual aluminium or like the chrome finish of your shower i would test it on a hidden area first because obviously the acid in the vinegar can potentially damage the shower in this case it was absolutely fine and as i say after about half an hour the lime scale scraped off quite easily so i'm in me monkey clothes i've got some knee pads on and i'm ready to crack on so the first thing i like to do before i start with anything else is to get your silicon remover on because that needs to be left for a little while so all i'm going to do is generously apply this to everywhere that i want silicon removed once again with these sort of products i mean i've used these a lot and i've never had a problem with them but i would always suggest that you test it on like a hidden little area first just to check that it's not going to cause any damage to either the shower screen or the tray or anything like that but i've used this so many times now i've never had a problem with it [Music] so once you're done with all of that you can have a little break you need to just leave it for a good half an hour hour if possible but uh yeah just leave it what does it say an instructions let's see well the instructions say leave it for 15 minutes but i've always found that the longer you leave it the better i would suggest that you test it and just find what works for you but you know if you can leave it for half an hour or an hour uh i've found that that works pretty well so while that's doing its thing i'm going to go and get a cuppa i'm going to get a bucket and everything else that i need to do the next part of this job right so a good half an hour has passed now and we are ready to start removing the silicon and you know it's ready because it goes all kind of wavy along the edge of the silicon so you know that's ready to pretty much just peel off some will come off quite easily some will be a real challenge i'm going to start in the shower because silicon is much much thicker in there and it might need a couple of applications to get off i'm not going to show you every single second of this because this will take a good couple of hours to get everything uh cleaned down and sorted out all i would say is use your selection of tools that you've got on hand anything that can potentially scratch use plastic tools on if it's stuff like tiles and stuff you can probably get away with the metal scraper but do be careful that you don't damage your tiles metal scrape is really a last resort but i can tell you right now looking at this silicon there's a lot of last resort silicon in here that's going to be a challenge to [Music] remove [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so that's the bulk of the old silicon removed now there's quite a few bits where there's mold growing either water has managed to get behind the old silicon or they've just siliconed over the top of mold and just left it so i'm going to give everything moldy a quick spray with a mold spray and then i'm going to go off have some lunch come back give everything a clean down let it dry for a bit and then we're ready to do the final silicon by the way it's quite strong stuff this so i would suggest you open a window while using it i'll include a link in the description to this if you're looking for it as i say and use any kind of bleach or anything but this works pretty well [Music] so all i'm doing now i'm steadily going around with a hairdryer drying out every joint just making sure everything's absolutely bone dry remember silicon does not stick to damp surfaces so you've got to get it absolutely bone dry and this is also a good opportunity to use the hair dryer to blow any bits of dust to a little leftover bits of silicon residue out of any of the joints as well so folks guess what we're actually ready to start siliconing well nearly uh we need to let this completely dry out now we've obviously we've done the hair dryering i would like to just leave it for a bit longer about half an hour now it's a good time to do a quick tidy up as well so i'll clean out the dust sheet clean out the shower tray put all my tools away and things just while i'm waiting on it to dry and then we'll get the last bit done i'm giving all the joints a good final wipe down with methylated spirits this gives a really nice clean surface ready for applying the silicon it's then just a case of applying the silicon itself and removing the excess with the fuji forming tools i am adding a slight return on the lower pillars stopping at the edge so that any water inside the pillar can drain out i wouldn't normally recommend this but i don't know what state the silicon is in behind the uprights so this is just belt and braces really just make sure you don't seal all around the bottom edge on the inside of the shower unless your shower screen manufacturer specifically recommends it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i'm not going to reinvent the wheel here and tell you how to use the fuji kit james from plumber parts charlie from charlie diy chess from ultimate handyman and skill builder have all made excellent videos about how to use these i'll leave some links to their videos in the description below my main tips for this is don't rush know when to stop and make sure you've got plenty of blue roll and that's us all done i'm dusted not the easiest of jobs but as per usual it's all in the preparation if you spend a bit of time doing the preparation the actual siliconing bit will be easy so let this dry overnight i'm going to give this until tomorrow morning it'll be absolutely fine and ready to use by tomorrow morning and what i would also suggest is that the first time you use a shower just watch out for any leaks or anything just in case you've missed a bit or something like that and you can fix it afterwards but hopefully i've gone round and i've checked everything i can't see anything that i've missed it's substantially better than it was before it's not perfect at the end of the day the shower has been like it's had remedial fixes on the ground using silicon all over the place and it makes it a little bit difficult like where do you stop basically but as i say it's a massive improvement and hopefully it'll not leak anymore a couple of little tips for you before i finish off if you do make a mistake on your silicon once it starts to skin you'll destroy it if you go over it but you can sometimes use like a dilute soap and water mix if you literally just do a quick spray of soap and water go over it with a finger or a tool you can sometimes fix mistakes that way but you can also sometimes make it a lot worse as well so that's a bit of a last resort if it started to skin and you've mucked something up you could give it a quick spray with soap and water but remember the rule silicon doesn't stick to wet things so if you make it too wet and then you're putting silicon over the top it'll you might as well just take it all out and start again another quick tip as well to avoid your silicone turning moldy in the first place try not to keep bottles and like um toothbrushes and all that sort of thing right in the corner of the shower on top of the silicon because if the silicon just never gets a chance to dry out then you're fighting a bit of a losing battle you want plenty ventilation in your bathroom try not to keep things right open it's okay having bottles in your shower but just don't have them right up against the silicone try and leave a bit of an air gap and then the silicone will dry out between uses and it'll last much much longer as per usual this is just my method of doing it i'm not saying it is the perfect way of doing it i'm not saying it's right or wrong it's just the way i do it if you do it a different way please let us know in the comments below and we can all learn from each other and it's a beautiful thing as per usual folks thanks for watching take care be nice i shall see you next time teddy bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Gosforth Handyman

Views: 3,030,495

Keywords: how to, silicone sealant, do it yourself, how to resilicone shower, silicone shower corners, shower leaking, shower screen installation, mouldy silicone sealant, replacing mouldy silicone in shower, remove mouldy silicone, how to remove old silicone from bathtub, how to remove old silicone sealant, how to remove old silicone caulk, how to seal shower, resilicone, diy, reseal shower door frame, reseal shower tile, replace silicone sealant in shower, replace silicone bathroom

Id: gycBOQJ58pU

Length: 23min 53sec (1433 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020