Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. We are coming to you from our home in Jerusalem, and today we are diving into something that is honestly a universal struggle for anyone who has ever signed a lease. I am here with my brother, as always.
Herman Poppleberry, ready to talk shop. And honestly, Corn, this prompt from our housemate Daniel really hit home. We have lived in enough shared apartments to know the absolute dread that comes with the phrase, no drilling in the walls. Especially here in Jerusalem, where the rental market continues to tighten in neighborhoods like Rehavia and Nachlaot. Landlords are more protective of their property than ever.
It is the ultimate renter's dilemma, right? You want to make the place feel like a home, you want to set up your tech, but you are staring at these pristine, or sometimes not-so-pristine, plaster and stone walls knowing that a single drill bit could mean losing your security deposit. Daniel sent us this great audio prompt about his workaround, which is using Three M V H B tape, or Very High Bond tape.
It is funny because we actually touched on some of these rental anxieties back in episode three hundred forty-eight when we talked about fair wear and tear. But Daniel is taking it to a much more technical level. He is not just talking about hanging a picture frame with a little command strip. He is talking about mounting heavy speakers and running ethernet cables using industrial grade adhesives.
Right, and he mentioned some specific techniques he is using, like applying pressure for sixty seconds and waiting seventy-two hours for the bond to set. He even asked about using a hairdryer or a heat gun to prep the surface. I want to really dig into the science here, Herman, because I think most people think of tape as this temporary, flimsy thing. But Daniel mentioned this stuff is used on the Burj Khalifa. Is that actually true?
It is absolutely true. And that is where the distinction between what you buy at the grocery store and what engineers use really comes into play. Three M developed V H B tape around nineteen eighty, and it fundamentally changed how we build things. Before that, if you wanted to join two pieces of metal or glass, you needed rivets, bolts, or welds. But V H B allowed for what we call structural bonding. When Daniel talks about the Burj Khalifa, he is referring to the curtain wall glazing. The glass panels on some of the most iconic skyscrapers in the world, including the Burj Al Arab and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, are held in place using these exact types of tapes. In fact, on the Burj Al Arab, the tape was tested to withstand extreme wind loads like category five hurricane force.
That is wild to think about. You are looking at the tallest building in the world and thinking, yeah, that is mostly just really high-quality tape holding the windows on. But okay, if it can hold a glass panel against high-altitude winds, why does my power strip still fall off the wall after two weeks? What is the gap between the industrial application and what we are doing at home?
That is the million-dollar question, and it comes down to the chemistry of the bond and the preparation of the surface. To understand why Daniel’s tape works, we have to talk about viscoelasticity. This is the secret sauce of Very High Bond tape. Most adhesives are either solid or liquid. But V H B is both. It has the properties of a viscous liquid, meaning it can flow into the microscopic crevices of a surface, and the properties of an elastic solid, meaning it can absorb energy and return to its original shape.
Okay, so when Daniel is pressing down for those sixty seconds he mentioned, he is actually forcing that liquid-like part of the tape to flow into the tiny valleys of the wall?
Exactly. We call that wetting out the surface. Even if a wall looks flat to your eye, on a microscopic level, it looks like the Grand Canyon. If you just lightly touch the tape to the wall, you are only making contact with the peaks of those canyons. You might only be using ten percent of the available surface area. When you apply firm pressure, you are physically pushing the adhesive into the valleys. That is why that sixty-second rule Daniel mentioned is so critical. You are literally increasing the surface area of the bond by an order of magnitude. This is where Van der Waals forces come into play. These are weak intermolecular attractions that only happen when molecules are incredibly close together. By wetting out the surface, you are maximizing those molecular-level connections.
So what about the seventy-two-hour wait time? Why does it take three days to reach full strength? If it is a tape, shouldn't it be instant?
You would think so, but the flow process, the wetting out, is not instantaneous. It is a time-dependent process. After twenty minutes, you might have fifty percent of the bond strength. After twenty-four hours, you are at about ninety percent. But to get that full, structural-grade hundred percent bond where the adhesive has fully migrated into every nook and cranny, you really need those seventy-two hours. This is where most people fail. They stick a heavy speaker to the wall, give it a thumb-press, and hang the weight immediately. The tape hasn't had time to flow, the weight pulls it away from the valleys, and the whole thing fails. It is like trying to build a foundation while the concrete is still wet.
That makes a lot of sense. It is a test of patience as much as physics. Now, Daniel also mentioned using a hairdryer or a heat gun. He said it was an intuition he had, but he wanted to know if the science backs it up. Does heat actually improve the bond of Very High Bond tape?
Daniel’s intuition is spot on. Temperature is a massive factor in how well an adhesive performs during the application phase. Remember how I said the tape acts like a viscous liquid? Well, what happens to honey or maple syrup when you heat it up? It gets thinner and flows more easily. By warming the surface and the tape to, say, thirty or forty degrees Celsius, you are dramatically reducing the viscosity of the adhesive. It flows into those microscopic crevices much faster and more deeply than it would at room temperature. This is especially important for what we call the glass transition temperature of the polymer. If the tape is too cold, it stays in a glassy, rigid state. If you warm it up, it moves into its rubbery state where it can actually bond.
So, if you are working in a cold apartment in Jerusalem in the middle of February, your tape is basically fighting against you?
Absolutely. If the surface is below fifteen degrees Celsius, the adhesive becomes too firm. It cannot wet out the surface. It is like trying to stick a piece of cold plastic to a wall. Using a hairdryer to prep the wall and the tape is a professional-level move. It ensures that the initial contact is as intimate as possible. Just don't overdo it. You don't want to melt the foam core; you just want to get it nice and tacky. Think of it as waking up the molecules.
This brings up an interesting point about the tape itself. It is not just a thin layer of glue. It is usually a thick, acrylic foam. Why the foam? Why not just a super-strong film?
This is where the second part of viscoelasticity comes in, the elastic part. The foam core is designed to absorb stress. Think about a speaker mounted on a wall. There are vibrations from the sound, there are temperature changes that cause the wall and the speaker bracket to expand and contract at different rates, and there is the constant pull of gravity. If the bond was perfectly rigid, like a brittle superglue, those tiny movements would create cracks in the bond line, and it would eventually snap. V H B tape can typically tolerate shear strain up to three times its own thickness. So a one-millimeter thick tape can stretch up to three millimeters without the bond breaking.
So the foam acts like a shock absorber?
Exactly. It distributes the stress along the entire length of the tape rather than concentrating it at one point. This is why it is used in Times Square for those massive LED signs. Those signs are huge, they are heavy, and they are buffeted by wind and the vibrations of the city. The V H B tape allows the sign to move slightly relative to the frame without the bond breaking. It is the same reason it works for Daniel’s ethernet cables. If someone trips over the cable, the foam stretches and absorbs that sudden yank, whereas a rigid plastic clip might just pop right out of the plaster.
I love the idea that the very thing that makes it feel squishy is what makes it strong. But I have to ask about the dark side of this for renters. If we are creating a bond strong enough for the Burj Khalifa, how on earth do we get it off when the lease is up? We talked about mold disputes and legal headaches back in episode two hundred seventy-nine, but a ruined wall is a surefire way to get a landlord to keep your deposit.
That is the danger zone. If you just grab a corner and pull, you are likely to take the paint, the primer, and maybe a chunk of the drywall with you. The bond between the tape and the paint is often stronger than the bond between the paint and the wall. This is a classic failure mode where the substrate itself gives way before the adhesive does.
So what is the professional way to remove it? Is there a hack for that?
There are a few. The first is heat, again. Just as heat helped it flow on, heat can help it soften up. If you get it warm with a hairdryer, the adhesive loses some of its internal strength, its cohesive strength, making it easier to peel. But the real secret weapon is a technique called cheese-wiring. You take a piece of high-strength fishing line or even dental floss, and you gently saw it through the foam core of the tape, parallel to the wall.
So you are basically bisecting the tape?
Right. You leave a thin layer of foam on the wall and a thin layer on your speaker bracket. Once the heavy object is gone, you can deal with the remaining residue much more easily. You can use your thumb to roll the remaining adhesive into a ball, or use a citrus-based solvent, like D-Limonene, to dissolve the last bits without harming the paint. Three M actually makes a dedicated citrus-based adhesive remover that is safe for most painted surfaces. It is a bit of a process, but it is the only way to guarantee you won't be patching and painting the day you move out.
That is such a crucial tip. I think a lot of people overlook the removal part until they are three hours away from handing over the keys. Now, I want to go back to the chemistry for a second. Most tapes use what we call pressure-sensitive adhesives. But V H B is specifically an acrylic. Is there something special about acrylic versus the rubber-based adhesives you find in cheaper tapes?
Acrylics are the gold standard for longevity and environmental resistance. Rubber-based adhesives, like what you find in standard duct tape or cheap double-sided tape, are great for quick sticks, but they degrade. They oxidize over time, they get brittle when it is cold, and they turn into a gooey mess when it is hot. If you leave duct tape on a window for a summer, it is basically fused there in the worst way possible.
I have seen that. It turns into that yellow, crusty residue that nothing can remove.
Exactly. Acrylics, on the other other hand, are incredibly stable. They are resistant to ultraviolet light, moisture, and most chemicals. This is why you can use them on the exterior of a building for twenty years and the bond will be just as strong as day one. For Daniel’s speakers, that is important. He doesn't want to wake up in three years to the sound of a speaker crashing onto the floor because the adhesive finally gave up the ghost. Acrylic molecules are cross-linked, meaning they form a three-dimensional network that is much harder to break down than the linear chains you find in rubber adhesives.
It is interesting because we are talking about this as a rental hack, but it is really a shift in how we think about fasteners. In my mind, a screw is always better. It is mechanical, it is deep in the wall. But you are suggesting that in some cases, the tape might actually be superior?
In terms of stress distribution, absolutely. Think about it this way. A screw holds at exactly one point. All the weight of that speaker is concentrated on a few millimeters of steel and the surrounding wall material. If the wall is crumbly, that screw can pull out. But if you use a strip of V H B tape that is ten centimeters long, you are distributing that weight over a much larger area. There is no single point of failure. Engineers call this reducing stress concentrators. It is why modern airplanes are increasingly held together with adhesives rather than millions of rivets. It makes the structure lighter and more durable because you aren't drilling millions of holes that can turn into cracks.
That is a fascinating second-order effect. By trying to avoid holes to please a landlord, we might actually be using a more sophisticated engineering solution than the traditional one. But what about surface energy? I have heard you mention this before when we were talking about why some plastics are so hard to glue. Does that apply to Daniel’s apartment walls?
Oh, surface energy is the silent killer of adhesive bonds. Think of surface energy like the magnetic pull of a surface for a liquid. A high surface energy material, like bare metal or glass, wants to be covered in liquid. When you put a drop of water on it, the water spreads out flat. That is great for tape. It means the adhesive will easily wet out the surface.
And low surface energy would be like a Teflon pan?
Exactly. Water beads up on Teflon because the surface has very low energy; it doesn't want to bond with anything. Now, most apartment walls are painted with latex or acrylic paint, which generally have medium to high surface energy, so they are pretty good for tape. But, and this is a big but, if the wall is dirty, oily, or has some kind of easy-clean silicone-based coating, the surface energy drops through the floor. The tape might feel sticky to your finger, but it won't actually bond to the wall. This is why some modern scuff-resistant paints are actually a nightmare for adhesives.
So Daniel’s prep work should probably include more than just a hairdryer. He should probably be cleaning those walls with something, right?
Absolutely. The standard professional recommendation is a fifty-fifty mix of isopropyl alcohol and water. You wipe the area down, let it dry completely, and then apply the tape. You want to remove any oils from fingers, any dust, or any residue from cleaning products. If you skip this step, you are basically bonding the tape to a layer of dust instead of the wall. And that is why things fall off. In industrial settings, they sometimes use a primer like Three M Tape Primer ninety-four for low surface energy materials, but for a renter, a good alcohol scrub is usually enough.
It is funny how much of this comes down to the things we can't see. The microscopic valleys, the surface energy, the molecular flow. It makes me wonder about the future of this technology. If we can hang glass on skyscrapers, are we eventually going to reach a point where we don't use nails or screws for anything in residential construction?
We are already moving that way. If you look at high-end furniture or even some modern cabinetry, you see fewer and fewer visible fasteners. Adhesives allow for much cleaner lines and more interesting combinations of materials. Imagine a world where you can just move a wall in your house because it is held in place by a high-tech, reversible adhesive bond rather than being framed into the floor. We are seeing more use of purchase groups in the Israeli residential market lately, where buyers are looking for more planning flexibility. Adhesives could be a big part of that modular future.
That would definitely make the Jerusalem rental market a lot more interesting. Imagine being able to reconfigure your apartment layout without losing your deposit. But there is a psychological hurdle there, isn't there? We trust a piece of metal that we can see. It is hard to trust an invisible chemical bond.
It is, but that is where the data comes in. Three M has done tests where they bond two pieces of metal with V H B and then try to pull them apart. Often, the metal itself will tear or deform before the bond breaks. When you see that kind of performance, your perspective starts to shift. You realize that stuck can be just as permanent as bolted. For Daniel, it means his speakers are actually safer on the wall with tape than they might be with a poorly installed drywall anchor.
So, for the regular listener who is inspired by Daniel’s success and wants to try this at home, let's summarize the Perfect Bond checklist. Because if they are going to do this, I want them to do it right.
Number one: clean the surface. Fifty-fifty isopropyl alcohol and water. Do not use a window cleaner or a multi-purpose spray; those often leave behind oils or scents that ruin the bond. Number two: check the temperature. If the wall is cold, use a hairdryer to warm it up to at least twenty-one degrees Celsius. Number three: apply the tape to the object first, then the object to the wall. Number four: pressure. This is the one everyone skips. You need to apply significant pressure across the entire surface of the tape. Three M recommends at least fifteen pounds of pressure per square inch. For most people, that means leaning into it with your body weight for a full sixty seconds.
And then the hardest part. The waiting.
Yes. Number five: the seventy-two-hour rule. If you can, find a way to support the weight of the object with something else for those three days. Use some painter's tape to hold it in place, or prop it up with a box. Give those acrylic molecules time to flow into the wall. If you do those five things, that speaker isn't going anywhere.
And just to be clear, we are talking about V H B tape specifically here. This is not the stuff you find in the stationery aisle. You usually have to order this specifically or go to a specialized hardware store. It is often grey or black with a red liner. If it doesn't say V H B on the inside of the roll, it is probably not the structural grade stuff we are talking about.
Correct. There are different versions for different surfaces, too. The forty-nine-forty-one family is the multi-purpose grey tape Daniel is likely using. But if you have powder-coated metal or certain plastics, you might want the fifty-nine-fifty-two family, which has a modified acrylic adhesive that is even better at wetting out difficult surfaces.
I think this is such a great example of how a little bit of deep-dive knowledge can solve a really practical, annoying problem. Daniel is out here living in the future, using skyscraper technology to avoid a fight with his landlord. It is brilliant.
It really is. And it makes you appreciate the engineering that goes into the mundane things around us. We walk past these buildings and signs every day not realizing that there is this incredible dance of chemistry and physics happening right there on the surface of the glass. It is a reminder that sometimes the most powerful solutions are the ones that are completely invisible.
Absolutely. Well, I think we have covered the what, the why, and the how-to for V H B tape. If you are a renter out there struggling with the no-drilling rule, maybe it is time to put down the drill and pick up the hairdryer. Just remember to be patient.
And remember the dental floss trick for when you move out. Your future self will thank you for not ripping the paint off the wall.
Definitely. We want to thank Daniel for sending in that prompt. It is always fun when we get to nerd out on the materials science of everyday life. If you have a weird workaround or a technical question that has been on your mind, we want to hear from you. You can head over to myweirdprompts.com and use the contact form there.
Or just send us an audio clip like Daniel did. We love hearing your voices and your perspectives. It really adds a different layer to the show.
For sure. And hey, we have been doing this for nearly four hundred episodes now, which is kind of wild to think about. If you have been enjoying the journey with us, please take a second to leave a review on Spotify or whatever podcast app you use. It genuinely helps the show grow and helps other curious people find us.
Yeah, those reviews are like the V H B tape of the podcast world. They create a strong bond between us and new listeners.
I see what you did there. Very nice. Alright, I think that is a wrap for today. You can find all our past episodes, including the ones we mentioned today about rental laws and tech, at myweirdprompts.com. We have a full RSS feed there for you as well.
Thanks for listening, everyone. This has been My Weird Prompts.
Stay curious, and we will talk to you in the next one. Bye!
