Home Improvement | Green Home Improvements | Home Improvement Tips

A caulk gun is one of those tools that everyone can identify, but not a lot of people use on an everyday basis. Caulking guns can, of course, be used for much more than just caulk. They can spread out caulk, sealants, adhesives, and just about any other tacky chemical or material that is designed to be used with a caulk gun.

Most caulk guns have a nozzle cutter in the handle.

Caulking guns only have a few moving parts, but correctly operating them often eludes the home improvement beginner. I know, because I was once one of them! Manual caulk guns are relatively cheap (usually under $10) and can be used over and over again for many years if they are properly cared for. And, like a lot of home improvement tools, caulk guns only take a few minutes to understand but can take a lifetime (or at least several big jobs) to really master.

It’s called a caulk or caulking gun because it pretty much looks like a gun. There’s a shallow metal half-tube that’s the “barrel” of the gun. That holds your caulk tube. There’s usually a metal plunger that can move back and forth along the barrel of the gun and the shaft that connects to the metal plunger is notched on only one side. That’s an important detail. The gun also has a trigger which, when squeezed, should move the plunger a little bit forward if the notches are aligned down towards the floor. The entire caulk gun is simply a mechanical device for pushing caulk or sealant out of those plastic or cardboard tubes.

Before you use any sort of caulk you’ll want to read the manufacturer instructions carefully, be sure that the area you’re applying your caulk or sealant is clean and free of any dirt, dust, debris or other sealant and you’ll probably want to be working in a well-light and well-ventilated area. Goggles are also a good idea when working with caulk because you don’t want some of these chemicals anywhere near your eyes. A lot of people smooth over their caulk with a wet finger when they are done. That’s usually an okay idea, but if you’re using anything other than simple bathroom caulk you’ll want to double-check the instructions to really make sure the stuff in your tube is safe for contact with skin.

Now that our area is clean and we’re set up to be safe, here are the basics of using a caulk gun:

1. Cut off the end of the caulk nozzle: All sealant and caulk tubes have a tapered plastic tip that’s usually a few inches long. You’ll have to cut this nozzle to allow the caulk to come out, but there’s a few things to remember. The farther away from the nozzle you cut, the larger your opening will be. A larger opening means more caulk will come out in a thicker stream. If you’re unsure, you may want to go with a smaller hole (cut closer to the tip of the nozzle) when you start out. You can always cut the nozzle a little further down to make the hole bigger, but you can’t make the hole smaller once you’ve cut the nozzle.

Another trick: look closely at the nozzle because many have a small outline of where you should cut for various applications. If you have one of these little guidelines on your caulk tube nozzle then you’ll also realize that the guidelines are on a 45 degrees angle. You’ll almost always want to cut your caulk tube nozzle at an angle, and not straight across. It gives you a better shaped hole and allows for a little more control when it comes to spreading your caulk.

Finally, it’s time to cut. Check your caulk gun closely. Do you have a little hole somewhere near the trigger mechanism? Be careful, that’s actually a little sharp piece of metal that’s made to cut the nozzle off a caulk tube! Just stick your nozzle in there, angle it appropriately, and gently but firmly squeeze your caulk gun’s trigger. The trigger should move back and slice the top off that nozzle fairly cleanly. If your caulk gun doesn’t have a nozzle cutter built in then you can you a utility knife or razor, but be sure to cut against a piece of wood or the floor. Never place the caulk tube against your leg or part of your body and try to cut it.

2. Poke a hole in the seal: Even though you cut off the tip of the nozzle, you may need to take one additional step. If you look down the nozzle you may see that the caulk tube actually has a foil or plastic seal that’s holding the caulk back. You need to poke a hole in that seal. This time look under the front of the barrel of your caulk gun. Many caulking guns have a long metal pin there. The pin should swing out and in front of your barrel, almost like a bayonet. You can push that metal pin down your caulk tube nozzle and straight through the seal. It shouldn’t take much effort. When you’ve done it, pull the metal pin out and wipe it clean before folding it back under the barrel of your caulk gun.

Just pull the plunger all the way back and rest the caulk tube in the caulk gun barrel.

3. Load the caulk tube in the gun: Now you’re ready to go! You just need to load the caulk tube in the gun, which is a pretty straightforward procedure. First, twist the metal plunger so that the notches are facing upwards. Now pull the metal plunger all the way back. You’ll now want to put your caulk tube into the gun, with the nozzle sliding securely into the opening at the front of the gun. The tube should lay completely flat in the metal barrel.

Now you’ll need to get the gun ready for action. Twist the back plunger back around, so that the notches are now down towards the floor. You can now squeeze the trigger of the caulk gun, and it should catch on the plunger’s notches (or teeth) and it should move the plunger forward towards the front of the gun by just a small big. Each time you squeeze and let go of the trigger, the plunger should move forward a little more. You’ll want to watch the plunger to make sure it goes into the back of the caulk tube straight and even. The trigger should squeeze easily for a few times, and then you’ll begin feeling some resistance. Stop when you feel that pressure, because it means the plunger is now in the caulk tube and about ready to start pushing caulk out the other end!

4. Begin caulking: Again, this is a little bit of an art form and if it’s your first time, you may actually want to buy an extra tube or two of caulk and simply practice on some scrap wood or a left over cardboard box. To apply caulk (or any other sealant) you’ll want to lay the angled tip at your starting point and begin squeezing the trigger firmly and steadily. As the caulk begins to come out you’ll want to slowly pull your caulk gun away from the trail of caulk. You’re going to basically keep squeezing and pulling the caulk gun along, leaving a trail of caulk “behind” it. As long as you are firm and consistent, your caulk line should be about the same thickness along your entire edge.

Again, this takes practice and a lot of people smooth over their caulk lines with a wet finger or popsicle stick or some other slightly rounded object after they’ve applied their caulk. You can do this, but again, practice makes perfect. I’ve put down a line of “okay” looking caulk only to then completely mangle it because I didn’t smooth it over very well.

5. Remove the caulk tube when you’re done: If everything went well, then you’ll be able to continue applying caulk or a sealant until the plunger has moved all the way into the tube and you can’t squeeze the trigger anymore. To remove the caulk tube you’ll want to turn the plunger so that the notches or teeth are pointing upwards (and therefore not engaged) and then pull the plunger all the way back. Now the caulk tube can be lifted out of the barrel and thrown away. If all went well, then your caulk gun is probably still fairly clean and can simply be put away or used again.

Power caulk guns can apply consistent pressure to the caulk tube.

After a tube or two of caulk you may find your hand starts to get a little sore if you’re not used to this sort of thing. Just take a break and pick up again in a few minutes. If you’re working on a large job that’s going to require lots of caulking you may want to consider picking up a power caulk gun which runs on batteries or canisters of air. These caulk guns should be able to consistently squeeze out a bead of caulk without wearing out your hands.

Again, when it comes to applying caulk, practice makes perfect. Find a caulk gun you like and stick with it for a few jobs before your switch to another. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to operate a caulk gun and put down professional looking caulk lines after just a few jobs!

It’s not often that you have a book, much less a large set of home improvement books, that are voluntarily recalled.

Yet, that’s exactly what’s happened to about 951,000 different home improvement books published by Oxmoor House, Inc., a publishing company that specializes in informative “lifestyle” books.

Oxmoor House, Inc. and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) are working together on the home improvement book recall. The nine books in question are all home improvement in nature and contain errors in electrical diagrams and wiring instructions that, if followed to the letter, could give DIY homeowners an electrical shock or could result in an unsafe fire hazard.

The books were published between 1975 and 2009, which indicates that the exact same wiring diagrams and instructions have been used over and over again in these various home improvement books for the past three decades without anyone catching the error!

Though the Consumer Product Safety Commission has reported no incidents related to the error, Oxmoor House still strongly encourages anyone with the books to contact them for a full refund. To get the book refund you will need to register your recalled home improvement book on the special recall website: www.sunsetrecall.com or call the Oxmoor House Recall hotline at (866) 696-7602.

After contacting them, Oxmoor House will send you a prepaid shipping label so that you can mail the recalled book back to them free of charge. Within 4-6 weeks you will receive a check as a refund for the book. You do not need to have a sales receipt to be eligible for the refund.

The nine books in question are:

This is not the first time a home improvement book has been recalled due to faulty electrical diagrams. Back in May of 2009 two other electrical book, “Wiring a House 3rd Edition” and “Wiring Complete Expert Advice from Start to Finish” were also recalled. Both books, published by The Taunton Press, contained electrical graphics that were mislabeled, mixing up the ground and neutral wires and incorrectly stating how to wire a GFCI Receptacle.

I do not have any of the home improvement books on the recall list. If you’re looking for good DIY home improvement books with plenty of photos and fairly clear instructions, I usually recommend the Black and Decker Complete Guides as a good starting point.

My gas furnace is only a couple years old, so I wasn’t real happy when it began operating intermittently, sometimes starting when it should and sometimes not. We would be sitting in the living room playing a board game or just walking around and one of us would say, “Hey, it’s kind of chilly in here…”

You can actually buy replacement flame sensors online.

We’d check the thermostat to see that the heat was set for 68 but the house was still only 66 degrees. So I’d turn the thermostat off, wait a few minutes, and then turn the heat on again. Sometimes that would work and the heat would kick on, but sometimes it wouldn’t. I went through all the basic gas furnace troubleshooting steps and I was still averaging about a 50% rate of being able to get the heat going again.

Each time I couldn’t get it going right away I panicked a little more until everything magically started running again. So I took a few safety precautions: turn off the heat, shut off the gas and took the cover off my furnace for a closer examination. You may also want to wait a few minutes before working on a furnace, just to let it cool down.

I started checking out my furnace a little more closely and I stumbled upon three little green LED lights that would give me error codes. Two lights were solid on when everything was working correctly, but one green light would blink whenever the heat stopped running. One the inside door of my gas furnace was a wiring diagram, a truncated table of error codes and a troubleshooting flow chart which was a little too technical for me to completely decipher. Most furnace companies don’t make their full technical manuals available to the public because it really isn’t safe for do-it-yourselfers to be rewiring gas furnaces. There’s just too much that could go wrong.

But as I was looking in my furnace, trying to understand how the whole system worked when I suddenly remembered having a similar problem with another gas furnace years ago when I lived in a condo. That time I called the technician out and he poked around a little bit and then pulled out some steel wool and quickly cleaned a little part. The furnace started working again almost immediately and he charged me $145.

You can see how difficult it is for me to get to my flame sensor.

That’s when I remembered it: the flame sensor! In most modern gas furnaces they’ve done away with the old pilot lights and gone to electronic ignitions which work similarly to gas grills: gas starts flowing and an electric spark is used to light the gas.

The flame sensor then checks to see how hot the flame is and helps the furnace regulate how much gas to use to keep things warm. The flame sensor is usually a 3 - 4 inch gray metal looking rod that has a little white porcelain base. It can be either straight or angled but it should be positioned right in front of one of the burners.

If this sensor doesn’t think the flame is hot enough it will simply put the furnace in a safety “lockout” mode because that could be the sign of a gas leak or other potential problem. This lockout mode could last anywhere between 15 - 30 minutes. You can sometimes bypass the wait by flicking the circuit breaker or resetting the electrical power to the furnace. No, you’re really not supposed to do that, so if you are unsure about anything with your furnace you’re better off calling in a technician.

Flame sensors can go bad and they sometimes need to be replaced (you can even buy gas furnace flame sensors on Amazon!), but often they’re just corroded or need to be scratched clean a little bit to keep operating well.

Most people recommend gently rubbing some steel wool against a flame sensor to clean it, but mine is sort of hard to get to, so I just use a long screwdriver and gently scrape up and down and around the flame sensor as much as possible. You may or may not be able to see anything getting cleaner, depending on your situation.

And that was it! Once I got everything back up and running the problem was solved - my gas furnace has now been running without a hitch for the past seven days, all because it has a clean flame sensor.

And, yep, I saved myself $145 in the process!

The sales and marketing of Christmas lights and decorations is only superseded by the even larger sales and marketing of wild and clever plastic containers and gadgets that are meant to be used for the storing Christmas lights and decorations.

I’ve tried several different clever containers and methods for storing my Christmas lights from one year to the next. Some work better than others, but I was looking for a simpler way. I’ve tried putting the light cords back into the original plastic trays with very little success. It’s both too time consuming too easy to break bulbs or LED’s out of their sockets when you’re trying to cram everything back into the box the way they came out.

My method for storing my Christmas lights is cheap and easy and it’s worked for for me for several years now. Here’s what I do:

1. Remove and Test your Christmas Lights: I take down each strand of Christmas lights separately and test them after I get them down, just to quickly make sure I haven’t broken or crushed anything accidentally in the removal process. This may seem silly, but it saves me from storing a set of lights that is broken or in disrepair.

2. Wrap Each Strand of Christmas Lights Separately: I know some people who keep three or four long strands of Christmas lights all plugged together in one long line from year to year, but I find that small strands are easier to work with. I keep each strand separated and then I just coil or wrap them in a circle. For longer strands I run them around my arm and hand like any other cord, but I try to keep the loop rather loose. For smaller strands I sometimes wrap the lights around a cardboard tube (from paper towels or toilet paper) or even a chuck of cardboard. The idea is to have the lights in a loose coil or pattern. Yes, there may be some minimal tangling, but if you do it neatly and gently it’s rare that you’ll have any real problems next year.

3. Pack the Christmas Lights in Plastic Bags: Yes, plastic bags. I do not use old plastic shopping bags, but rather, I splurge for the clear zip top freezer bags. There are several reasons for this. First, zip top bags usually stay shut, so your Christmas lights won’t go falling over the floor if you pick up the wrong corner of a bag. Second, clear bags make it much easier to see what’s in the bags and the freezer variety of plastic bags are made of a thicker plastic than regular bags. And these types of bags are durable and can be flattened and packed tightly and even provide a little spot for labeling.

4. Label and Store Your Christmas Lights: I use a Sharpie marker to then write on the outside of each bag a few things. I write where I put them (indoor, outdoor, tree, bushes, etc) and sometimes the brand or number of bulbs if I know it and sometimes I write on the year that I bought them. I have recently started cutting up the Christmas light boxes and putting the specifications panel and spare bulbs and fuses for each set of lights into the bag as well, just for use at a later time. The trick here is to make sure you put the right set of lights back into the right bag each year. Finally, I store all my Christmas lights in one big clear plastic storage bin. Again, I like clear bins because I can see what’s in them without opening them up.

The total investment for my Christmas light storage solution was probably less than $20 which bough the clear storage bin, a box of zip top freezer bags and a permanent marker. Using this simple method I’m able to find, organize and pack away my Christmas lights with a minimum amount of hassle!