With the minidigger gone and most of the mud sorted out, now was the time to refit the PVC door and window I had to pull to fit the digger through, for the sake of 3cm.
Here's the door all nicely back in place, after a few sharp thumps and kicks to seat the frame. Better than new, I used some trade gun PU foam to seal up the inevitable gaps you get between the brickwork and the frames. Unfortunately, I also managed to blast it into my eyes, twice. Not for want of care. Unlike regular cans of squirty expanding foam you get at B&Q, these trade cans are half the price and shoot out of a reusable metal gun. After use, you clean the gun by washing it through with some squirts from a can of solvent that screws on in place of the PU foam. I had some tissue over the end of the nozzle as I rinsed it through and the rinse sprayed back at my face. Lesson leant the hard way, turn your face away when rinsing.
You can find the squirty foam guns at Toolstation.com They don't sell them at B&Q. The B&Q verions are a plastic nozzle you screw onto the can. Both the screw on nozzle and can nozzle cure and so block within minutes of setting them aside, rendering them useless. You need to check out a trade 'gun' and 'gunable' cans of the foam. The B&Q type will rip your pockets dry of cash.
I found it helped a lot wearing a pair of disposable gloves to keep it off my hands. Like silicon, once it's on yours hands, it's on everything else. I also found acetone was great for wiping both the silicon and PU foam off while it was wet, so had a big roll of tissue and acetone next to me to clean up as I was going. Acetone works beautifully for getting the glass crystal clear. Any foam left standing proud, after it'd expanded and cured, I could poke back into the gap with a chisel.
This IS the gun. I got it free with a gigantic 12 pack of the foam cartridges. The bigger one is the foam, the small one is the solvent. I like this gun, it's well balances and comfortable. It also has a brass dial on the back for adjusting the flow rate, which is very, very important and makes applying it a whole lot easier. It has a fine thread, so I can adjust it from literally nothing to jetting out all over the place; for tiny gaps to big voids. With B&Q, straight from the can, versions there's no dial and you control the flow by depressing the nozzle, making it impossible to dispense neatly. The gun comes with little plastic nozzles, two fine point cones and two long straws for reaching deep into spaces. The solvent can be used to clean everything, I used it with some tissue to wipe the port off on the gun and foam can after foaming and before rinsing to make sure they didn't clog or get all mucked up. I also found a neat solvent saving trick. After foaming, there'll be a good few seconds worth of squirty foam still left in the gun it's self. If you go straight to rinsing, you'll waste a massive amount of solvent. Instead, unscrew the foam cartridge and dispense whatever is left in the gun; plan ahead so u still have some void left to fill. The rinsing will then take almost nothing. The solvent will clean the gun to the point that it all looks new, 'specially if you squirt some onto a bit of tissue and wipe it all down. One negative, I heard an almost silent hiss while I was sitting at the computer typing this and went searching. Discovering the can of foam was quietly hissing propellant. Maybe I damaged the seal with excessive cleaning or it's just a dud, but it shut up when I turned the can upside down, allowing some of the foam to block where ever the leak was in the port.
The door is in cleaner and sounder than it was when I pulled it out. I've Flash cleaned the whole thing, then wiped out all down with acetone, removing the pencil marks left by the builders. The expanding PU foam has filled some of the annoying voids they left - and I know they have a PU foam gun, I've seen it in their truck. Tisk tisk... sez John
The void you see filled with foam isn't an issue. The jamb is fixed with screws, the foam just helps sure up the voids. A piece of PVC trim, not installed in this picture, covers the mess to create a neat finish. Having foam behind the trim means I can then wipe a blob of silicon over to level the surface and glue the trim on without it sounding and feeling 'hollow' behind it, so it won't be so prone to bending or coming loose. The foam it's self is sticky enough to glue things together, but I didn't want a big green line of it expanding out the sides of the trim.
I used this same trick for the piece of white plastic you see at the base of the jamb on the inside. This small sheet of PVC covers the gap you can see in other photos where the 'crete of the foundation bridges over the Kingspan insulation and outer brickwork. The Kingspan was recessed a good two inches below the surface of the 'crete and brickwork, as it lies underneath the slab. With nothing solid in this big void, the PVC sheet always felt loose. Filling the void with foam and fixing the base trim in place whilst it was still sticky has made the piece exponentially more rigid and firm, as it now has something to rest on over it's entire span, and the foam has effectively glued it into place when it cured.
When taking the trim off, it sustained a few nicks and burrs that you can just about see in this photo. I shaved those off with a carpet knife and may fill the seams with some silicon once they're in place, depending on how I feel. I hate using silicon, it's all sticky and messy and hard to keep under control. Yes, I cleaned the muck off pre-refit
The easiest way I found to deal with the silicon is to leave it two or three minutes after gunning to start tacking up before using the wet finger. I also found it much easier to do it in at least two stages. Rather than wipe it an immediately expect a smooth surface, wipe it to get the excess off and the bead into a rough curve shape, wait another two minutes, then wipe it smooth with a spit soaked finger. It should smooth up like it's being polished with the second wipe, which'll help stop so much dirt sticking in it when it dries.
Here's the door all nicely back in place, after a few sharp thumps and kicks to seat the frame. Better than new, I used some trade gun PU foam to seal up the inevitable gaps you get between the brickwork and the frames. Unfortunately, I also managed to blast it into my eyes, twice. Not for want of care. Unlike regular cans of squirty expanding foam you get at B&Q, these trade cans are half the price and shoot out of a reusable metal gun. After use, you clean the gun by washing it through with some squirts from a can of solvent that screws on in place of the PU foam. I had some tissue over the end of the nozzle as I rinsed it through and the rinse sprayed back at my face. Lesson leant the hard way, turn your face away when rinsing.
You can find the squirty foam guns at Toolstation.com They don't sell them at B&Q. The B&Q verions are a plastic nozzle you screw onto the can. Both the screw on nozzle and can nozzle cure and so block within minutes of setting them aside, rendering them useless. You need to check out a trade 'gun' and 'gunable' cans of the foam. The B&Q type will rip your pockets dry of cash.
I found it helped a lot wearing a pair of disposable gloves to keep it off my hands. Like silicon, once it's on yours hands, it's on everything else. I also found acetone was great for wiping both the silicon and PU foam off while it was wet, so had a big roll of tissue and acetone next to me to clean up as I was going. Acetone works beautifully for getting the glass crystal clear. Any foam left standing proud, after it'd expanded and cured, I could poke back into the gap with a chisel.
This IS the gun. I got it free with a gigantic 12 pack of the foam cartridges. The bigger one is the foam, the small one is the solvent. I like this gun, it's well balances and comfortable. It also has a brass dial on the back for adjusting the flow rate, which is very, very important and makes applying it a whole lot easier. It has a fine thread, so I can adjust it from literally nothing to jetting out all over the place; for tiny gaps to big voids. With B&Q, straight from the can, versions there's no dial and you control the flow by depressing the nozzle, making it impossible to dispense neatly. The gun comes with little plastic nozzles, two fine point cones and two long straws for reaching deep into spaces. The solvent can be used to clean everything, I used it with some tissue to wipe the port off on the gun and foam can after foaming and before rinsing to make sure they didn't clog or get all mucked up. I also found a neat solvent saving trick. After foaming, there'll be a good few seconds worth of squirty foam still left in the gun it's self. If you go straight to rinsing, you'll waste a massive amount of solvent. Instead, unscrew the foam cartridge and dispense whatever is left in the gun; plan ahead so u still have some void left to fill. The rinsing will then take almost nothing. The solvent will clean the gun to the point that it all looks new, 'specially if you squirt some onto a bit of tissue and wipe it all down. One negative, I heard an almost silent hiss while I was sitting at the computer typing this and went searching. Discovering the can of foam was quietly hissing propellant. Maybe I damaged the seal with excessive cleaning or it's just a dud, but it shut up when I turned the can upside down, allowing some of the foam to block where ever the leak was in the port.
The door is in cleaner and sounder than it was when I pulled it out. I've Flash cleaned the whole thing, then wiped out all down with acetone, removing the pencil marks left by the builders. The expanding PU foam has filled some of the annoying voids they left - and I know they have a PU foam gun, I've seen it in their truck. Tisk tisk... sez John
The void you see filled with foam isn't an issue. The jamb is fixed with screws, the foam just helps sure up the voids. A piece of PVC trim, not installed in this picture, covers the mess to create a neat finish. Having foam behind the trim means I can then wipe a blob of silicon over to level the surface and glue the trim on without it sounding and feeling 'hollow' behind it, so it won't be so prone to bending or coming loose. The foam it's self is sticky enough to glue things together, but I didn't want a big green line of it expanding out the sides of the trim.
I used this same trick for the piece of white plastic you see at the base of the jamb on the inside. This small sheet of PVC covers the gap you can see in other photos where the 'crete of the foundation bridges over the Kingspan insulation and outer brickwork. The Kingspan was recessed a good two inches below the surface of the 'crete and brickwork, as it lies underneath the slab. With nothing solid in this big void, the PVC sheet always felt loose. Filling the void with foam and fixing the base trim in place whilst it was still sticky has made the piece exponentially more rigid and firm, as it now has something to rest on over it's entire span, and the foam has effectively glued it into place when it cured.
When taking the trim off, it sustained a few nicks and burrs that you can just about see in this photo. I shaved those off with a carpet knife and may fill the seams with some silicon once they're in place, depending on how I feel. I hate using silicon, it's all sticky and messy and hard to keep under control. Yes, I cleaned the muck off pre-refit
The easiest way I found to deal with the silicon is to leave it two or three minutes after gunning to start tacking up before using the wet finger. I also found it much easier to do it in at least two stages. Rather than wipe it an immediately expect a smooth surface, wipe it to get the excess off and the bead into a rough curve shape, wait another two minutes, then wipe it smooth with a spit soaked finger. It should smooth up like it's being polished with the second wipe, which'll help stop so much dirt sticking in it when it dries.
The resident DIY Doctor Dave, a neighbour, had told me how important it was to shim the PVC frames as they went in. I can warp the door frame almost a centimetre by pulling hard on it, so simply blasting screw into it with an electric driver will warp it all out of square. I picked up a pack of these shims from Toolstation.com They're about £5 for a pack of 100, but well worth it. The pack has a ton of different, colour coded, thicknesses in it. I could simply jam these into the gaps and mess around with the sizes until I got a snug fit. They come with a handy tab for pushing and pulling them in and out, which snaps off if it's poking out beyond a frame. They're also a nice U shape, which lets you poke them in where a screw runs through and seat the screw at the base of the U, setting them in place while you screw the frame in. They go from fat to really thin (you can only see the fat ones in this photo) and have tapered fronts so they can be wedged in place easily.
They're obviously not just for PVC jamb fitting. I'll probably end up using them on the decking and bunch of other things around the place. Seems so simple and not worth spending the money on but it's incredibly handy to have a pack of these to hand
They're obviously not just for PVC jamb fitting. I'll probably end up using them on the decking and bunch of other things around the place. Seems so simple and not worth spending the money on but it's incredibly handy to have a pack of these to hand
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