Finding and fixing leaks

[rookienewbie]

Hows everyones packrafts holding air? I still am losing a little bit of air, although i no longer see anymore bubbles. I even glued all of the strips on the outside of the bottom. Has anyone found odd spots that tend to leak?

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[krstahl]

Pay close attention to the inside of the raft tub, i.e., at the junctions where the two tube ends and seal strip come together and are welded to each other and to the floor.  Matt stresses this area for extra care during fit up and welding.  Even so, those are the locations where I had most trouble.  My second most source of leaks was at small burn/melt marks on the TPU next to the seal strips and around tie downs any where the iron slipped off the seal strip.  Some of those are very tiny and may take several minutes to make a bubble with the soap test.  I have built 4 rafts.  My first deflates about 30% in a day (10 or 15 puffs to refill), my second about 10% in two days, and my third deflates about 5% in about three or four days.  My fourth was given away so I don’t have stats on that.

On my first raft I even went so far as to seam grip the outside of all my seam strips but on that boat I did not apply seam grip to all of the seam internally.  I also did a poor job of welding the seam strips to the tube because I was trying to build the raft too fast.

 

If you go to a rafting store frequently  you will notice that even the factory made rafts will slowly lose pressure although over several weeks rather than days.  Still, they will all lose some pressure over time.

[harald]

I recently learnt that a good dishwasher fluid to detect leaks is Fairy Ultra diluted one plus ten. This is what people use in homemade formulas to blow giant soap bubbles. Works better than the no name stuff I used before. You have to cover the whole raft in detergent and wait a while for all leaks to show up.

 

 

 

 

 

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