So a regular client came to me with an issue, she had two furnace pipes going into a chimney but they were not sealed around the edges, and her insurance company said she had to get them sealed, as they might leak carbon monoxide.
In any job calling for some kind of sealant (I refer to such gooey substances as GOOP), I always have to be on high alert, as it is SO easy to get the wrong stuff, and there are so MANY WRONG CHOICES. so I asked my guy at Home Depot about this, and he said I should get this product from Oatey/ Hercules, their high temp furnace cement:
Okay, this certainly looked good and made sense, I figured I needed something that could withstand the heat of the gases in the pipes. So I bought a tub of it. (Big mistake here, I did not cross check with other experts.)
Comes the day to do the install, I could not quite figure out the instructions on the tub for how to do the curing, as I was supposed to run the heat a little after installing as the heat would cause it to cure. So I called the company hotline and told them what I was up to. And they said, “NO NO NO you should not use this product for that kind of thing, out product needs super high heat to cure and those pipes will never get that hot.”
OOPS. WRONG GOOP.
So I called a local hardware store that deals in cement and mortar, and as luck would have it they had a guy who knew what kind of goop I needed, a product from Red Devil:
This was the right stuff as it hardens with minimal heating. And this time I called Red Devil help to make sure it was the right stuff.
It was a tough install because I could not get around to the other side of the pipes, access was blocked by pipes and a furnace, so I had to do it by feel and with a mirror, but I succeeded:
This is a perfect example of something I endlessly do battle with, these pitfalls of getting bad advice. I don’t do bigger jobs like installing storm doors, but these little jobs, there are always variables . . . you have to be very alert and make sure you get the right goop or whatever to do it right, and it is SO easy to get blindsided with bad advice, as I had been. My constant paranoia paid off bigtime.
Gotta do the research! Nothing is simple.