Tips for foaming hard to reach space
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I’m trying to seal a hard to reach area. I tried a 25 inch extended spray gun, but the large foam can gets in the way.
Any tips on reaching far into a narrow space?
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I had a couple spots that I foamed by taping / zip tying a two part foam gun to the end of a broom handle. I then taped the safety in the on position and tied a rope around the trigger. It worked but it was difficult to aim.
DAP makes a foam gun that has a 5 ft hose between the handle and the can. It’s called the “ Sharpshooter Extend Foam Applicator ”. I bought one but haven’t had the clave to use it yet.
You can attach a piece of flexible tubing, like clear vinyl or polyethylene tubing (available at hardware stores), to the end of your spray gun nozzle. A 1/4-inch or 3/8-inch diameter tube, cut to the length you need, can extend your reach into tight spots. Secure it with tape or a hose clamp if it’s loose, and test it first to ensure the foam flows smoothly.
Any idea roughly how long a vinyl tube a great stuff can can push foam through?
Fair warning...my SF guys sprayed all my rim joists just like I asked. What I never thought about were the frost free outdoor faucets. These got covered in SF as well, insulating the entire pipe INSIDE the house.
When it got cold, the SF kept the interior pipe so well insulated from the latent heat of the basement that it kept the pipe COLD, and they froze and burst.
I'll be scraping all the SF off the of those faucet pipes inside the basement.
You can get freeze "proof" outdoor faucets with longer pipes to help avoid this if you insulate them. You need to get enough of the faucet's pipe inside the insulation so that the pipe conducts enough heat (I think of this as the faucet "stealing" heat from the interior of the house) to keep the assembly from freezing in the area of the valve, which is typicaly somewhere near the indoor end of the pipe assembly. The portion of the pipe past the valve should trickle drain on it's own and not stay full of water. You should NOT have any kind of accessory valve on the exterior of these type faucets that would prevent them from draining (i.e. no hose "Y" adapters with the valves shut or facing upwards).
Note that this becomes more critical if your indoor pluming is PEX and not copper pipe.
Bill
Right. Plus, I have a two brand new beautiful manifolds that allow me to turn any pipe run in the house off. Stupid me trusted the frost free faucets.
What I do in my own home is pretty simple. I have frost-free faucets, and I have seperate piping for the outdoor plumbing. I have a sample valve (for getting samples of well water for testing) inside near the beginning of the pipe run for all the outdoor stuff. I made an adapter with a male hose adapter, a check valve for pressurized air systems, and an air hose connector. In the fall, I shut off the water to the outdoor stuff, then connect my air compressor to that sample valve inside using the adapter. I blow out ALL of the pipe run to the outdoor stuff, and cycle the sprinkler valves to blow those systems out too. I then leave the water to that part of the system shut off over the winter. This blows all the water out, and leaves only air in the pipes, and the faucets, so I don't have to worry about freeze issues. The entire process only takes an hour or two, and most of that is waiting for the spinkler zones (I use drip systems in all zones) to empty out.
Bill