Have you heard of Sashco? For the last 84 years they have been a family run company that geeks out over a better way to caulk and stain. Making a ‘Good, Better, Best’ product range just doesn’t turn their crank. They are passionate about making the highest performance product possible for each project. Great products are only ½ the answer. We want you to be successful applying them.

We camp out in their booth at Design and Construction Week in Orlando Florida and talk about doing things a better way. If you are tired of moldy caulking in the bathroom or having to re-caulk something every couple of years there is a better way and we talk about it in this episode. We dive deep into Sashco with Nathan Ferraro! You dont want to miss this one!

Win a chance to win a $250 VISA gift card at www.sashco.com/ATH

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[00:00:27] Eric Goranson: that's probably an eighth

[00:00:31] Nathan Ferraro: If it's vinyl pool and can go a half inch depending on the day. So if you've only got an eighth of an inch gap and it's moving a half inch, you're now asking your sealant to stretch 400%. Right. Whereas if you have a quarter inch gap, Now you're only asking your sealant to stretch 200%. So that's a good difference to be a big deal.

[00:01:03] Eric Goranson: around the house, around the house with Eric G and Caroline. Be your source for home improvement. And construction, design and healthy homes every single weekend. Thanks for joining us. We have got a fun show today. I'm sitting here at design and construction week at the Sashco booth, and we're getting ready to have a good time in here.

[00:01:30] Nathan Ferraro: Good to have Eric I'm I'm Nathan, I'm a marketing manager for Sashco. You got it. And, uh, it's helpful to understand about me that I'm, I'm a bit of a technical guy, right? So I have a chemistry background. No. So I, uh, I talk a little bit about, you know, elasticity and modulus of allegation and all that sort of stuff.

[00:01:56] Eric Goranson: we're talking sealants here and of course we're at this biggest trade show [00:02:00] of the year already, and we're having a good time out here. You guys have done some stuff. I mean, we all walk into home centers, you see the aisle of caulking or your lumberyard or whatever.

[00:02:19] Nathan Ferraro: guys are doing. Yeah. It's, uh, it's incredible that in caulking and in sealants, in particular, it seems like the expectation is facing. Right. People, a lot of folks just expect Cox to crack and to fail.

[00:02:40] Eric Goranson: house? It's like six months old and it's got like the Hardy plank on it. And around the edges, you can see a little light coming off, like little plastic worms coming off the side of the house.

[00:02:56] Nathan Ferraro: Of doing caulking and sealing. So you don't have to go back to the job [00:03:00] and, and, and fix cracked car. Seriously. How many

[00:03:07] Nathan Ferraro: call them. That's right. And I mean, it's

[00:03:15] Eric Goranson: There's a lot of science to this. That's right. Let's talk a little bit about some of that stuff, cause it's amazing how it's working.

[00:03:38] Nathan Ferraro: It's going to stay in the joint. Yeah. So first is you need a caulking. It has a good elongation factor, right. That means it can move. Right. So it's got to be able to move and expand and contract with the joint. Sounds simple. Right? It sounds simple, but, uh, you know, it's, it's something that can get. A little [00:04:00] out of hand, especially depending on the size of the bead that you use.

[00:04:04] Eric Goranson: Cause some guys in there, well, maybe they didn't miss that cut and make it just exactly as

[00:04:10] Eric Goranson: will just caulk it up. It'll be great. And, but the paint diamond, the painters are done. It'll be fine.

[00:04:22] Nathan Ferraro: Right. So, so think about like a 16 foot PISA citing. How much would you guess that moose on average, I'm going to say that's probably an eighth and eight, depending on the type you're right. If it's vinyl, you can go a half inch depending on the day. So if you've only got an eighth of an inch gap and it's moving a half inch, you're now asking your sealant to stretch 400%.

[00:05:00] Eric Goranson: thought of that because yeah, you're taking that and sometimes they put a too tight and an expands out and then you see that wave down the side of the house.

[00:05:10] Nathan Ferraro: And that's not good either. That's not good. So, yeah,

[00:05:28] Nathan Ferraro: to do it.

[00:05:33] Eric Goranson: and we're so good at mixing materials on job sites, depending on where you're at, you could have fiber cement siding. You've got a Cedar trim going around the outside or some other plastic trim going on over there too. So you've got expansion rates that are all over the.

[00:06:10] Nathan Ferraro: Right. Because instead of the caulking cracking. It's going to appeal away from the surface.

[00:06:28] Nathan Ferraro: side.

[00:06:31] Eric Goranson: Is this flying across there? So you're in trouble

[00:06:48] Nathan Ferraro: And the sealant fails. And it has super good. And he's in, it might actually pull the wood fibers or if it's on concrete, it might actually pull the concrete out since it. Now you're just not just patching a [00:07:00] sealant. You're patching the concrete and this before

[00:07:07] Eric Goranson: And you made my work so much harder. Cause now I got to patch it, finish it.

[00:07:21] Eric Goranson: example. I had a, I, I have a great shower system and I had a defect in the LCD screen that happens, you know, it's electronics that happens.

[00:07:47] Nathan Ferraro: Yeah, I buy it. And, uh, w we don't do silicones at Sashco because you can't paint silicones.

[00:08:10] Eric Goranson: go, okay, I'm going to use silicone. Cause that's the most durable caulking out there.

[00:08:27] Nathan Ferraro: impressive. Cool. Yeah. W we have a couple of different technologies.

[00:08:48] Eric Goranson: my gosh, this is, this is the

[00:08:54] Nathan Ferraro: It has good elongation. Yeah. If it's under stress, when it's stretching [00:09:00] the problem, like a rubber band, exactly. The

[00:09:08] Nathan Ferraro: else that's holding it. Totally. With the copolymer rubber that we use and actually relaxes when you stretch it.

[00:09:31] Eric Goranson: trick. Think of a rubber band that you grab. Let's say you have a three eights piece of section of caulking right there, and you grab it.

[00:09:55] Eric Goranson: That's trying to pull off the substrate

[00:10:13] Nathan Ferraro: That's

[00:10:17] Nathan Ferraro: in your house anyway. That's right. So

[00:10:29] Eric Goranson: It's kind of

[00:10:35] Eric Goranson: But you know, that's is that one of the things that you guys are most known for is that product there or how does that work within all your brands?

[00:10:56] Nathan Ferraro: Yup. Through the roof is for roofing gutters, gutters. [00:11:00] Uh, you know, you're going to use it on your pipe. Uh, sealing, um, all

[00:11:10] Nathan Ferraro: all that stuff. When you're up there

[00:11:11] Nathan Ferraro: around and you can tamp down shingle so that Alexa is truly are use anywhere products.

[00:11:21] Eric Goranson: great. It's been a while since I used, it was probably a year or so ago, I had a contractor buddy throw me someone that's like, that's the one product that I've used for years before we got reintroduced by Cheryl here, you know,

[00:11:34] Nathan Ferraro: It's, it's super cool. Like it comes in a clear too, so you can see how clear it is. Uh, and so it's going to start clear and it's going to stay clear for even when it's outside exposed to UV and all that. How many

[00:11:57] Eric Goranson: And you hope that it gets. That's not. And [00:12:00] there is no question what

[00:12:19] Nathan Ferraro: Right. If you've got a lot of moisture in the air, for example, the urethane might not get there. Pretty good. Uh, but with Lexile, you don't have to worry about that. You can put it on wet in the middle of a rain storm. We're demoing that at the booth where we put it on underwater, it displaces the water.

[00:12:41] Eric Goranson: first person to admit that when I see I can cook something like a shower and it says, wait, eight to 24 hours before getting. Yeah. Yeah. That usually translates to me about four and a half to six. And then I go, oh, I wonder where that didn't work.

[00:13:00] Nathan Ferraro: Yup. Yup. Leksell saw that problem

[00:13:03] Eric Goranson: you and see that's, what's cool about that. I'm not having to wait because I'll be honest. Not everybody has multiple showers in the house or anything like that when you're doing stuff or you're working outside and you're cranking along and you're like, oh man, it's going to rain in three or four hours.

[00:13:16] Nathan Ferraro: that good enough? Exactly. And, and the answer is. It depends. Right? Because it's not just temperature, it's humidity, it's the sun out gap. It's what's the wind doing, you know, do you have some air movement going on? So it's, it's virtually impossible to predict, even though you get a range, that's like, yeah.

[00:13:39] Eric Goranson: When I was how I was out, Peyton, my house here, this last fall, I'm out paint and everything's going good. It's a little overcast. 70 degrees. All of a sudden I can feel the mist. Oh no. Coming on. And I'm like,

[00:13:53] Nathan Ferraro: But, uh, and I'm

[00:14:06] Nathan Ferraro: job site stuff. Yeah. And with a lot of technologies, you'll be in trouble there, right?

[00:14:31] Eric Goranson: You guys are really involved. I love in the building trades out there. You guys are really working with those contractors, remodelers builders out there to get the product out there, which I think is cool. What all you guys doing to help those guys?

[00:14:54] Nathan Ferraro: Right? So one of the easiest ones is tools to help sell the products. [00:15:00] Right? So we actually give folks little demo kits, such that they can go up to the homeowners and say, Hey, check this out. Even now. Sealants the accessory products in my house, I'm using high-performance materials, which is why you should go with my bed, not the cheapest bit.

[00:15:18] Eric Goranson: cause I mean, then you get these little cool little worm thingies, which are actually the sealants to show him that

[00:15:37] Nathan Ferraro: Sealant game to the next level. We also have a whole division that does a log home products. That's cool.

[00:15:50] Nathan Ferraro: Northwest. Sure. And so. There's a lot involved when you're blasting and all that sort of stuff. So we take folks through a whole course.

[00:16:18] Nathan Ferraro: Right. And so we try to provide resources for that and to truly build a business and, and really to build a culture. Right. I mean, right now it's hard to retain employees, right. So my gosh culture as a builder, Sue maintain your employees and make it a place that they want to go to work every day. It's one of the biggest

[00:16:44] Eric Goranson: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Up now he's working over here. And so there's a lot of competition for that good quality

[00:17:07] Nathan Ferraro: You can make a great living, you can have fun, it's rewarding work. Uh, and so we're partnering up with, with various different folks, like, uh, Bloomquist for example, that, you know, has a school and is teaching. How to build houses and, uh, it's really cool. So I gotta make

[00:17:34] Eric Goranson: And so they take girls from eight to 14 and they do summer camps to get them in the trade. So they'll have an who got them. Katie has gotten things started really well. Good. Good, good. Mike Rowe turned around and got him a trailer and stuff like that. Because she was running out of an old school bus.

[00:17:59] Nathan Ferraro: [00:18:00] out there. We'd love

[00:18:05] Eric Goranson: Just a great organization and I'm happy you guys are doing stuff out there because there's such a need

[00:18:13] Eric Goranson: tell me a little bit more about Sashco because you guys have some amazing products, including which we'll get into that bathroom. Call king. It's pretty cool to get into that in a

[00:18:26] Nathan Ferraro: Yeah. We'll talk about some cool products. We've been around for 85 years. We're a family owned. So our current owners, dad started the company of course. And, uh, you know, he was doing window glazing buddies and it's evolved into sealants. The log home division. We have, we have way too much fun at work.

[00:18:49] Eric Goranson: every time I come over here, you guys are having a blast.

[00:19:09] Nathan Ferraro: If someone gets sick, can't come to work. I go back, our president goes back into manufacturing, which is in the same building and he's filling tubes, you know, right on the manufacturing line. And I think that's a really cool thing. Right. So don't see that too on family. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's just a fantastic place to work.

[00:19:39] Eric Goranson: and you know, you think sealants, what all can you talk about? But seriously, I mean, I want to run down the line here, the products, because your stuff that as a designer, I'm like, yeah.

[00:19:54] Nathan Ferraro: ago? Sure. So let me tell you about. Some of my favorites. [00:20:00] We have a full line designed for every application from tune meta foundation. Yep. One of the coolest products I think we have is exact color. Okay.

[00:20:35] Nathan Ferraro: And you dispense that into the cartridge and you shake. Now that probably sounds difficult, but we thought of that we make the caulk and the cartridge thin. Right? So it's like water thin. So you can shake it up, get a good mix. Then we give you a thickener. There we go. There you go. Yeah. So you add the thickener and you shake them.

[00:21:04] Eric Goranson: Oh man, homeowners out there, contractors. And as somebody's jaws hitting the ground right now, going what? I'm not trying to figure out. I'm not going over to the tile supplier, trying to find something that makes a work.

[00:21:25] Nathan Ferraro: right there. That's right. Yeah. It's, it's a perfect match every time. And, uh, you know, no, no dealing with fans.

[00:21:39] Eric Goranson: get home and use it and go, well, I was all right. Rice, rice, you know, so many times I'm picking the, the, the, the lesser of the two evils. Well, that's. Well, it's not so bad.

[00:21:55] exactly.

[00:22:00] Nathan Ferraro: rice. Right?

[00:22:05] Nathan Ferraro: mad. Sure, sure. So. The seal is a cool one. This is trick too. So clean seals is like big stretch. Yeah. But it has enzymes in it that break down this food source for mold, no

[00:22:22] Eric Goranson: If you don't have a food's food source there.

[00:22:39] Nathan Ferraro: Plainsville doesn't actually do that. But with those other products, if you spill something on the surface, like let's say apple sauce or something like that, the mold can grow on the food. Correct. Right. So it's not growing on the clock. It's growing on the food, but you still. You still have mold clean seal is going to break down the food [00:23:00] source.

[00:23:11] Eric Goranson: Brilliant. And you're not putting something crazy toxic in there. That's

[00:23:22] Nathan Ferraro: That's just better because it's an enzyme it's just kind of latches on discerning turns these lipids into basically. So that washes away, like

[00:23:33] Nathan Ferraro: soap machine, like a little Pac-Man we've been, we've been thinking we should do a little animation. Yeah. Pac-Man thanks, Sue. Yeah, maybe. I mean, maybe not quite,

[00:23:50] Nathan Ferraro: You're going to get an edit out that. No more to go with it.

[00:24:10] Eric Goranson: Totally. Yeah. And I don't know if anybody else is doing that.

[00:24:21] Eric Goranson: cool. And then, man, again, I've got a whole table. This stuff's sitting right next to me and I'm just looking at it while we're

[00:24:29] Nathan Ferraro: Give me a least two more. So, so flux, uh, or sorry, more flex. Yep. Is a. Stucco repair products. Okay. So what happens when mortar cracks? What are you going to do? Ah,

[00:24:50] Eric Goranson: It's quite the process to data

[00:25:10] Bandaid,

[00:25:10] Eric Goranson: I mean, here's spanning because next year you're gonna come back after that, whatever moved. You're not fixing the moving problem. You're just fixing the symptom of the moving problem. That's

[00:25:33] Nathan Ferraro: It, and you're done, and it's flexible. It's going to stretch like rubber, like Oliver products. And, uh, so when you get that stress instead of. Like a mortar patch. Yep. It's it's going to move with the joint, because what happens

[00:25:52] Eric Goranson: So it makes it even bigger. You want to get enough so you can get the mortar in there and then it moves again. And now you have a large, bigger hole than they did last time [00:26:00] when it broke. That's right. So it just kinda keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. This, you put a flexible thing. It's going to move with things and stayed here and you solve the

[00:26:10] Nathan Ferraro: That's right. Let me say about one more. All right. So this is a new product. It's not even on the market yet. Okay. So it's coming, it's coming probably in April or early spring here. And it's from our log home division. All right. So right now, when you're staining a log home, you need to color match. Sure.

[00:27:04] Nathan Ferraro: So you got to carry. Inventory around with you when you're doing this, uh, you content, whatever, you know, you use the right base and you tense up whichever color you need right on site. So instead of carrying around a five gallon pail of every color you need, you're just carrying around a cart. You'd be

[00:27:28] Eric Goranson: Exactly. And now you can have one and a bunch of cartridges.

[00:27:53] Nathan Ferraro: Yeah. And

[00:28:07] Nathan Ferraro: gift card. That's right.

[00:28:13] Nathan Ferraro: a gift card as well.

[00:28:19] Eric Goranson: And so that's pretty awesome. So you're going to have to head over to sashco.com forward slash 80 H

[00:28:28] Eric Goranson: That's where you'll find over there. And if you're listening to the podcast a few weeks after this, this is going to last for two weeks.

[00:28:47] Nathan Ferraro: That's right. Didn't make it. But there are a couple of other perks, right? So they can enter to win the gift card, but you can also reach out to our customer service team.

[00:29:14] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. Man. I am seeing some people in the booth I see from fine home building.

[00:29:24] Nathan Ferraro: today, it's been busy. It's been a good show. We had Matt Reisenger earlier today. The Perkins brothers stopped by yesterday. Travis from catalyst builds has come out tomorrow. So it's, uh, it's keeping us rocking and rolling here.

[00:29:44] Nathan Ferraro: I've been very impressed. You know, I was a little uncertain, you know, You know what the attendance would be like? Um, we we've been, we've been rocking and enrolling no question.

[00:30:13] Eric Goranson: So mealtime, always, always out there going how many people are using this as their dining room? Are you there really for this doc,

[00:30:26] Eric Goranson: a good one. Um, we were doing a home techs seminar about home tech and talking about smart home hubs and a guy was trying to understand his level of technology knowledge.

[00:30:45] Nathan Ferraro: Okay. We had a hill to climb, I guess. Yeah. I can imagine that Samsung

[00:31:05] Eric Goranson: And I'm like, Let's step back and get into one-on-one, but that's why I'm here. It's an education part of

[00:31:27] Nathan Ferraro: Yeah. What's the craziest

[00:31:29] Nathan Ferraro: far crazy. Question. I know it's tough, right? That, that is. I'm going to stump you on one. I know. I can see, um, you know, I get say I get a lot of questions about our Cobra nozzle. Okay. We've got a lot of folks who are. So, or through the roof as struggled to tool it.[00:32:00]

[00:32:32] Nathan Ferraro: See, this is my secret for caulking. It is. Okay.

[00:32:41] Nathan Ferraro: bright stuff that I've always used. I got ya. I got ya. Yep. Well, we've had some people here who don't believe me and I didn't actually bring any, so I said, okay, I'm going to show you.

[00:33:10] Eric Goranson: he says clear, cause this is something that I learned from.

[00:33:31] Nathan Ferraro: to the mix. That's right. This is, this is like caulking 3 0 1. Level. This is awesome.

[00:33:55] Eric Goranson: are tricks that I learned fairly recently, you know? Awesome. [00:34:00] And I'm like, and so I actually did a video out on a couple of years ago and people are like, that actually works.

[00:34:04] Nathan Ferraro: it. Didn't believe me. And by the way, it works on water-based Cox. It does too. It does too. And they're already pretty easy to smooth, but it, you glide like butter. Well, what's funny is, is I actually like

[00:34:24] Eric Goranson: Like, ah, it gets too

[00:34:30] Eric Goranson: talking about. I'm not talking about your products. I'm talking about maybe some of these other guys that have three letters and end with a P O because what I'm talking about.

[00:34:44] Nathan Ferraro: I'm with you. I'm with you. That's my deal. Yeah.

[00:34:54] Nathan Ferraro: Let's see, we talked clean seal. We talked more flexible.

[00:35:06] Eric Goranson: That's a huge deal because in my area, the sidewalks and driveways, we get enough rain and you get enough water going through that slab and starts to undermine under there. And years and years and years of high rainfall expression and an older place, it wasn't really that base wasn't prepped right beneath it.

[00:35:24] Nathan Ferraro: life out of it. That's right. There's two more products that we haven't really talked about. So I mentioned through the roof. Yep. But just in case folks, haven't heard of it. For roofing, you gotta put it on when it's wet, it'll displace the water and, uh, and cure after the water evaporates or runs down the roof.

[00:36:01] Nathan Ferraro: You got that. Is backer rod. Right? So, so we do provide filler rope and backer on SIS that if you have a big joint, there's two things that does for you. Right. First off, it saves you money because you don't have to put a ton of cracking in this. Right. You can put some backer rod and then put the caulking in.

[00:36:24] Eric Goranson: more as well, less expensive than a tube of caulking is.,

[00:36:31] Eric Goranson: also gives it support behind it too. So not only are you saving money, but you end up having a better job when it's all said and

[00:36:41] Nathan Ferraro: So when you put in. Sealant down. You really only want adhesion on two sites, right? Because when you're, when you're playing with the demo strips that we're showing folks, and you're stretching it back and forth, if you have it, Heejin on a third side, then you're forcing the caulk to stretch on one [00:37:00] side, but it can't stretch on that.

[00:37:08] Eric Goranson: cause yeah. There's no place to stretch. It would be like having it's like pulling a rubber band three different ways

[00:37:26] Nathan Ferraro: Yup. Then you'll actually have a joint that lasts longer. That's

[00:37:46] as

[00:37:46] Nathan Ferraro: Totally.

[00:37:49] Nathan Ferraro: was good. Glad you're here. Absolutely.

[00:37:59] Nathan Ferraro: [00:38:00] awesome. We're we're north of Denver. Cool. Which is why we care about temperature fluctuation so much, right?

[00:38:09] Eric Goranson: So these guys in our. And our listeners in the Denver area,

[00:38:25] Eric Goranson: Yeah, that'd be great. All right, man.

[00:38:36] Nathan Ferraro: some stuff we should do some demos. Here we go. Put me to work. Aren't you? That's right. That's right. Well, every man in the booth.

[00:38:47] Nathan Ferraro: You are doing that though. In the building zone, right? Oh yeah. I've been over there. You all, that's a big stretch, right? Yeah.

[00:39:13] Eric Goranson: And for somebody that loves to overbuild and do it right, it's, it's kind of hard going. That's the right way to do it. Can I put four more nails in this now while they got to take them back down again?

[00:39:29] Nathan Ferraro: And then you're going to tear it apart so we can put a different style right on it. So I don't

[00:39:47] Eric Goranson: Cool. We're one of the only people out here, you guys are very self-contained. So it's not a problem, but a lot of these other stages, they just. Wait, wait,

[00:40:05] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. Is there anything around here? I know you've been in the booth. Is there anything out here that you've seen that you went? Wow, that was crazy.

[00:40:26] Nathan Ferraro: So that was interesting when I go learn more about that,

[00:40:53] Eric Goranson: We have to explain it as around the house. ATHS and bigger thing is if you forgotten about that, if you need to check [00:41:00] in the show notes down below, if you listen to the podcast, if you listen to the radio head over to around the house nation or around the house, online.com our website, you can check it on social media.

[00:41:15] Nathan Ferraro: I like 250 bucks and I'd like someone else to have it. Absolutely.

[00:41:26] Nathan Ferraro: winning. It'd be, it'd be.

[00:41:52] Eric Goranson: This has been such a breath of fresh air for our entire industry. A lot of people working together, out here and it's been great.

[00:42:13] Eric Goranson: and for Caroline B, you've been listening to around the house.