FAQ Friday #60 - Can SealSkin be used in drop stitch floors – the type of fabric inflatable boat air decks are made from?

Drop stitch fabric is two parallel layers of fabric, kept in shape by lots of vertical threads. Without the threads, the two fabric layers would inflate to a cylinder with squashed ends. This material type is typically PVC, although it does exist in PU and Hypalon too.

When we’ve been asked about using SealSkin to fix minor leaks in inflatable floors and air decks, we’ve always been open and honest and said it’s not something we’ve tested ourselves but that we’ve had lots of customers report positive results. We’ve also said we don’t know how it will effect the threads in the fabric, especially if the liquid SealSkin isn’t allowed to fully cure before deflating the inflatable.

One of the team reported having a slow puncture in his tender floor, and based on the feedback we’ve received from RIBstore customer’s he was more than happy to use SealSkin.

The first step was to check the floor to find out where the leak was located, so we could direct the SealSkin liquid to the right location. We followed the process shown in the RIBstore YouTube video, with great results, using BoatSoap to create a soapy mixture.

The valve turned out to be properly airtight when tested so he moved on to testing the whole surface of the tender floor. A whole host of tiny punctures spread across different areas of the inflatable floor were found. Sometimes, with slow punctures, it can take a while for any bubbles to form but in this case, it was immediately obvious!

The next step was to deflate, squeeze some SealSkin into the floor via the valve and then reinflate.

The inflated floor was tumbled around to ensure each area with a puncture was covered with the liquid.

I have to admit, there were pinhole punctures in so many different places that it took three attempts to cover all the areas - retesting each time to see which leaks remained.

After a few attempts, there were no further leaks and the floor stayed fully inflated, at full pressure, for over 48 hours before we decided it was definitely repaired!

So, a successful repair, using SealSkin - and a first test by us of its effectiveness on drop stitch fabric.

I hope this will encourage you to fix any of your own mini-leaks that appear on your own boat.

The added bonus was the BoatSoap mixture made a great job of cleaning the floor. Our teammate's wife was very impressed with the lovely, jelly bean smell of the sparkling clean floor afterwards!

Here's a photo pre-cleaning: 
And a photo post clean - much better!