Silicone caulking
Just a rant on dang Silicone, I bought a 1997 Lance camper a few weeks ago, and I need to be kicked in the rear if I ever buy another RV thats had silicone slathered everywhere. This poor camper has ...
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The hate about silicone for me with this camper is that as i remove old silicone you can see layer after layer of silicone as you get down to the camper you can see what appears to be the original Lance caulking. This silicone has degraded from the weather and the following is from a silicone site.
"deterioration of sealants can be caused by
prolonged exposure to water, ultraviolet light, and freeze
thaw cycles; evidence of weathering appears in the form of
chalking, discoloration, cracking, or softening."
The silicone on my camper was displaying all of the above characteristics.
my experience has been if you just remove the silicone or if you put silicone over the old it will not stick and fails very quickly, nothing seems to stick to silicone.
My process has been to remove it the best i can and then remove the "film" of silicone.
Now as i remove this and replace the caulking we will see if what ever i choose to caulk with holds up.
I thought I should add, that the people who owned this camper before me apparently thought the silicone was working and sealing, it was not. There are various areas where the silicone has failed and damage has occurred, when the silicone fails it doesn't readily appear bad, but gentle probing will show evidence of failure, instead the previous people just applied more silicone that did not stick. I am not blaming the previous people I probably would have done the same thing until I actually started to learn about silicone.
"deterioration of sealants can be caused by
prolonged exposure to water, ultraviolet light, and freeze
thaw cycles; evidence of weathering appears in the form of
chalking, discoloration, cracking, or softening."
The silicone on my camper was displaying all of the above characteristics.
my experience has been if you just remove the silicone or if you put silicone over the old it will not stick and fails very quickly, nothing seems to stick to silicone.
My process has been to remove it the best i can and then remove the "film" of silicone.
Now as i remove this and replace the caulking we will see if what ever i choose to caulk with holds up.
I thought I should add, that the people who owned this camper before me apparently thought the silicone was working and sealing, it was not. There are various areas where the silicone has failed and damage has occurred, when the silicone fails it doesn't readily appear bad, but gentle probing will show evidence of failure, instead the previous people just applied more silicone that did not stick. I am not blaming the previous people I probably would have done the same thing until I actually started to learn about silicone.
