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Tools & Materials
Create Airtight Drywall With Great Stuff Flexible Drywall Gasket
This water-based foam gasket offers a clean and simple way to get a consistent, reliable air-seal between your framing and drywall.
Sponsored by DuPont
Drywall makes a great air barrier if you do a good job of sealing it to a house’s framing when you install it. Great Stuff Pro™ Gasket is a water-based spray foam that can make that job easy. The cans of foam pair with an compact reusable gun that you use to spray the gasket onto your framing, and then you let it set to a soft gasket that compresses flat when you place your drywall against it. This way you can get an airtight seal wherever drywall meets framing without the mess associated with caulks or other sealants. In this video, drywall expert Myron Ferguson demonstrates how to apply Great Stuff Pro™ Gasket and shows where to use it to help you build a more comfortable and energy-efficient home.
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This looks interesting. Does this change the AirTight Drywall strategy of using caulk to seal up the framing? Do you still use drywall adhesive and this gasket foam?
I used this product after a gut-to-the-studs house fire. It's a bit spendy, but may still be the cheapest way of creating "air-tight" drywall. It went on easily and didn't annoy the typical production-oriented drywall hangers (they only buried 2 boxes and only put one screw in a pocket door...)
The squishability of the product is a real advantage- I pookied the back of the J-boxes and then used this product to seal them to the drywall after installation- regular foam would have required trimming- this stuff just mashed down under the cover plates.
For lighting, I used 1/2" thick Lithonia LEDs ( Model # WF6 LED 30K40K50K 90CRI MW M6 UPC Code # 191848253946 ), airtight except for the flange-drywall joint. I put a bead of the gasket material around the flange before installation.
I used regular foam to seal all the sheathing joints (from the inside.) I haven't scheduled a blower test of my workmanship yet, but the house seems pretty tight- closing one door rattles all the others.
So, at this point, I can give a positive recommendation for the product.
PS- use a Sharpie to make an index mark on the knob, so you can tell how far you've opened the valve, which is what controls the reproducibility of the bead size. Same with a regular foam gun. Expect to practice a bit- there's a definite learning curve.
I always glue and screw my drywall. If I apply a bead of drywall adhesive to every framing member, does that basically do the same thing as this product?
I like to use glue to reduce screw pops in the future and also make up for a little variation in the framing.
Maybe, but I think the gasket is probably a better approach. Because it's fully cured before applying the drywall, it's less likely to be compromised if/when there's wood movement. The glue dries hard and will likely crack if there's too much tension.
I suppose this wouldn't work in colder climates that use vapour barriers. I can't see that foam sticking to the vapour barrier well enough.