Eternabond Review

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Sealed delivered Steve Maxwell - Ottawa Citizen, October 21, 2006

I bought and installed $20,000 worth of Repla windows in a showcase project, only to find that the windows leaked badly along seams in the vinyl extrusions. A manufacturing flaw was at the root of the trouble. Since I took delivery, Repla declared bankruptcy, and the new owners of the trade name refused to offer assistance, except to suggest that I rely on caulking to keep water out. The only positive experience I had during this ordeal came from engineer David Nunn, an independent professional working with the window industry. He examined my windows and provided a cutaway model of the vinyl extrusions used in my case. As far as we can tell, vital caulking was left out during assembly, allowing key joints along the sill to leak. It took three months of phone calls and e-mails to discover all these facts and to realize I was on my own. If I wanted to stop pools of water from forming on the floor every time it rained, I'd either need to tear out the new windows or identify a fix and implement it myself. I needed a technical expert, and that led me to Adrian Russell, a sealant guru at Construction Distribution Supply. He made several suggestions based on the digital photos I sent, including the use of a product called Eternabond (www.eternabond.com). I'd never heard of this product, but it was the key component of an excellent and elegant solution. The largest Canadian supplier of Eternabond is Roofer's World (www.roofersworld.com; 800-3526147) Eternabond is probably the stickiest and most durable tape on Earth. It's a family of astonishing roof repair products that come in several variations. I chose a cloth-backed version called WebSeal as a cap for my defective windowsills, used over top the best polyurethane caulking I could find. WebSeal is designed to be painted, and that's why I chose it over the other plastic-backed and foil-backed Eternabond products. Either the caulking or the WebSeal alone may have done the job, but for how long? Used together, however, I'm confident that the sills are now sealed as reliably as if they were made from a single length of vinyl. Eternabond was originally developed for use sealing pipes under the ocean, and the adhesive backing is the most amazing part of this product line. It's pressure-activated. Once you put the tape in place and squeeze it down, it's not going anywhere. I never realized anything could be so sticky.


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