What are the most common mistakes people make with bedding beads?
When you’re laying a bedding bead, you’re essentially applying a gasket. So your bead should be shaped like a gasket—rounded, like an O ring. Some installers will flatten the bead by pushing the tip of the gun into it too much. It’s an easy mistake to make if you aren’t an expert in sealant application. But it can really undermine the seal’s performance.
When do you use a bedding bead?
Bedding beads are laid in bedding joints, which is a type of sealant joint formed when the surfaces of two planes need to be bonded and sealed together.
How you secure two planes together—such as fiberboard siding and walls, or window flanges and wallboard, for example—can have a big impact on the performance of the building envelope. So making sure your sealant bead is right can be critical. In this article, OSI Application Engineer Paul Majka explains how to lay a proper bedding sealant bead and why it’s important.