Replacing Silicone caulk

[Mr. Bill]

Hi,

My house is 12 years old and the shower in the master bath needs recaulking.

It is a cultured marble pan with cultured marble walls. The bead of clear silicone caulk has failed in a couple of places allowing water to get through (drip drip drip downstairs).

I have read several how-tos, and tried them , but I cannot get the snew silicone to adhere where the old was.

The technique I tried was to scrape away as much of the old as I could, clean it with rubbing alcohol and re-caulk. That lasted about

3 weeks, and then a nice long bead of caulk came up.

Any ideas?

Any ideas that people have tried that worked?

Thanks

[Joe Bobst]

Your clean up was ineffective. Soap scum, detergents and similar are known killers of the silicone bond. Try a soap scum remover, even two different brands since there are competing chemistrys in the market, and each works better on a particular kind of bath soap deposit. Get it clean it ought to work just fine. Good luck.

Joe

[blue]

I agree with Joe. We did ours once and it looked bad (first timers), redid it, it looked good, but ended up coming up, redid it for the 3rd time, it came up, then the last time we scraped for HOURS and got rid of every bit of caulk possible, cleaned the entire area with our bathroom cleaner, then cleaned the entire with 99% ispropyl rubbing alcohol to get rid of any residue left behind from the cleaner. Anything less than

99% ispropyl alcohol contains oils and can leave a residue. With the good cleaning, so far, so good. :-)

[CAStinneford]

All good advice and I'll add one more thought. When I redo the bathroom caulk, after I've removed the old caulk and cleaned it up, I put a box fan in the bathroom...aimed at the tub or shower... and let it run a few hours to be absolutely sure all moisture is dried up in the area the caulk is going.

[m Ransley]

All good advise, but you forgot one thing. MOLD , It grows and impeeds caulk life adhesion .And only Bleech will kill it

[Roger]

Make sure the silicone is for bathroom applications, and works on plastic resin products like cultured marble, and not use the paintable silicone or paintable acrylic caulk. Also use fresh product. Older stock will not set correctly. I sounds as if you cleaned it well, using alcohol, but you may have to try to scrape or razor blade more of the old caulk out of the crack, and check for total dryness - a hairdryer might help for prep.