Question about a seam that wouldn't stick in a humid basement job

I was finishing a basement in Charleston last summer, the humidity was crazy, and my seam tape just would not hold on this one section no matter how much heat I applied, so I ended up mixing a little bit of aerosol seam sealer with my adhesive on a scrap piece and that finally did the trick, but has anyone else found a better fix for that kind of situation?

3 comments

3 Comments

troystone13d ago

That Charleston humidity is a special kind of beast... I had the same fight in a Savannah crawlspace. Running a dehumidifier is the right call, but sometimes you just need to get the seam to bite right then. What finally worked for me was wiping the backer board down with a rag soaked in rubbing alcohol right before applying the adhesive. It flashes off the surface moisture just enough for the glue to grab. Your fix might hold, but that alcohol trick is a lot less likely to mess with the chemistry long term.

michael_king7413d ago

Man, that is a ROUGH fix. Mixing aerosol sealer into your glue sounds like a last ditch move that could cause other problems down the line, like the seam getting brittle. In that kind of soup, you gotta treat the air first with a big dehumidifier running for a full day before you even touch the tape. Sometimes the only real answer is to walk away and wait for a drier day.

wright.finley13d ago

My last attempt at a humid fix involved a hair dryer and a prayer, which went about as well as you'd expect. The alcohol trick sounds way smarter than my desperate methods. I'm clearly better at making problems than fixing them lol.