I realize that Great Stuff is great when it comes to quickly sealing things up, but it is not great in a lot of other respects:

• it gets on and ruins your clothes
• it gets on and doesn't come off your hands so you have to wear gloves
• you have to tape over or seal materials nearby so errant Great Stuff can be cleaned off them without a lot of wiping and scraping
• the huge number of safety warnings on it lead me to believe it is toxic
• unless you have a job that requires *exactly* one can, you end up wasting a lot because once you stop using a can, it dries up in the tube and you can't use it again.

After using at least 10 cans of the stuff, I'm not at all convinced it is really great stuff. But, everywhere I read and hear about weatherization everyone prescribes it. Are there really no better alternatives? I've searched online and was unsuccessful in finding any meaningful comparison of Great Stuff to any alternative products.

Recently, a friend moved and gave me a whole box of opened cans of paint, drywall compound, etc. In it, I discovered an open can of DAPtex Plus, which I used to seal around a window. It was great! It is water-soluble so it cleans up easily. It doesn't appear to be nearly as toxic. You can save a half-empty can for later reuse. You don't have to chisel off foam that has expanded too much. And it seems to block airflow just fine. The only disadvantage I saw was that it takes (much) longer to cure. And, it looks like it costs a dollar more per can. Is there some other disadvantage? If not, why don't green building people recommend DAPtex Plus instead of Great Stuff? Or at least mention it as an alternative?

I'm a DIYer, not a building professional so spending $40 (the price at my local store) on a gun certainly defeats any cost saving Great Stuff has over DAPtek. Judging by the Great Stuff display cases stationed in the walkways at the local hardware box store, I'm guessing there are a lot of DIYers like me using Great Stuff without a gun (because it doesn't make economic sense for us to buy a gun).

So, I guess my question is this: Are there performance reasons why I would want to hassle with Great Stuff instead of using DAPtek? If there aren't, I'd like to tell several local nonprofits that have flyers and checklists on DIY weatherization to switch from promoting Great Stuff to prescribing DAPtek. Unless Great Stuff performs dramatically better than DAPtek, it seems like it loses to DAPtek in every other characteristic a DIYer would care about. It may be a dollar cheaper, but if you have to buy gloves, throw away half-used cans, and any clothes unfortunate enough to get in the way, the dollar savings go out the window really fast.

I found no performance disclaimers on the DAP "Solutions for your home" website. They seem to recommend their latex foam for window and door sealing jobs with no reservations. The only distinction they made between when to use latex vs polyeurethane foam seemed to be when the gap is larger than 2".

On the Great Stuff website, I found this buried in an FAQ page:

[i]How are latex products different from GREAT STUFF™? There are two key differences between latex foam and GREAT STUFF™, which is a polyurethane foam:
1. Latex foams are typically "open cell" and, as a result, can take on water. In fact, the same properties that allow you to wash latex foam off your hands with water also mean that the cured foam can absorb water. This can cause wood rot or deterioration in areas where wet latex foam is next to wood, such as a window frame. In contrast, GREAT STUFF™ is a closed-cell foam. It forms a water-resistant outer coating when cured.
2. Latex foam does not expand. GREAT STUFF™ expands to thoroughly fill all voids and cavities making it an ideal air sealant.[/i]

So, is DAP ignoring/downplaying the threat of using their latex foam near windows and doors?

Now that I know that DAPtex Plus is an open-cell foam, I've been able to find more things that compare the performance of these two types of foam products. Articles like this one on the Green Building Advisor compare open and closed polyeurethane foams, but I'm assuming that latex open-cell foams have the same permeance problem as the polyeurethane open-cell foam. The thing that seems unsatisfying about articles like that one, however, is that they are comparing closed and open cell foams for whole wall or whole floor encapsulation. In those applications, I can see that using an open cell foam would adversely affect the "reversibility" permeance requirement, but in the application where DIYers are weatherizing the gaps around their windows and doors, it seems like the little seam of foam around the window wouldn't throw off the moisture performance of a whole wall. I could turn that into a question, but don't worry, I'll give ya'll a break and take that question over there.