Security Sealant Solutions

Why Use Security Sealants?

Protect building inhabitants, including children, patients and residents -- as well as the building -- with safe and reliable Pecora security sealants.

Pecora sealants protect more than the building. In a daycare, hospital or prison project, there is much more at stake. It’s important that sealant can't be pulled from a joint and eaten by a small child, used by psychiatric patients to hurt themselves, or removed to expose a joint for an inmate to hide a weapon or illicit drugs.

Security sealants contain the properties to prevent idle tampering and vandalism that can endanger children, patients and citizens. In addition to safety, the use of security sealants present many benefits from an economic perspective:

• Decreased risk of lawsuits
• Decreased maintenance costs
• Increased service periods of sealants
• Decreased replacement costs

Tamper Resistant and Tamper Proof Joint Sealants

Most caulking and construction materials are easily tampered with or “pickable”. Pickable meaning, the ability of the material to be interfered with to the point of removal, for uses other than what they were intended. Typical flexible sealants which are usually based on urethane or silicone chemistries can be pulled away to expose a joint.

Security sealants, often referred to as "tamper-proof" or “tamper-resistant”, differ from ordinary sealants in hardness and tensile strength making it more difficult to cut, dig into or pull out of a joint.  A “tamper proof” or “tamper resistant” sealant requires a Shore A hardness of up to 80+ and 50, respectively, to prevent them from being easily removed from a joint. Typical architectural sealants are designed for weatherproofing, durability, and accommodating expansion joint movement.

Because no movement capability is sometimes unacceptable, but tamper “resistance” is still a requirement, a new class of sealants was needed. To fill the gap Pecora has formulated materials which can be classified as tamper- resistant as opposed to tamper proof. These products can be classified as having limited movement capability and can be used in properly designed joints performing as both a moving joint and providing an acceptable level of tamper resistance.