Silicone dissolver ?

[Arfa Daily]

Number two daughter is moving back up to our neck of the woods, and is coming back to stay for an indeterminate length of time whilst she and her fella sort out a new flat or whatever in the area. Now she has this uncanny knack of being able to find the exact spot that the shower tray leaks, resulting in water coming down through the ceiling in the utility room downstairs. I don't know how she manages it. Never happens when me and the wife use the shower every day ...

Anyways, the silicone sealing around the tray and door etc is starting to look a bit grotty as its been there a few years now, so I guess this is a good time to re-do it. Trouble is that these days, I can't be fagged to spend hours crammed down through the cubicle doors on my already knackered knees, so I'm looking for testimonials from the good folk on here, for the silicone digester chemicals that you can get now from the DIY sheds. Are they any good ? Any recommendations for best value / performance / speed products ? Do Toolstation do one ? Couldn't find it in their catalogue, but could be looking in the wrong place ?

Obviously, I'd like to get the whole job done in a day if possible, so's the shower is not out of service for longer than that. Also, what to clean down with before re-caulking ? It would be a bit of a bugger to redo it all, only to find that the new stuff didn't stick because there was some residue of the digester left on the tiles ... :-)

TIA

Arfa

[Roger Mills]

I think that with all of them, you need to remove as much of the silicone as possible by mechanical means before using the dissolver. I, too, would be interested in other people's experience with them. I have used some which I got from Screwfix, but wasn't over impressed. I have recently bought some different stuff when Lidl had it on offer, but haven't had cause to try it yet.

[Chris Bartram]

I've used the Unibond stuff. It works fairly well, but it's messy, sticky stuff- rather like sealer before it sets.

It is best to use one of those plastic removal tools to get the bulk off first.

The new sealer stuck on OK afterwards- no problems there.

[ss]

I gave up on chemical removers, what I do now and I am in the process of doing one of the showers is do a small section at a time so I dont get hacked of doing it but this means I do it properly. The side or section I am doing I tape (gafa tape) a strip of polythene above it and a couple of inches around the corners, the strip will be about 6 inches of a drop and cover over the silicone seam and the edge of the tray. A bit unsightly but it does allow the shower to be used until the job is done.

[Scott M]

[snip Arfa]

From my experience, I reckon the mistake people make with the gloops you can buy (TS do do one, bought some a while ago) is expecting them to actually dissolve silicone[1]. What they do is destroy the 'stickingness' so that all traces of the old stuff can be fully removed so that freshly applied silicone will then stick.

Trick seems to be:

a) mechanical removal of 99.9% of the old stuff

b) apply gloop and wait prescibed time (20mins on the TS one)

c) Thoroughly wash away it and, with it, the remnants of the old stuff with washing up liquid.

I bought this to remove silicon from a potted bit of circuiry to let me repair it and just used some before re-sealing a kitchen sink and it worked well in both cases. This was after reading a load of old UK.DIY threads that said, as per the other posts in this one, that they didn't really do a lot.

Scott

[1] At least, at a rate faster than tectonic shift.

[Arfa Daily]

OK. Thanks all for the comments so far. Looks like my shagged-out left knee is going to be taking some more stick, then. I like ss's idea of taping polythene over the work area to allow the shower to continue to be used. On the knee, it's a bit of a funny one. Out of the blue, it developed a problem such that if you kneel on it, you get a pain like having a glass shard in the side towards the bottom - sort of 5 o'clock position on my left knee (or right as you look at it from the front). It leaves a burning sensation for a few minutes after you take the weight back off, but otherwise recovers perfectly. Absolutely nothing else has any effect. You can run, jump, climb stairs - anything - without a problem. I found a forum on the 'net where literally hundreds of people all over the world describe the exact same symptoms, but here's the odd thing. No one actually knows what causes it. Many of the posters have seen specialists, and had all sorts of both invasive and non invasive tests done, but no physical problem ever shows up. It's a mystery, and not really an issue, until you forget and kneel down. It's like you knelt on a nail. A lot of the posters said that it just got better on its own in between three and nine months, but others say that they have had it for two years or more with no sign of improvement. Anyone else on here suffer from it ?

Arfa

[scorched]

I also have knee probs but was wondering how the dog shop was doing.

[ss]

Maybe not the same issue but I used to do a lot of motorbike repairs over Winter on my bikes, I found after a day one of my knees started to swell and give a lot of pain and it would take a couple of weeks to get back to normal. The doc said take a couple of Ibuprofen the day before you start (not sure of the dose now maybe 3 spread over the day) and continue while doing the work. It was a great help for me and I still do this if I know I will be on my knees.

[Arfa Daily]

Arfa

[Chris Bartram]

It works well. I've used it on an area where grout had cracked on the bottom row of tiles, and it needed to dry out properly but leave the shower useable.

[Andy Champ]

Dunno what Arfa has, but that is housemaid's knee. You may prefer one of the other names :)

[Arfa Daily]

My first thought was 'housemaid's knee' but when I looked into that, the symptoms are definitely not the same. AFAIK, that is also a repetitive strain type injury caused by a lifetime of working on your knees, hence its 'common' name. I have only worked on my knees on a few DIY occasions, and certainly not recently, the last time being when I spent a couple of weeks building that counter in our burger joint about a year ago now. Many of the people on the forum also said that they had thought that it might be that, and some had even had that condition diagnosed by their doctors, but the ones who had gone on to see a specialist had all had that diagnosis absolutely refuted. There are a couple of other symptoms that again everyone on the forum also has. These are that although there is absolutely nothing wrong with the functionality of the knee for any condition other than kneeling, if you stop and think about how the bad knee feels with respect to the good one, something definitely feels not *quite* right, but it is faint, and subtle. The other symptom is that there is a small patch of skin above the area that hurts when you kneel, where there is reduced feeling. Also, you can't provoke the pain by prodding anywhere, but the slightest kneeling pressure is excruciating. Kneel on a cushion or on the 'side' of the knee though, and nothing at all. It really is very strange ... :-\

Arfa

[David WE Roberts]

One strategy - buy some of those work trousers from Screwfix which have pockets at the knee for cushion pads. I have been trouble by bursitis but these seem to protect my knees whilst working.

[Arfa Daily]

Well, now. Here's where it gets curiouser and curiouser ... Today, I dropped a screw in the workshop, and without thinking, knelt straight down to pick it up. As my knee hit the floor, I realised my mistake, and my brain was already screaming PAIN !!! and my face was screwing up ready. But here's the deal. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It felt as normal as the other side. Just two days ago, it was still there bad as ever. Now ? Gone ...

I really can't make head or tail of it.

Arfa

[tony sayer]

I get some rather odd things in finger joints. Come on all of a sudden and without any obvious cause, not like lifting anything heavy or similar.

Rather painful. Then lasts for a couple of days or so then just disappears!....

[Arfa Daily]

I guess we're just getting old, Tony ... :-)

Arfa

[tony sayer]

In article , Arfa Daily scribeth thus

Guess;?, Guess!?? Bl^^dy well know so Arfa;!...

[Arfa Daily]

It's hard when you really are getting old, but still 20 in your head ... I hit 58 this year, which didn't seem so bad until I suddenly thought that when you add just another ten years to that, I'll be nearly 70 ! I know lots of people are still very good at that age - my mother was one - but a lot of people are also getting very decrepit at around that figure. Although my father went on for a lot of years after that age, he was never really well. I've never been 'properly' ill my entire adult life, which is why when things like this start happening, it's all the more concerning that this is the shape of things to come. You could actually get quite depressed about it if you didn't have a generally sunny outlook on life ...

Arfa

[tony sayer]

Quite .. my thoughts exactly.

As time goes by;!...