Above It All Podcast: Episode 23

Above It All podcast episode #23 features Product Manager, Derek Nickum, for Johns Manville Commercial Roofing.  Join us as we discuss a new product we are launching, PVC All Season Sprayable Bonding Adhesive. This sprayable adhesive is innovative, and can truly save your crew time because of its simplicity. This product was previously offered for TPO and EPDM, and we are excited to extend it to PVC. 

Above It All is a podcast by Johns Manville dedicated to the roofing industry.  The goal of this podcast is to bring knowledge from a Johns Manville perspective on trends, innovations, and people shaping the roofing industry. Join us as we dive head first into enriching conversations about the people and passion that are an integral part of the JM experience.

Transcript

Daniel Robbins: Welcome back for another episode of Above It All, a roofing podcast dedicated do the industry by Johns Manville. Today, we are going to be covering a new product that we’ll be launching called PVC All Season Sprayable Bonding Adhesive. It is like our single ply in its use and application, but it is different in its chemical makeup. So, we’ll go into the details of all of that in this podcast. And with us, we have Derek Nickum, who is the product manager for this product.

Daniel Robbins: Derek, how are you, sir? Thanks for being on the podcast.

Derek Nickum: I am doing great, Daniel. How are you today?

Daniel Robbins: You know, I am working from home because we are in lockdown from the office. So, it is nice to have some human interaction, so.

Derek Nickum: Yeah, the most interaction we can get the better for everybody, I think.

Daniel Robbins: Exactly.

Derek Nickum: So, yeah, no, I’m excited to be here today. You’re right, we have had the JM All Season Sprayable Bonding Adhesive on the market now for a couple of years. And I’m excited that we recently announced that we are launching this PVC All Season Sprayable Bonding Adhesive at the end of March. Kind of the industry has seen this big movement to both low VOC adhesives, but then also these new canister aerosol sprayable adhesives because they’ve been effective at reducing kind of the labor required to install single ply roofing membranes. And up until recently, we were limited to using those types of adhesives with just EPDM and TPO. And now we’re excited to announce that we have an option in an aerosol sprayable canister that can be used with our PVC membranes.

Daniel Robbins: That’s very cool. So, it potentially is a similar product in its ease and utility, but potentially it also has a different chemical makeup, might look a little bit different than the older version, correct?

Derek Nickum: Correct. Yes, it’s a completely different adhesive, a completely different chemical makeup, it does have different coverage rates associated with it. One of the reasons why the roofing industry in general hasn’t had a sprayable bonding adhesive readily available for PVC is because, and some people listening to this may know this, but it’s hard to get stuff to stick to PVC. PVC just in general is more resistant to adhesives. So, a lot of work has gone in to formulating these chemistries that can work with PVC membranes. And something that’s unique about ours in comparison to a couple of other options that are already out on the market is ours works with both our normal PVC SD Plus membrane, but also with our JM PVC with KEE membrane. So, that’s completely new to the industry, no one else has offered a sprayable adhesive that works with KEE membranes before .

Daniel Robbins: We’ve gone over a little bit about what the product is. Let’s talk about what parts are involved with it. So, I know that potentially there’s several differ-ent wands, there’s different nozzles, and that’s the same as the old All Season, but I figured we’d go through it again, because we don’t really have a podcast episode dedicated to it. So, let’s go through the parts involved and I guess are people going to have to add these as options to their order or is it like when they order the setup it’s going to come with the full package?

Derek Nickum: Right. So, just like our current All Season Sprayable Bonding Adhesive, when you order the canister of adhesive all that comes with it is that canister of adhesive. In order to use the adhesive you do need the additional accessories. So, to run through those, we have your applicators. So, those are spray guns that are used. We have both the standard size applicator, the applicator that had the extension nozzle on it, and then you also have replacement nozzles. So, we sell replacement nozzle parts in packs of five.

Derek Nickum: Then we have different adhesive hoses available. So, three different hoses available in six foot, 12 foot and 18 foot length, and then we also have the JM Sprayable Bonding Adhesive Flush low VOC. So, that is a 14 pound canister that’s used for cleaning out the equipment at the end of the day. So, then you properly clean it out, get the adhesive out of it so you can reuse those, the applicators, the nozzles and the hoses.

Daniel Robbins: Very nice.

Derek Nickum: And the nice thing about this offering is all of those accessories get used with both of our All Season Sprayable Bonding Adhesives, both the one for TPO and EPDM and the one for PVC.

Daniel Robbins: That’s very nice.

Derek Nickum: So, the only new product that we’re actually bringing to market is the canister adhesive and then we’re able to use all of our current accessories that we were already offering with both adhesives.

Daniel Robbins: And it’s that same flush with both adhesives that’ll clean out the wands and the hoses?

Derek Nickum: Correct.

Daniel Robbins: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, that makes life easier if you’ve already been working with the product, that’s for sure. So, moving to kind of application, we’ve talked about it before, and also on a side note too for our listeners, if you want to check out a full kind of in-depth tutorial, we have Derek and then one of our engineers, Jo-nas Houchin, going over the install exactly, how to hook everything up, how to apply it with the right coverage rate. And it’s 38 minutes long, so it’s really in-depth. We have a short on the roof version too, but that’ll be on our YouTube. Just go check it out if you are interested in learning exactly how to install it. But with that being said, the coverage rate is a 50% overlap per line, correct?

Derek Nickum: Yeah. So, when you’re applying this adhesive the nozzle sprays it out in kind of a fan shape, and as you’re going back and forth across your substrate or the back of the membrane what you’re looking for is you’re essentially looking to coat each section twice. So, you overlap your spray fan 50%. So, you have a one direction and then you’ll come back the opposite direction overlapping 50%. So, you’re hitting both the same spot of the substrate twice with each pass.

Derek Nickum: And I’m not going to pretend to be an expert when it comes to the application of this adhesive, but I did want to touch on a couple of the features with this application in particular. And one of those is the fact that the entire reason that we call it all Season Sprayable Bonding Adhesive is that we can install roof systems using this adhesive down to 25 degree ambient air temperature and rising. So, that greatly extends kind of the roofing season, so to speak, especially in the Northern climates that start to see those colder temperatures earlier in the season and later into the spring.

Derek Nickum: So, the real goal here is to enable our roofing contractors to be able to install proven fully adhered PVC systems as close to year round as possible.

Daniel Robbins: And we would hope that they would want to use probably this product year round as well, because it doesn’t really have a... I think what’s the heat maxi-mum on it that it won’t work? It’s very high I’m pretty sure, right? Isn’t it close to a hundred degrees or something like that?

Derek Nickum: Yeah. So, during the application we don’t want the canisters to exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit on the roof.

Daniel Robbins: Gotcha.

Derek Nickum: You can certainly, especially a steel can, can start to approach those temperatures during the application time, especially during the summer, as it’s out in direct sunlight. But if they’re just keeping an eye on it, then they can move it into the shade if the canister starts to get too hot so that they can allow it just to cool back down.

Derek Nickum: The other extreme to that, Daniel, that I would add is when it is cold outside we still want to keep the canister and the adhesive itself as close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit as possible. So, even though the ambient air temperature that you can apply this with down to is 25 degrees and rising, keeping the adhesive itself stored prop-erly, keeping it warm and then using some sort of an electric heating blanket on these canisters to help keep them at [inaudible 00:09:39], it’s critical to allowing that adhesive to kind of flow and spray out as well as possible during the application. And that’s pretty common practice, using those heating blankets is done throughout the industry already with the existing adhesives that were out there for sprayable applications.

Daniel Robbins: So, you mentioned the heating blankets, they help tremendously out in the field, and I’ve definitely seen them in action before, they seem very popular. Can people get easy access to these blankets?

Derek Nickum: Yeah. Those heating blankets, they’re common throughout the industry, not just for roofing adhesives, but for other building materials and in canister applica-tions. So, they’re pretty readily available through most local distributors.

Daniel Robbins: Very, very cool. As far as the labor part goes, I wanted to touch on that one more time, because I think a lot of people who haven’t used it they might argue that the product is expensive or it is just a little bit on the higher price end of things. And what would you argue against that? I know that potentially you’re saving a lot of costs where, okay, this might be a little bit higher premium product, but you’re saving costs in so many other areas that it actually justifies this.

Derek Nickum: Sure. So, the thing to keep in mind with spray adhesives in general when compared to your typical bucket adhesives is that because of how quickly they’re being sprayed out you’re not having to manually roll them out or spread them, and then they typically all have pretty quick flash times. So, like this one, during fairly standard application temperatures, you’ve got a three to five minutes flash time on it from the time of application. Once you start approaching that 25 degrees Fahrenheit ambient air temperature, you’ll see the flash times extend a little bit, maybe to somewhere around like 13 minutes, but it’s still a really quick flash time. And then you’re essentially im-mediately rolling in your adhesives or rolling in your membrane to substrate.

Derek Nickum: So, you spray it out, it’s a single man operation to spray it. It flashes really quickly, so there’s no idle time on the roof. And then you’re in short order rolling out the membrane into the substrate, and then rolling it in with a weighted roller. So, very quick application from that standpoint, and then when you start talking about your verti-cal applications, I’m sure everyone listening can imagine that spraying an adhesive on a vertical wall for your flashings is a lot easier than using a typical bucket adhesive where you’re having to use some sort of a roller to apply it, which is a very manual and time consuming process.

Daniel Robbins: Yeah, and I think one more thing that we could add to that would be the coverage rate. You’re getting a consistent coverage rate every single time depend-ing on the nozzle that you’re getting, and we’ll cover the nozzles in a little bit too because I want to touch on that just so people have a better idea about why we have just a few. But you’re getting a better coverage rate I feel like then if you’re rolling with adhesives. And I could be wrong about that, but I’ve heard several people say that because of the consistency we always know where it’s going, you’re getting more consistency and you’re able to save the adhesive and utilize it more effectively compared to older style of adhesives.

Derek Nickum: Yeah. Well, I mean, along those lines, I think that applicators that have used and are going to be using any sort of these spray applied adhesives, once they get a good sense for the pace at which to move back and forth and they have a good idea of the visual of what that adhesive should look like during application, kind of what the visual cues are as to when there’s enough adhesive versus when there’s not enough or maybe in some cases too much, it’s easier to control that application rate because it’s coming out of the canister at a consistent rate, it’s coming out of the nozzle as long as they’re keeping a relatively consistent distance from the substrate that they’re spraying it on, it’s coming out of the nozzle at the same spray fan pattern. So, they very quickly figure out what pace to move and they can control and not put down too much or too little. So, I would agree with that, it’s easy to control, it’s easy to calculate how much adhesive you need on the job and apply it accordingly.

Daniel Robbins: It’s very effective. I’ve seen the product in action and the crew was going at light speed. I mean, just the idea too, that when you spray the deck down and then you spray the membrane and you put a little air underneath that membrane and the membrane literally will just fly into place. And I find that that’s what we’re about at JM, is innovating so that our customers can benefit from it. But before we go, I know that there might be some people with questions about the nozzles out there. Can we talk a little bit about that? Like, we did, and for our listeners, if you watch on YouTube the in-depth training video, we’ll go over the nozzles there as well. But Derek, how would you describe that situation with the multi nozzles?

Derek Nickum: Sure. So, the reason we are bringing a couple different nozzles and making those available directly through us for our customers is that nozzles kind of dic-tate the... Essentially it’s the angle at which it sprays the adhesive out. And the tighter that angle, the less kind of coverage you get out of the particular nozzle, but the more resistant it is to the elements. So, if you have a really tight angled nozzle, that adhesive is going to flow very quickly, and it’s not going to be impacted by things like the wind. That being said, it doesn’t cover as much space, so it’ll take longer to apply.

Derek Nickum: So, we wanted to kind of provide a range of nozzles that allow the contractors to choose which nozzle they want to use based on their current installation environment. So, if they’re in a location that maybe they don’t expect a lot of wind and they’re trying to cover as much square footage as quickly as possible, then they would be able to take advantage of the nozzle that has the widest fan pattern on it. But if you were in a location, maybe you’re on the coast somewhere and you’re going to expect a fairly decent breeze on a regular basis, then they would probably prefer to use a nozzle with a tighter angle on it. So, essentially what we’ve done is we’ve expanded our offering to add two additional wider angles on them to hopefully help our contractors install even more efficiently.

Daniel Robbins: Very cool. Are those two angles... Do we have those in the in-depth tutorial that we did?

Derek Nickum: Yeah. So, if you refer to the video that we’ve got posted on our website, it kind of walks you through those three different nozzle offerings. I can run through them right now. One’s a 6501 LP. That’s what we’ve been offering with our current All Season Sprayable. The two new nozzles that we will be offering are the 8001 LP and the 9501 LP. So, the first two numbers, the 80 and 95 and the 65, that refers to the angle at which the adhesive or the liquid sprays out of the nozzle. So, definitely refer to that video, you’ll see a visual display of how much more coverage you get with each one of those adhesives, or I’m sorry, with each one of those nozzles.

Daniel Robbins: Outstanding. Well, we are out of time, Derek, thanks so much for being on the podcast and let us know one more time when we’re launching this product? I know we’ve announced it, but when exactly will it launch?

Derek Nickum: It will be available the last week of March. So, the official availability date is March 29th.

Daniel Robbins: Very cool. Well, that about wraps it up. Thank you again, sir, and we’ll catch you next time.

Derek Nickum: Thank you, Daniel. Have a great one.

Daniel Robbins: Thanks so much for listening. I hope everyone has a better understanding of PVC All Season Sprayable Bonding Adhesive. Like its predecessor for single ply, it is very similar in its use and application, but the chemical makeup is different, yet it yields just as much reliable adhesion as the All Season for single ply.

Daniel Robbins: Yeah, I mean, this is a product that helps crews move faster. I mean, you’re literally just spraying the deck, spraying the membrane and then flying the mem-brane out over the deck and then rolling it. Well, first you’re brooming it and then rolling it with a roller. But yeah, it should be a great product, huge time-saver and that about wraps our episode. We’ll catch everyone next time, thanks.