I finally learned why my mud was bubbling after that job at a Denver condo complex

Was finishing a ceiling repair at this fancy condo in LoDo a couple weeks ago and kept getting these tiny bubbles no matter what I did. Drove me nuts for like an hour until the building super walks in and goes "you using the cold tap water?" Yeah turns out that building has super soft water from a whole building system and it was causing the compound to trap air. Switched to bottled water from my truck and it laid down perfect. Anyone else hit weird water issues on high rise jobs?

2 comments

2 Comments

abbyl4920d ago

Wait, you've seriously never seen soft water mess with mud before? I had the exact same thing happen in a building near a water treatment plant in my city. The stuff kept foaming up like dish soap no matter how careful I was with the mixing. I even tried different brands of joint compound thinking it was a bad batch. Then a plumber friend told me some water softeners use potassium chloride instead of salt, and that can definitely make mud act weird if you mix it too thin or stir it too fast. Your point about the hot truck water is spot on too. That bottled water probably had way more air dissolved in it than cold tap water ever would. Sounds like the building super maybe just wanted you to switch for some other reason, or it was a fluke. Real talk, I've had more issues with hard water leaving crud on my tools than soft water making bubbles. Some folks just gotta blame something other than their own technique.

taragrant20d ago

Hold on, I gotta call BS on this one. I've been using tap water from all kinds of buildings for 20 years and never had this problem. If your mud is bubbly, it's way more likely you mixed it too thin or you're working it back and forth too much. Soft water doesn't trap air, it's just got less minerals in it. People blame the water when they really just need to check their technique. Plus, bottled water from your truck? That same bottled water sat in a hot truck for hours, so it probably had more dissolved air in it than the cold tap water. I'm not buying that the water made that big of a difference.