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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Expanding Foam Gap Filler

We're having the house's back door stoop reconstructed. When the stonemason dismantled the old stoop, some mortar voids in the masonry block basement wall were revealed, like so.


'Not the sort of thing that one ought to leave as is. A can of expanding foam gap filler is in order.

I probed in those voids with a length of coat-hanger wire, and the voids appear to be bottomless. We'll see how this goes.

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The voids swallowed a whole can of filler. Had I aimed the nozzle downward, I probably would've needed a case of twelve or twenty-four cans. I aimed the nozzle to the sides and rear of each cavity, so the stuff would cling and build at the top of the cavities.  Here's the outcome.


No one will accuse me of having done that neatly.

It says on the can that the stuff fully cures in eight hours, so tomorrow morning I can trim off the excess and make it look right.

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I took a look at it about half-an-hour after that last photo was taken, and the stuff had 'grown' some more.


It's just as well that the job took the entire can. The instructions printed on the can warn you that you're only likely to get one use out of it -- the nozzle will clog when the can gets set aside after use. That may be the single most important thing to know about the foam. When you have need of a little of it, try to find use for the entire can, else you can waste a great deal of it. Once the nozzle clogs, you'll have no way whatsoever to salvage the remainder of the can's contents.

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MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012

All Done

The cured material is easily trimmed flush with a small,sharp utility knife. Here's the finished job.



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