TIL the $8 tube of caulk I laughed at actually stopped my swamp of a bathroom window
I always thought the guys at the hardware store on Montgomery were just trying to upsell me when they pushed the fancy silicone caulk over the cheap stuff. Last fall I kept getting water pooling on my windowsill after every storm, and I was convinced I had a roof leak that would cost me $2000 to fix. A buddy who does handyman work on the side told me to just pull the old cracked bead off the frame, and when I did, I could see daylight through the gap, which blew my mind since I had lived there 4 years without noticing. I grabbed the $8 tube he recommended, ran a fresh bead, let it cure a full day, and then we got 2 inches of rain that next week with zero drips on the sill. Six months later it still looks clean and no peeling, while the cheap tube I used on my shed door already cracked apart. Now I'm wondering what else I wrote off as a scam that actually works, like those foam outlet gaskets everyone swears by for drafty rooms. Has anyone here tried the foam ones and seen a real drop in their heating bill, or is that the next thing I'm wrong about?
Those foam gaskets are cheap enough to just try, but dont expect much. I put them on every outlet in my house and my bill barely moved. The real draft was coming from the gaps around the box itself, not the outlet face.