Negawatt* News
Save Negawatts* of energy ! Draught excluders by the yard or metre...
Experimenting on something else, we discovered a curious property of silicon mastic, the stuff you seal around bathtubs and sinks with - although it sticks like dung to a blanket for almost everything, it doesn't stick to masking tape.
Friends had a very draughty house, an old farm, and the door frames and doors were much too irregular to use the self-adhesive foam strips, or the nice everlasting phosphorus-bronze kind sold for the purpose of keeping out the gales.
We stuck masking tape, the pale-yellow paper kind used by careless painters, onto the edges and top of the door and either side of the frame recess, extruded a healthy bead of mastic onto the frame and closed the masked door onto it overnight.
In the morning the door opened easily enough, for the silicone had not stuck to the surface of the tape. We peeled off the tape and cleaned up a bit with a sharp blade and lo, a silicone seal that fitted perfectly into the humps and hollows in the door, which then closed with an ear-popping clunk as in a posh car. Curiously, brown mastic was cheaper than transparent, and you can use white if your doors are painted that colour.
This works for lumpy windows too, of course. I can't include images in list mails, so if you are interested, but aren't sure what to do I've made some explanatory images - write to me and I will forward them.
* Negawatt - large and otherwise expensive unit of energy that you don't use.
simeon@raindropkites.co.uk
Experimenting on something else, we discovered a curious property of silicon mastic, the stuff you seal around bathtubs and sinks with - although it sticks like dung to a blanket for almost everything, it doesn't stick to masking tape.
Friends had a very draughty house, an old farm, and the door frames and doors were much too irregular to use the self-adhesive foam strips, or the nice everlasting phosphorus-bronze kind sold for the purpose of keeping out the gales.
We stuck masking tape, the pale-yellow paper kind used by careless painters, onto the edges and top of the door and either side of the frame recess, extruded a healthy bead of mastic onto the frame and closed the masked door onto it overnight.
In the morning the door opened easily enough, for the silicone had not stuck to the surface of the tape. We peeled off the tape and cleaned up a bit with a sharp blade and lo, a silicone seal that fitted perfectly into the humps and hollows in the door, which then closed with an ear-popping clunk as in a posh car. Curiously, brown mastic was cheaper than transparent, and you can use white if your doors are painted that colour.
This works for lumpy windows too, of course. I can't include images in list mails, so if you are interested, but aren't sure what to do I've made some explanatory images - write to me and I will forward them.
* Negawatt - large and otherwise expensive unit of energy that you don't use.
simeon@raindropkites.co.uk
posted by Simeon Lapinbleu at 23:06
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