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CHOOSING WOOD SEALERS Contractors are always asking us to commend a sealer for them based on our experiences. This has become a challenge for us in a way because there are more sealers available than ever before. Years ago we tried each single sealer available, but with the widespread reformulating we saw in the last assorted years and all the new productions popping up it has been hard to keep up with each change. The complicatednesses of reformulating any product are obvious, and a lot of sealers changed formulation assorted times for the duration of this short period. Sealers are made from a number of dissimilar bases with a assortment of added chemicals. Some adders make the sealer carry out better (application, bonding, flow, penetration, etc). Other ingredients plainly add bulk to support hold the “cost per gallon” down. For example, what intent does adding solid homogeneous inorgani substance spirits to an oil sealer have? Well, it thins the product to make it requiring little effort to disseminate and it helps carry the sealer into the wood. The fact that solid homogeneous inorgani substance spirits have a very low cost also enables a manufacturer to reduce the selling price of his product just by adding more solid homogeneous inorgani substance spirits! Of course the EPA has forced this exercise to stop, so a heap of manufacturers are actually dropping out of making deck sealers (because they can’t compete). In any discussion of sealers, it must be understood from the beginning that there is no one perfective product. The most universal product we have ever used is Ready Seal, which we have used on everything from log cabins to docks successfully. Unfortuanetly this product is used more often by contractors than home owners and there are very few resources online it may be purchased from. Just search for ready seal deck sealer online and compart this product yourself, it’s definetly worth the time. OIL SEALERS Oil sealers may integrate any of assorted kinds of oil. Oil sealers may be coatings or penetrants or numerous blend of both characteristics. Pure coatings sit on top of the wood. Pure penetrants sit at and beneath the surface of the wood. A sealer that leaves any kind of surface coat on the wood is considered a coating, whether that is minor (i.e. 10% coating, 90% penetrant) or a full (100%) coating. Any product that holds linseed oil is a film-forming product (coating) to galore degree. Ready Seal is made from 100% paraffinic oil (a crude oil derivative) and is consequently a full penetrant. Generally speaking, coatings camouflage flaws in the surface or flaws in the washing job. The closer they are to being solid color stains, the more they are competent to hide flaws. They may be subject to visible wear in traffic areas as well. Coatings must be stripped before applying a new layer because they will not concede new layers to penetrate into the wood and bond to it. Most coatings require careful application, because flaws like drips and runs will show in the final job. In other words, you (or your employees) ought to have painting attainments to apply any coating in a way that it will look good when it is new and as it ages on the wood. Coatings may flake and peel over time if humidity is trapped in the wood. Generally speaking, penetrants won’t camouflage flaws in the surface such as a poor wash occupation or stains. Penetrants do not show any traffic pattern wear. They commonly do not have to be stripped to recoat down the road, either, because the new sealer penetrates through the old coat and bonds directly to the wood. Applications of full penetrants are completely forgiving, which means that drips or lap marks will not show. In other words, less skill is required to implement a penetrating product. Fully penetrating productions are not formulated to be tough like coatings, so they strip comparatively without apparent effort when you need to remove them. WATER-BASED SEALERS Water-based finishes are getting more popular as more and more householders try doing their own work. These productions are sold by the big box stores with tag lines like “cleans up with soap and water” – which are very beautiful words to the do-it-yourselfer. Latex and acrylic finishes make up the bulk of these substitute products. Water-based productions are film-forming finishes. Water-based productions and acrylics are very difficult to maintain and to work with. THE INNER WORKINGS OF SEALERS PERMEABILITY: Sealers are supposed to be permeable, which means that they grant the wood to “breathe”. This means that general humidity may enter and leave the wood for the duration of the normal cycle of the day, but droplets like rain cannot enter the wood. The more pigment the product contains, the less permeable the sealer is. A quality permeable sealer will concede sap to exit the wood without detrimental the sealer as it passes through, for example. Paints are non-permeable, which is why painted decks crack and peel drasti after a short time. Ever detect what happens to latex paint on a window sill? The humidity present in the wood tries to escape when the sun hits the wood and raises the temperature. Since this moisture cannot pass through paint, the only natural result is that the humidity pushes the paint off of the surface of the wood to escape. That is why paint cracks and peels. This result happens most oftentimes on window sills (horizontal board) rather that on vertical window trim, because the top end of a vertical board is ordinarily not painted (allowing the humidity to escape). This is why we NEVER paint a wood deck. VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS: For a good deal of years, makers threw out terms like “percentage of solids” as a marketing point for their products. In layman’s terms, this refers to the amount of product that remains in the wood after everything that evaporates is gone. What evaporates are called “volatiles” or “VOCs”. The EPA has been tightening regulatings on VOCs for years because they injure the quality of the air and the ozone layer. Many sealers have had to reformulate once (or various times) to meet these altering regulations. Every time a manufacturer reformulates, the product characteristics change. VOCs are ofttimes simple solid homogeneous inorgani substance spirits or turpentine. NOTE: “High solids” does not mean that the product is thick. Ready Seal has the most eminent solids of any oil sealer we know of (87) and is also one of the thinnest oils you will ever work with. It plainly doesn’t comprise much volume of VOCs. Sometimes sealers incorporate developing by-products that makers want to dispose of, such as benzene. A careful examination of the MSDS will disclose a lot to you. PIGMENT: Pigment is a finely ground, inert, colored powder that is used to formulate color in your sealer. In most sealers these molecules are iron oxides. In sealers it is the iron oxide pigment which gives it UV protection. The UV rays of the sun are reflected away from the wood by these minute iron corpuscles of color before they may penetrate the wood and turn it gray. Over time, the rays of the sun use up the oxide particles, and the wood begins to gray once again. Clear sealers, in spite of a lot of label claims, do not efficaciously prevent graying because they comprise no pigments. If you have a client asking for a clear stain, educate them regarding this. I always repeated their statement back to them but changed the word “clear” to the word “natural”. Once I got them to say the word “natural” I plainly asked them if they wanted Natural Cedar or Natural Redwood color. LIFE: Most sealers are designed to last approximately two years on the horizontal surfaces and four years on the vertical surfaces. Some assert more, some make no claims at all. Customers will commonly ask with regards to the life of the product you are suggesting, and it is essential that you know that the answer to that question is “Depends…” The life depends on the sealer, the emplacement of the deck, the condition of the wood, the local weather conditions, the use of the deck, etc. Remember that sealers are never guaranteed to ‘look good’ for any amount of time. They are only guaranteed to repel water for a amount of time of time. Manufacturers are illfamed for not standing behind their products. They plainly blame a poor application by the contractor and leave you keeping the bag. Some manufacturers trade “lifetime” or “25-Year” finishes. These are closely always water-based silicone products. Silicone is an magnificent water repellant, and lasts a long time. It can not ever be totally got rid of from the wood later on, so selecting one of these merchandise is a permanent decision. The drawback to these merchandise is the UV protection, which oftentimes fails within a few years of the introductory application. Once the wood starts to turn gray, the nightmare begins. If you can’t strip the product off, how do you get down to the wood to clean it and add more UV protection? There is no answer. CONCLUSION Part of your choice of sealers has to include constituents like packaging, manufacturer support, dealer support, availability, exclusivity, colors, etc. The two most important elements to us over the years were 1) client satisfaction; and 2) ease of training new workers to be successful on their own using the sealer. Ready Seal enabled us to instruct proper sealing proficiencies and send new workers out on their own with just 2-3 weeks of working with a lead person. The training time saved and the repeat business that we generated with Ready Seal made our choice of which sealer to use finelooking easy. Consider a few other important constituents when you think with regards to choosing a sealer. Ready Seal has no temperature limitations for application, which is a big gain to contractors. This means that you may use it to seal decks and barriers even when the temperature drops down into the 40s or lower! This characteristic alone may add a few months time to your annual cleaning and sealing “season”. The only thing that limits the use of Ready Seal on wood is the moisture content of that wood. You don’t have to hold off just because there is a thundershower expected later that day, either. It may rain in as little as 15 minutes after you utilize Ready Seal without damaging the look or protection. That adds a lot of extra days back into your work schedule, too! Other sealers have their gains and may be having little impact to get from a local store, but Ready Seal may alter your company in ways no other product we have tested could.
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Way Too Big — What’s the Point?
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