Skirting & Air-Tightness

ninjaBob

I believe that SinnerBoy pointed this out in another thread (can't recall which one).

Before I put on my skirting what would be the best options to ensure where the walls meet the floor that I limit any potential airflow?

I was thinking of using expandable foam, but then I was thinking because my floors are 18mm that I would put in my floors use a silicone / tape to seal where the floor meets the wall. Leaving it ready to put on the skirting.

I am open to suggestions.

beyondpassive

If you are concerned about airtightness, the skirting is the least of your worries. well worth getting an the loan of a blower door and smoke pencil.

mickdw

I know we did some smoke testing on a large commercial building in relation to fire certification & we found that expanding foam is useless with regard to airtightness. After having spent many many days filling everything with foam, the air went through the building as if it wasnt there. We had to go back and coat everything with silicon

ninjaBob

Is there any tapes for this? I used alot of Airtightness Tape, should I be using these?

Cheers

Technophobe

Hey Ninjabob,

I presume that anywhere you used the Air tight membrane that you carried it down onto the floor for sealing??

Anywhere else, would carrying floor perimeter insulation around all walls as opposed to just external walls not do the trick?

Another alternative would be to tape the join of the walls to the floors with the tapes you refer to?

maybe, maybe not

sinnerboy

This type of tape

http://www.proclima.com/co/INT/en/contega__pv_pd.html

Is intended to bond to a window frame and provide a mesh to begin wet plastering to the wall . But it looks to me that if you pvf bond sealed the concrete floor slab that you could stick it to the floor . Then fully wet plaster behind the skirting

I would check with the manfacturer first though

soldsold

Tescon primer, or SIGA dockskin can be painted onto the floor beside the walls, then they can be taped to the walls. Klober/ Moy may have similar primers but I dont know.

Be careful not to tape to a non-scratchcoated wall unless the tape is specifically for this, many of them will just pull off.

For bare concrete block walls a "mastic" type sealer is usually applied using a gun that looks very like a standard silicon gun. Siga are bringing out a new tape that is basically a roll of 8mm thick, 10mm wide mastic with a tape backing. You just roll it out on the blockwork instead of having to be careful to keep an 8mm bead of mastic. Ive tried it on the SIGA airtightness course and it looks very good, no idea of price but a guess of "shirt off yer back" probably wouldnt be too far off.

If interested in the different tapes etc for your own build - doing the one day airtightness course with either SIGA in mountmellick through metac, or the same type of one day course with ecological building systems and proclima would be a good investment and an interesting day for 50 euro.

gears

mickdw wrote: »

I know we did some smoke testing on a large commercial building in relation to fire certification & we found that expanding foam is useless with regard to airtightness. After having spent many many days filling everything with foam, the air went through the building as if it wasnt there. We had to go back and coat everything with silicon

I do hope you haven't gone ahead and sealed everything with Silicone, as it's fine at first and will probabaly pass a blower door test but in time it can shrink and will pull away from what it's sealed to. A much better approach is to use the products from an air-tight system.

gman2k

What do folks reckon is the best value (or even cheapest) tape for taping floor to wall underneath the skirting?

gears

I reckon cheap tape won't work for air-tightness. There's no point going to all the trouble of sealing up a house using selotape or duck tape as they will loose there adhesion quite soon. The best value in the long run is to use a taping system designed for the purpose from SIGA or Intello or some other specialist manufacturer. As always with what ever you buy look for certification from IAB or similar.

Ferocious

I’ve planned to install the floor (insulation, underfloor heating and concrete) after walls and ceilings have been plastered.
If the wall is plastered down below the top of the floor insulation (there will also be wall insulation between the floor and the wall), is it necessary to seal the junction and what is the best way to do this?
Tape the finished floor to the plastered wall with?
If I have polythene over the insulation (under the pipes and floor) could/should I bond this to the plastered wall with something like siga primur?

In terms of air leakage/infiltration, usually, where is the largest loss? Windows/floor-wall/wall-ceiling...