Tägliche Haupterneuerung-Spitzen

Yesterday we wrote about and shows the major gaps along the outer edges of our family room fireplace which caused significant air to rush into our home during our second energy audit’s blower test.Today, we show the solution.

For comparative purposes, here is one picture showing the gaps between the wood trim and the brick of the fireplace. 

Now, our solution was to use DAP Seal N’Peel removable (or as I say in the video below, strippable) caulking.

Why this product which, yes, is one of the products included in our DAP Energy Saving Packages which you can win in our current contest (ending 11:59 pm ET on October 11, 2009)?

First, it is clear. I don’t want it to be seen when one is looking at the fireplace.

Second, it is strippable, meaning that I can peel it away very easily compared to say regular caulking.

This was very important to me as I really didn’t know how this would turn out. Having used this product around the opening to our attic from inside one of the closest in our home I knew that this product works well in sealing out drafts and air leakages. What I didn’t know was how it would look in the one room in our home which has the most traffic and where we spend most of the time.

Applying it was as easy as any caulking I had previously applied. 

The entire fireplace borders on the left and right of our family room fireplace took one full tube and part (approximately 15%) of a second.

How does it look? Well, compare the first picture above which is the before picture (before we applied the DAP Seal N’Peel caulking) to the following picture: 

While you can see the caulking you do need to really look carefully, right? As you can hopefully see the full gap is sealed preventing further air leaks which this winter will see our home use less natural gas to keep our home warm and thus save us money on our lower heating bills. The clear caulking looks shining because I took this picture about 10 minutes after I had applied it.

Above is a second after picture, this time focusing on the lower part of the fireplace’s left side around the cabling, a typical area for air leakage in homes. You can compare it to the before picture in yesterday’s article. Again, the caulking looks shiny becasue it is still wet as I took the picture about 10 minutes after it was applied.

And, if you prefer to see video, you can by playing the short clip below.

Next, we look at the application of this same product around the outside of our billiard room fireplace in our basement which has a totally different type of material used to cover and surround it from the above fireplace’s brick. To tontinue to the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 3.