The Pro Clima tapes that we sell are great products, they adhere so well to substrates that if you try to remove them after a day, which won’t be easy, you will end up destroying the substrate or the backing of the tape. Doing this will really give you the confidence that the tapes will indeed last for years to come.
However, job sites generate a lots of dust and dirt. If you are applying tape and the substrate is dusty, the tape will adhere to the first element it encounters – the dirt. This of course isn’t a solid durable substrate and thus the tape won’t be able to connect in a airtight way to the substrate beneath it. The dust will cling to the solid Acrylic adhesive and thus prevent proper attachment of the tape.
hand brush and cloth to clean substrate before taping
This dust issue is especially prevalent at window sills and other horizontal surfaces. So have a hand-broom/cloth available to clean you substrate when taping, as this will assure proper adhesion of the tape.
From my experience, if the application of the tape and cleaning of the substrates is rushed, the middle of the sill will be clean enough to allow for proper adhesion. However, a quick sweep of the sill does remove most of the dust from the middle, but some is pushed into the corners. As these corners are already the hardest to seal, even with the formfitting TESCON Profil tape, the addition of dust while trying to adhere the tape into the corner properly will lead to an incompletely adhesion. Which results in the need for another round of checking adhesion, cleaning and taping to be done to properly seal these junctions.
Dirt under tape prevented proper connection in corner of window box
Sweeping and cleaning the sills and corner well the first time around, will make tape stick the first time around, should almost eliminate the need to retape the corners, and most importantly it will prevent frustrations later during blowerdoor-tests as reaching 0.6ACH50 for Passive House certification with tape adhered to dust is practically impossible.
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