University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Melissa Cook Stadium, Softball

South Bend, IN—A delightful little ballpark, Melissa Cook Stadium proudly serves Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish softball team.  It also proudly serves the University’s engineering department as a facility that was waterproof and did not leak since the day it was built.

This is in large part due to the selection of EMSEAL’s DSM System for the expansion joints.  DSM is one of EMSEAL’s line of precompressed, preformed joint sealants that offers a durable alternative to backer rod and wet sealants.  In joints as small as 1/2″ and up to 1 3/4″ sometimes varying across that entire range in a single run, the DSM System was sized to suit the changing joint widths.

Unlike wet sealants in their traditional field-applied format, EMSEAL’s precompressed sealants are never in tension.  Tensile stresses at the bond line AND within the cured wet sealant are the principle reasons for wet sealant failure.  Combine these physical forces with any deviation from the hour-glass geometry required for wet sealant to function and caulk-joint failure is likely to occur even after one winter cycle.

There is sometimes a misperception that precompressed sealants are difficult to install to follow joint-gap size variations and that this is not a problem for caulk-and-backer rod. On the contrary.  It is absolutely critical to switch backer rod sizes in order to preserve geometry.  This is seldom done–how many times have you seen backer rod twisted one or more times around itself in order to pack a joint too wide for the product taken to the jobsite that day?

A project, properly measured for size switching using an EMSEAL precompressed sealant will go a long way in ensuring that the joint is not only properly sealed, but that the material installed will properly handle the joint movement expected.

Melissa Cook Stadium joins a long and growing list of sports facilities that are benefiting from EMSEAL’s approach to stadium expansion joint sealing at new construction or at retrofit—Who else is using EMSEAL stadium joint sealing solutions?