Protecting Drywall Tools from Rust with WD-40
I started my own company when I was 20 years old, built my first addition when I was 24, and now I have a company of 37 people that does residential remodeling and design build work. I’m Todd Jackson, I’m the owner of Jackson Design and Remodeling. When you’re mudding and you’re taping, your tools have to be cleaned consistently with water over and over and it has a tendency to overall rust. Here’s an example of a drywall knife that’s been rusted and corroded – something you would never use on a jobsite. As I’m cleaning my drywall tools, I’m going to remove all of the drywall mud, clean off the drywall knives and pans very thoroughly, I’m going to dry them and then I’m going to spray WD-40 Multi-Use Product in order to prevent any kind of rusting to come back through. We look at that as not only having a hammer, a screw gun, drywall nails… We use that product in order to keep the tools lubricated and clean and keep them in top working shape.
Displace Moisture from Tools
We talk about the upkeep of equipment all the time. A company like us, in today’s economy, can’t afford to waste money on buying new tools just because they’ve been used or neglected. I’m Todd Jackson, I'm the owner of Jackson Design and Remodeling. I’ve been in the trades for over 25 years. I was out there on the jobsite, middle of July, inside working in the home. And all of the sudden, a thunderstorm comes down. Twenty minutes later, I go out to my truck. All of the tools in the back of my truck are soaking wet. That’s my livelihood, so what do I do? I break out WD-40 Multi-Use Product and start wiping and spraying and lubricating to prevent rust and corrosion. I’m glad to say no tools were damaged in that rainstorm.
Restore Rusted Tools and Equipment
I went to change out my saw blade the other day and found that the blade was rusty. So I could’ve thrown it away or went and bought a new one. I wanted to try out WD-40 Specialist Rust Remover Soak and see how it actually works. I dipped half the blade in that material, let it soak for 4 hours, to overnight, came back the next day, wiped it down and voila! This is what I have. If you have to go out and purchase new tools because they’re not being taken care of, that’s when you’re going to find that your profitability goes down. I’m Todd Jackson, I'm the owner of Jackson Design and Remodeling.
Removing Gunk Once You’re Done with WD-40
My name is J Steele and my company is Black Diamond Builders. I named the company after my favorite sport. If you’re a snow skier, it stands for expert-only. There’s the black diamond on the runs. I just thought the double meaning was good for construction. At the end of the job, we’re walking through and doing a punch list and we’ll see things that need to be cleaned up or taken care of. We see duct tape adhesive, different types of caulk or adhesive and even some mastics. And WD-40 Multi-Use Product, you just spray it on, wipe it off, and it’s a done deal.
Keeping Ramset Guns Well-Lubricated with WD-40
My name is J Steele and my company is Black Diamond Builders. I’ve been with the National Association of Home Builders for about eight years, about the same time I’ve had my own company. This is a ramset gun and it shoots pins into concrete. And I use WD-40 Multi-Use Product before I even use the gun to coat all of the parts and it makes it work way easier. When I’m done, I use WD-40 again before I put it away.
Protecting Vinyl Windows During Installation
One of the challenges we have on a jobsite is keeping vinyl windows or any type of plastic clean during the course of construction. And vinyl windows can get beat up really easy. Stucco is probably the main challenge that we have. My name is J Steele and my company is Black Diamond Builders. We spray ‘em down with some WD-40 Specialist Water Resistant Silicone. It just adds a whole ‘nother level of protection. I put myself in the client’s shoes and said, what would I want? That’s something I tried to address – how can I make us more professional? You can’t protect a window too much and that just gives us some more peace of mind.
Protecting Plumbing Tools from Rust with WD-40
I’m Scott Ferrell from San Diego, California. I’ve been plumbing about 25 years. I own a company that’s called Black Mountain Plumbing. We’re part of the Plumbing Heating Cooling Contractors Association, which affords my guys good training. It produces I think quite superior plumbers as we having training all yearlong, training programs years 1-4. We get to teach people how to do plumbing right. As a plumber, we’re getting water on our tools, all our tools, and they rot – they literally rot. But if we put the water displacement product on here, on the chuck here, that’ll keep it from sticking and going bad. Run it back-and-forth a little bit, spray it down a little bit, and then just move it back and forth. Cutters, there’re springs in here, there’s ratcheting things, there’s wheels that need to turn, and they get gummed up and they don’t work. But if you use the Multi-Use Product on here, spray it on the cutter wheel, spray it on your springs, run it back a few times. This is probably 25 years old – I’d say it works pretty good. I don’t want another one – I want the one I started with.
Keep Valve Stems and Faucets Rust-Free with WD-40
I just like to be here, there, up on scaffolding, under a building, just in the middle of the mess of what’s going on. I’m Scott Ferrell of San Diego, California. I’ve been plumbing about 25 years. I own a company that’s called Black Mountain Plumbing. Everything we install is with the intention that we’re going to be the ones taking it apart. When we install a ball valve like this at the front of a house, it’s going to have a pressure regulator and a hose bib. And then, we’ll spray it down with the WD-40 Multi-Use Product, and that’s going to keep the water from rusting this. We use it everywhere first of all. But some things are simple applications. If you’re going to have a valve stem like this, you’re going to put a faucet together. If you just take some WD-40 Big Blast, just spray it on there real quick, and then just go assemble it now, it’s going to come apart on you easy in 10 years. But if you didn’t spray it, you’re going to be cutting it out with a grinder in 10 years. WD-40’s Water Displacement 40. That’s what I was always told, growing up in San Diego. And man, it keeps things in good shape forever. And when you go to take something apart like a old valve stem off of a wide spread faucet, this one’s just brass, and brass and water aren’t good friends. And they just corrode, they stick, they freeze… These are some handles here that nobody put any WD-40 Multi-Use Product on and they’re just rusted. Every one of our trucks has it. We’ve got gallons of it in the shop because we use a lot of it.
Disassembling a Gate Valve
In the last 10 or 15 years, we’ve been involved with the Plumbing Heating Cooling Contractors Association, which I love. I’ve had more knowledge, more success, better training from the PHCC and what they provide my plumbers and my staff than I could ever believe. Well, I’m Scott Ferrell and I’m from San Diego, California. I own a plumbing company called Black Mountain Plumbing. Customers like us because they know we really care. We want to get their business and keep them as customers for life. Right here, we’re just trying to show you a gate valve, and it needs to be taken apart to repair inside there. Some guys are going to go, well I got a big wrench or something and I can just take that apart. Right. This is a big deal. At Black Mountain Plumbing, when we have something like this, which is like an old valve we need to disassemble, we can use the WD-40 Specialist Rust Release Penetrant. You can go ahead and just put it on the valve, get it into all of the nooks and crannies, around the bonnet, around the packing nut, around the handle, the stuff you want to take apart… Yeah, it’s going to come apart now, you’re not going to have a bad day. Tap it a little bit. The little vibration sucks it in there. Dang, that comes apart good.
Removing Gunk from Drain Line Cleaning Machines with WD-40
They started me out, you know, pushing a broom, learning the trades. I started managing the shop around 1990, right around that area, and have been going since then. I’m Wes Livingston, I work with Redlands Plumbing Heating and Air Conditioning. One of the things we use the WD-40 Multi-Use Product for was the feeder here. This is a feeder for our drain line cleaning machines. Let’s go ahead and clean one. There’s caked on grease and build-up here is significant, so what I'm going to do is take the unit apart, remove the pin and you’re going to see this is the bearing that guides that snake, that holds it from jumping out like I was talking about earlier. And this is where rust gets in and you can see it just cakes all in there. I will first remove some of the build-up and then I’m going to take some of the WD-40 Multi-Use Product and spray it really good. And I like using the straw. I’m going to take my rag and check this out. I bet you didn’t know that used to be silver. That’s what the WD-40 Multi-Use Product does. It removes all of that gunk – that caked on grease and build-up. I’m going to spray it on the bearing here as well. We call it the roller bearing because it actually guides the cable. Not only does WD-40 Multi-Use Product remove the gunk and the grease, it also lubricates that roller bearing. So there’s a little bit of wiping to get that gunk out. That’s what it looked like before. It doesn’t get much better than that – the gunk’s gone. It’s a big safety item to make sure these feeders are maintained and the WD-40 Multi-Use Product is what we use to help keep that equipment junk-free.
Removing Oil Stains from Driveways with WD-40
One of the first times I used the WD-40 Multi-Use Product was when I was about 10 years old and dad just using it working on cars. I’m Wes Livingston, I work with Redlands Plumbing Heating and Air Conditioning. We’ve been in business for over 120 years now. I use the WD-40 Multi-Use Product on driveways to remove oil stains sometimes left from some of our vehicles. When I first found out that you could remove oil stains from a driveway, I thought, you know, at home I have oil stains all over my driveway – I’ve got one big patch that’s been sitting there for a year or two, I’ll try that – maybe that’ll work. I sprayed it on there, rubbed it around a little bit, washed it down with a hose, there it was – it was gone.
Maintaining Pipe Cutters with WD-40
Well, I’m Wes Livingston, I’m with Redlands Plumbing Heating and Air Conditioning. We’ve been in business for over 120 years now. We have some specialty things that we do. We use a pipe locator and we can figure out where that pipe is that we determine is leaking. Once we determine where that pipe is, we follow that pipe with a listening device and we can pinpoint precisely where it’s at, minimizing the amount of damage that’s caused to a home and lowering the cost of the total repair. We use the WD-40 Multi-Use Product for the ratchet snaps. These are the cutters we use for cutting soil pipes, a drain pipe if you will. And the way it works, we wrap it around the pipe and it tightens down and puts pressure on it and cuts a nice even cut around the pipe. If it doesn’t maintain that pressure evenly, which is why that lubrication is so important, then it’s going to crack that pipe, so it’s very important that the rollers be moving freely. So I take the WD-40 Big Blast and I’m going to get a nice blast of product on the chain. I’m going to turn it around to get the others side. It helps lubricate and protect and you’ll see here now, when I take this, I'm not sure if you saw, I was actually having a hard time turning these bearings. Look how freely they’re moving – that’s the way they’re supposed to move. A freely moving bearing means a nice, even cut.
Replacing Fan Blades
My name’s Alan Givens, I’m the president and CEO of Parrish Services. We’re primarily a residential service replacement firm. I hold master’s licenses in both gas fitting, plumbing, air conditioning and heating in multiple states. We’re big into certifications and continuing education for our employees. Our HVAC employees go through the North American Technical Excellence, otherwise known as NATE accreditation, and our plumbers go through the Green Plumbing accreditation. Fan motors tend to be items we stock on our trucks – they fail all the time. Unfortunately, fan blades are what we call OEM-specific, meaning no two are typically the same. So, the crucial thing is that when we’re removing the fan blade off of the fan motor, we’re able to get it off intact in one piece so we can re-use it. There are weights on these fan blades just like there are on your car tires. The least little bit of movement – we’re talking about something that weighs less than a tenth of a gram – can make a difference in whether it’s going to last. Being extra careful, having the right tools, the right products like the WD-40 Multi-Use Product to get this piece off intact is key in getting the customer up and running and keeping our bottom lines where they need to be. I can really control with the straw exactly where the penetrant goes and put it so we don’t have to worry about fire hazards when we’re using torches on this type of equipment, that sort of thing. Well, this is just to keep our tool clean so our tools aren’t rusty. We’ve got no problem moving this up and down because there’s quite a bit of friction when you’re trying to pull, force the shaft out of the unit. So, you can remove this – the WD-40 Multi-Use Product allows us to remove the product quite easily and remove all of the gunk so we can put it on the next motor and get the customer up and running. We just use it on a number of things, I mean whether it’s bolts, locks, putting barb fittings in hoses to make our job easier. It’s what we’ve trusted for decades and we’ll continue to do so.
Finding Cracks in Heat Exchangers with WD-40
My name’s Alan Givens, I’m the owner of Parrish Services. We’re a mechanical contracting firm out of Virginia. The company specializes in doing geothermal work as well, which is a green technology, as well as solar PV projects. Geothermal system is a heating system that uses the steady temperature of the ground, which, in Virginia, is about 56 degrees if you get down to about six feet or below. And so instead of trying, let’s say, to cool your home with an outside ambient temperature of 105, which we’ve had lately and high humidity, you’re trying to dissipate that heat into a heat sink, that being the earth, at about 56 degrees. That’s much more efficient. There’s typically also no outdoor unit so there’s no noise level and the lifespan of the unit is about twice as long as a conventional system. Pretty much the failure of a heat exchanger is the number one thing that would be the cause to replace a furnace. We use the WD-40 Multi-Use Product to verify any of the heat exchangers we’ve condemned indeed have failed. We use that by taking WD-40 Multi-Use Product to put in a garden sprayer like this and we’ll coat the inside of the product like this. If this heat exchanger had failed, we would tend to see the penetrant coming through the metal at any point that there might be a microcrack that we wouldn’t be able to see with the naked eye. The WD-40 Multi-Use Product is the best product for this. I mean, it’s been able to identify microcracks and fractures and heat stress fractures of heat exchangers that we’ve not been able to find with other types of products.
Removing Rusted Compressor Bolts
My name’s Alan Givens, I’m the president and owner of Parrish Services. We’re a mechanical contracting company, which means we do air conditioning, heating, plumbing and electrical, primarily in a residential market in the service replacement area. We spend a tremendous amount of money on training. I mean, as far as educating people, we give each of our employees about a $200/month educational allowance, we bring in training, a lot of technical training. Our industry is changing. Because energy is so expensive these days, the air conditioner we work on today is not the air conditioner we grew up with in the 1970s. It’s very complicated. I mean, now we’re using digital gauges versus analog gauges, hooking up laptops to equipment to monitor how it’s operating. We use the WD-40 Specialist Rust Release Penetrant on compressor bolts. Very often, we’ll find those have been rusted on there, have been there for 10-20 years. They’re very corroded, difficult to get to. In some cases like this, where we want to get the bolt removed, we use the WD-40 Specialist Rust Release Penetrant, which helps us prevent things like having to get a fire hot work permit, having someone on fire watch, literally saving the customer many hours of time and thousands of dollars in cost. That makes it so much easier. It ends up protecting it in the future so when I’ve got to come back if I need to change the seal or whatever I need to do, I can get it out of here without any additional rust and corrosion on the product. We’re pushing all of our employees to get, in the air conditioning side at least, a NATE accreditation, which is something that requires them to have continuing education to keep moving forward and not just depend on what they learned 20 years ago.
