Tips for sealing up cracks in laundry room.
I have been having an issue with finding spiders in my laundry room. I have a feeling it's due to one of two holes in the room, but I am not sure what the best way to try and seal them up and make then look nicer. This is the hot water valve pipe above my hot water heater. It appears they cut out too much of the drywall behind the plate and left a large hole. There's also a cut off black wire in that clamp that runs back into the wall. Im not sure what it goes to, my thoughts are the water h3ater used to be electric and that cord ran to old water heater. My current one is gas so I wonder if I can undo the clamp and get rid of the wire and patch the hole somehow? The second place is the pipe above the water heater leading to the attic area. It has a metal lip around the top that hides the hole but the hole isn't sealed and the Crack between the pipe and the ceiling allows attic insulation to fall through. Would using some type of heat resistant caulking be a good idea to help seal up the hole? Any tips would be appreciated. Im fairly novice at home repair/renovations.