Air sealing your windows and doors is an easy task to preserve cool or warm air in your home. When it comes to air sealing, the most popular option is caulk. By creating a good seal, the outside atmosphere will be kept from entering your home, and the cool or warm air produced by your ventilation will stay inside. It’s a great way to save money on your utility bills!
If you’re planning to renovate your home, you may be wondering what type of caulk is best to use. In this article, we’ll be looking at the five best caulks for air sealing, their best feature, advantage, disadvantage, and application.
Why Is Air Sealing Important?
If you want your home to be as energy-efficient as possible, you need to do more than just insulate and ventilate. It would be best to use a sealant to fill those tiny holes that allow air to pass through. If you don’t seal up your home and keep out any unwanted dirt, bugs, and air from the outside, you won’t get the best from your HVAC system or insulation materials, and it’ll cost you more money than it should.
That’s because air can leak through tiny holes, heat can escape in the winter, and cool air can escape in the summer, which means that your HVAC has to work even harder to do its job, using more energy to pump up your electric bill.
What Is the Difference Between Sealant and Caulk?
Sealants or caulks are essential because they help ensure that your home is well insulated from the outside environment. It helps keep your home safe from water and air leaks.
Caulk and sealant are typically used to fill spaces between two building materials, and both are designed to be air-tight. The main difference is that caulk is more flexible than sealant and can withstand minor joint movement. Most caulk in the market can contract and expand without cracking in high or low-temperature conditions.
To give you ideas on what caulk is the most effective based on your application, here are five products you can try:
Prosoco R-Guard Air Dam
Whether you’re working on residential, commercial, or institutional projects, be sure to use a high-quality sealant. R-Guard Air Dam is a caulk for air seal that produces a durable, weather-tight seal suitable for most common building materials even without priming.
Air Dam is also compatible with most sealants and waterproofing or air barrier components. It helps protect against moisture problems, including air leaks which cause energy loss and make your building less comfortable.
Best Features
R-Guard Air Dam caulk is waterproof and can be applied to dry or damp substrates in unfavorable weather conditions, eliminating many weather-related construction delays.
This cauk also protects against insects and vapor infiltration.
Advantages
- Easy to use
- Cures quickly
- Long-lasting
- Weatherproof
- No mixing required
Disadvantage
- One year shelf life
Applications
Air Dam is best for interior and exterior uses, particularly for window and door frame materials such as wood, vinyl, and metal.
Sikaflex Construction Sealant
This all-purpose silicone caulk offers strong adhesion and waterproofing properties best for heavy construction projects. Sikaflex caulk can be painted with water-based, oil-based, and rubber-based paint to make your construction quicker.
Best Feature
Sikaflex construction caulk is available in 4 colors: white, limestone, capital tan, and dark Bronze. Its elastomeric properties will help it perform well over time, while its color options will help it blend seamlessly into the structure of your home.
Advantages
- Durability
- Non-staining
- Tear resistance
- No primer needed
- Flexible consistency
Disadvantage
- Fragile tube
Applications
Sikaflex is suitable for air sealing joints and gaps in walls, floors, window or door frames, balconies, and expansion joints. It is also used to weatherproof joints between brickwork, block-work, masonry, wood, and concrete or metal frames.
Flex Shot Rubber Adhesive Sealant Caulk
Suppose you’re looking for a flexible, high-quality, easy-to-use caulk to air seal your windows. In that case, Flex Shot rubber adhesive caulk is an excellent alternative for home repair work involving gaps that could allow outside air into the house. Flex Shot can stretch and fill significant cracks and holes, and it does all of this without any of the mess or headache of traditional caulks and sealants.
Best Feature
Flex Shot adhesive caulk can be used for interior and exterior air sealing applications.
Advantages
- Affordable
- No need for a caulk gun
- No shrinking and cracking
- Has extension tube to seal hard to reach places
Disadvantages
- Fragile canister
- Difficult to clean up if spilled
Application
Flex Shot rubber caulk can be used to seal concrete, plastics, aluminum, metal, and elastic materials.
GE Advance Silicone Sealant
This silicone caulk is recommended for beginners since it is easy to apply, and you can see imperfections in your seal before the caulk cures.
Best Feature
The GE silicone caulk can hold up to severe weather and withstand the aging effects of sunlight and rain.
Advantages
- Durable
- Flexible
- Easy to use
- Shrink proof
- Moist resistant
- Weatherproof
- Not prone to cracking
Disadvantage
- Non-paintable
Applications
GE advance sealant is best used for indoor and outdoor purposes, specifically for windows, doors, siding, and trims.
Loctite PL Polyurethane Caulk
This industrial air sealant can withstand heavy rains and snows while giving its optimum condition without tearing or cracking. It is paintable, but the curing time could take more than a week.
Loctite PL caulk is superior to silicone caulk because of its ease of use, beautiful finish, and durability. Also, this polyurethane caulk can be painted, whereas most silicone cannot. This means that it’s a versatile material for numerous home repair projects to achieve color-matching results.
Best Features
Loctite PL Polyurethane Caulk is a multi-purpose adhesive and sealant. It can be used to glue foil-faced rigid foam insulation to concrete and other building materials and seal joints between sheets of drywall.
Advantages
- Long-lasting
- Easy to apply
- Tear-resistant
- Great flexibility
Disadvantages
- Expensive
- Long drying time
- Not ideal for permanent water immersion
- Not suitable for areas that exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit
Applications
Loctite PL caulk is used to seal the door, window, wood baseboard, garage framing, fascia, siding, and sill plates. This caulk can also bond wood, vinyl, fiberglass, metal, aluminum, concrete, brick, stucco, and other surfaces.
This ends our blog about the best caulks for air sealing. If you are concerned about energy efficiency, caulk is an excellent choice for keeping the environment of your home under control.
