Randal Murray: Hey guys, Randy with Pete's
RV TV today. Another quick tip segment for you. Today we're in the Burlington, Vermont location
shop and I want to show you how the industry puts on these great looking caulking jobs
to seal up our corner moldings and the base of our slides and other areas around the coach. I see a lot of units come in where customers
have done their own caulking job and they just don't look so good and they're not sealing
very well either. So let me show you some tricks that I use
[00:00:30] when I do it. It makes it look good and makes sure that
we get a great seal. So first of all, a few things that we need. We need some caulking, and if you go to your
local RV dealer or come to us, we'll show you the best stuff to use for the right surface
and the right job, so we'll instruct you on that, and any local RV dealers should be able
to take care of that. I also like to use a quality caulking gun. Now, there's one that you can buy that costs
like $1.99 at the big box stores, the Home Depots, the Lowe's and things like that. This one is actually a little bit more expensive,
about [00:01:00] 15 or 20 bucks, but it's a lot more manageable and it makes the job
a lot easier to do, so I do recommend if you do own an RV, invest in a good caulking gun
and you can use it for other things around the house as well. This actually does have a stop on it so I
can stop pushing. So the caulking is not coming out of the end
of the tube and just very nice control on it. Very easy to use. So invest in good caulking gun. One of the most important things that makes
me look good too is odorless mineral spirits. Odorless mineral spirits is the active ingredient
in a lot of the caulking out there. [00:01:30] This is the one we use. I like the odorless 'cause it doesn't stink
quite as bad and it's super easy. It's just a light duty paint thinner, but
it's going to help us work the caulking and clean the surface as well, which is very important. So let's get started. So we can get sealant gaps on our coaches
from them just being used. Only roll a camper down the road, it's like
putting your house through a 3.4 earthquake on the Richter scale every time it moves. So lots of moving parts, lots of things that
can open up for sealant gaps and we need to maintain these just like we maintain the seals
on our roof. So first thing I do is I'm gonna clean the
surface before I [00:02:00] go ahead and apply. So I'm just going to take white rag here and
I am going to put some mineral spirits on it. I go ahead [00:02:08] here. And I fold it up just for ease of use. Now I don't need to soak, soak the rag, but
I do like to get it damp, kind of like that. I also always have another clean rag on me
as well, so we want both of them. So let's clean the area here at the base of
this slide. And I'm just going to take the mineral spirits
and just wipe the area that I am going to clean and that's going to help get the dirt
off the existing [00:02:30] caulking, clean the surface, and allow us to get good contact
and good adhesion when we apply the caulking. So I'll get that wiped down pretty good. Get all the dirt and grime off, tuck back
my wiper seal there in there. If the caulking is really old and dried and
cracked, we probably will want to remove that with some sort of razor or some sort of scraping
blade. This one's not too bad, so I don't need to
get that tool out, but you may. We don't want to go over bad caulking and
we want a real flat surface to make sure that we get a good looking caulking, a joint, and
a good seal. If it's really bumpy, [00:03:00] it's going
to be really hard to maintain that quality of the look and the seal and ensure we have
no leaks. So get this cleaned up pretty good there. Now, I'm going to take my caulking. We'll set this here for a second. The other thing that I see a lot of people
do is they put way too big a little hole on the end of the caulking tube. We do not need a whole lot of material and
having too much material is going to actually make it not a good looking job and hinder,
uh, our sealing process. So I'm going to take and just put a small,
[00:03:30] small hole in this. I'm going to put it at about a 22 degree angle
too. That allows me just to work it a little bit. I like it to be nice and straight at my angle,
that way I'm not pushing into the caulking when I'm doing it, so it looks pretty good. Put my knife back in my pocket here. And I'm going to fill the tube. I don't know Karl, if you can see that white
coming up through that clear plastic tube there. I'm going to get it to the end so we get all
the air and everything out and I'm going to stop it by hitting my button on the back of
that [00:04:00] good caulking gun that I just referred to. So our area is clean. I'm going to take the dry rag and just wipe
any excess off from a cleaning process, make sure we get all the dirt, all the mineral
spirits and everything off, and then we're going to go ahead and start to apply. Again, I've got my mineral spirit rag in my
hand because I'm gonna use that here in a minute. It's gonna become very important. So now I'm gonna pump this thing up and I'm
going to start to apply and I'm not going to put a huge bead. I don't need huge bead. [00:04:30] Kind of
pushing it into the crack, into the transition, right straight across. We'll stop right there. Don't go too far because you want to be able
to work the area that you're doing and if you go too far, you may start getting a skim
coat over the top of it. So now this is the trick that separates the
men from the boys. After we get a small bead on there, I'm actually
going to take that wet mineral spirits soaked rag, mineral spirits soaked rag, and I'm going
to put a little on my finger [00:05:00] and this is where we get a good looking job. So I'm actually going to take my finger and
I'm going to go about four to six inches and then I'm going to clean my finger and I'm
going to continue that process down my whole caulking joint. What that does is it pushes it into the crack,
seals any cracks that are there. It also tapers, so we get a nice transition. We don't have a place where water is going
to sit or moisture is going to sit. We've pushed it into the crack and we've finished
it off and I'm actually going to go back to the other way and just get any excess off. Well, Karl, if you want to take a [00:05:30]
look at that, that's not a horrible looking caulking job. We've tapered both the edges. We've pushed the caulking into the crack. We don't have a ton of material on there. We don't need a ton of material on there. Any water that runs down the slide box will
go right over that caulking joint right off the side of the slide box, just the way we
want it. Now, that was easy. That was the horizontal one. Let's do a quick vertical one here just so
we can show you that as well, and it's gonna be kinda the same way. Gonna take my mineral spirit damp rag here. I'm just going to clean the area. Get that [00:06:00] dirt and debris off there. Make sure I got good adhesion. Clean the area up really good. I'm gonna take my dry rag and again, get any
of the excess off, dry it out where I run my caulking. Back to the caulking gun. Again, notice it's not continuing to push
out because I have a good caulking gun and I can take the pressure off it very easily. I'm going to make sure I clean the end of
my gun so I'm starting fresh. I'm just going to go up here and again, start
that bead. [00:06:30] Nice, easy, small bead. I'm pushing it into the crack as I go. I don't need too much material. If you get an air bubble, you can back up
a little bit. Not a big deal. We're just going to go down, nice fluid motion. Make sure to only do what you can work as
well, so if you can only do two or three feet until you get good at it, just do that. Back to the mineral spirit rag. I'm going to put it on my finger again and
I'm just going to start drawing down, again cleaning my finger about every three or four
inches. The [00:07:00] mineral spirits is going to
give us a little bit more working time as well, and I'm just doing a light touch here,
giving it a nice taper. I'm just kind of feathering it in so you can't
see where I've started and stopped. I'm going to go down there and you can see
how quick and easy this is. Karl, if you want to take a look at that job
there, and that's how the guys do it at the factory and it's super simple to do. Nice and easy. It looks professionally done and we've got
a great seal, a great taper, and we have penetrated both sides of the surface plus sealed our
joint. So if you do my couple little tricks here
with [00:07:30] you're caulking gun, get a good caulking gun, use mineral spirits, make
sure you dampen your finger. Don't put too much product on, all that's
going to do is push out and get all over the place and get real ugly while you're playing
around with trying to clean that up, the other stuff's going to skim over and make it really
hard to work. So if we just do a little bit, taper it in,
keep things clean, there's no residue left on my finger when I'm done. Life is good. That'll seal all your cracks. That'll make a great taper and a great looking
caulking job when you're done and they'll take a professional did it, not just you. So thanks again for watching Pete's RV TV
with Randy today. [00:08:00] I look forward to seeing you on
the road, and happy camping.
