When To Use Backer Rod? Sealants 101 & Sealing Big Cracks.

all right so today I'm here with Nate Ferraro from zashko backer rod I learned something about baccarat from you and you know all of it it's just this little phone circular stuff to me but I didn't even know there was any difference in um open cell and closed cell baccarat um can you share some information about that to our audience so we can have a little more understanding about it sure thing let me start by talking about why I need this background oh that's a good point so so there's kind of three reasons why one might want to use baccarat right now obviously this is a pretty massive joint here right the the first reason is actually price right if you were to fill this whole thing with sealant that would be really expensive right and we've blown this up this is a big big joint it's also actually more durable and so when you think about this joint we're pretending that this joint is moving this direction right so it's trying to move here right and the sealant is flexible right it can move as the joint moves but if we film this whole thing in with sealant right it would be stuck on this third side right so we're basically allowing the sealant to move up here but down here the sealant can't move so instead of moving freely it's kind of going to do this right and that's going to cause it to potentially crack and split sealant doesn't actually stick to back and rot so you want that in there as kind of a bond breaker to make it so that you only have adhesion on two sides because when you have a teasing on two sides it can move all at once yeah that's pretty interesting because I have no idea of one thing that the sealant wouldn't stick to backer on yeah and so it's designed for that purpose and it's designed so it won't stick then apparently the last reason to use backer on is actually because of kind of the the geometry of the joint you see how this looks kind of like an hourglass right it's kind of thinner in the middle wider on top if this was just a flat bead we wouldn't have that and that hourglass actually gives you a few things so first off you get a lot of surface area for adhesion right so it's going to stick better but if this was this thick the whole way it actually wouldn't move as well right so having it a little thinner in the middle makes it so that it's more relaxed when it needs to move I've always thought they've just always spilled the joint up as much as possible and if you feel the joint entirely then it's not going to crack and it's not going to fail I see there's all kinds of different background different sizes of background there's all the way down to quarter Edge so would I always try to use background or is there times when I just don't need to use that garage so I'll typically tell folks that I start thinking about using background when the joint's about a half inch or deeper anything from a quarter to 3 8 you you really don't have this problem right where you're getting too thick right right to the point where it's not going to move anymore um but yeah it comes in a bunch of different sizes I mean I'm looking at them and I see a color difference you know right off the bat it seems like this one is dark gray this one is a lighter gray there's basically two types of background there's there's open cell and closed cell right this one's actually hybrid we'll talk about that in a minute but open cell is going to absorb water right right it's also squishier right so you can kind of force it into the joint to make it the diameter that you want right kind of to conform to the Joint exactly okay exactly I'm not a big fan of open cell because if the joint ever fails and you get water behind there now you got a sponge behind your wall right so you're uh you're keeping water in so so we don't open we don't offer any open cell background so none of your so this is it opens up so we'll get to that it's it's a hybrid that so this is a closed sellback ready for how stiff that is right so if you have you know a joint that's the same size right the whole way this is perfect for that this one we call filler up this is actually a hybrid where it's actually open cell in the middle but it's lined with a closed cell on the outside so you see how squishy that is yes so you know think about like a sidewalk or a driveway right it's not it's not we've built a joint that's one certain width it's cracking all over the place right this can be really nice because it can be nice and big in some of those bigger areas but you can squish it down in some of the smaller so it's a little easier to work with but still gives you that waterproof so open cell and the inside and then got a seal on the outside of it that's right so some interesting information about baccarat that I didn't know so that helps out a lot I mean you learned something every day so I to me like this right here is kind of Representative of like a concrete dildo I mean concrete Delta upset why gaps like that and they always stuff back around in there and stuff and so I really never thought of it as you know saving sealant um or saving money you know so that's interesting that I had no idea that it didn't stick to it so that's really good to know so two just some cool things I learned today thank you very much for sharing this information you're a wealth of knowledge can't believe how much you know about this stuff so I'm my friend if you guys got any questions or comments for me just leave them down in the comment section below I'm sure you'll be willing to answer them for you [Music] [Applause]