HotVac & GelPlane

Gelplane and Hotvac - the dreamteam for your osmosis treatment.

Gelplane

One of the best professional tools to strip off Gelcoat from a GRP Boat hull.

The benefit is that an exact depth can be adjusted
and a smooth surface makes further works much faster.
No craters and no dust like with grinding or blasting.

This tool is perfect Gelcoat Removal for Osmosis Repairs
or removal of old porous gelcoat.

You can either rent this tool or get it with an operator.
Of course you can rent also a professional  chips and dust extraction system. Then you dont look like after a Grinder Session and you avoid the probably biggest D.I.Y. job
of your life.





Contact us for further details, rental or gelcoat removal job.

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HotVac

At the date of writing these lines Mandora-Fix.com is the only Company in whole Cyprus operating a patented HotVac Hull Cure system.



This sytem can be used for:

1) Osmosis prevention

Perfect to dry out the boat regulary and properly in short time and below humidity rates usually done before Osmosis shows its nasty signs. You can apply HotVac pads without removing topcoat, gelcoat or fiberglass layers. Check with Quantum Marine Moisture Meter the hull. If readings are high, we recommend to do a prophylactic osmosis treatment.

2) FRP Tempering

Fiberglass dried at room termperatures cures only to about 80%. The remaining uncured 20 percent are very dangerous for Osmosis.
Unfortunately lot of shipyards still do not temper new hulls and so they cure not fully and therefore are sensitive for osmosis.
Most resins can be temper dried up 2 years after production, in some cases even longer or at least to 90%.
This tempering should also be done after hull damage repairs where new fiberglass was applied.

3) Osmosis Treatment

In short, most osmosis happens because the resin in the fiberglass was not good quality, bad workmanship in the layupprocess and not fully cured resin (80/20 on room termperature resin curing). Mostly the uncured resin elements start a chemical process when they come in touch with water. Of course, on a boat you can´t avoid water. But you can avoid the 20% uncured resin elements (see 1 and 2). However, when you have osmosis already then the chemical reaction is in process and must be stopped immediately. This can NOT be achieved by removing the water. This must be achieved by removing the at least of one of the other 2 chemical elements involved.

So what is involved:

1. Water - can be removed only temporary, as it is a boat it will come back for sure.
2. Propylene Glycol - can not be removed as the FRP pores are too small
3. Styrene - can be removed under controlled temperature AND Vacuum

As soon as these 3 elements come together they start the so called osmosis process which as a result of this "rotting" process makes the stinky acid and the blisters. If one of these 3 would be missing, nothing bad would happen.

So the solution is to remove Styrene permanently or at least reduce it as good as possible.
But Styrene is stubborn and does not go away just by temperatures created by sun or heaters.

The boiling point of water (and all other liquids like glycol) is dependent on the barometric pressure. For example, on the top of Mt. Everest water boils at 68 °C (154 °F), compared to 100 °C (212 °F) at sea level. Conversely, water deep in the ocean near geothermal vents can reach temperatures of hundreds of degrees and remain liquid.

Water will boil at reducing temperatures as the vacuum level increases. Any combination of temperature and vacuum above the boiling point curve will generate large volumes of water vapour until all of the water has boiled away.

Hot Vac reduce the baromatic pressure to 2 - 10 millibars with vacuum on the fiberglass hull. Aditionally HotVac heat up the vacuum plates to a controled temperatur of 100 C°.  Water vapour in this pressure with about already 20 °C and the harmful glycol and other acids with less than 100 °C instaed of 197 C° at sea level.

This is the reason why the Sun never will cure Osmosis
(except photovoltaic panels drive a HotVac)

The Hot Vac Hull Cure System reduces or even removes breakdown elements of FRP in a Boat hull. This is done by controlled heat and vacuum. The combination of controlled heat and vacuum is the most successful way to get rid of the chemical elements in charge.

In the end "osmosis" is a kind of plastic corrosion (rust)

What is done:

1. Remove Gelcoat completely
2. Remove damaged CSM Mat layer
3. Remove deeper damages
4. Pressure wash the hull several times
5. HotVac the hull
6. Apply adhesion resin or if necessary new layers of fiberglass with vinylester resin
7. Apply several coats of coloured corrosion resistant (not water barring) resin
8. Temper the new resin with Hot Vac (Vacuum with controlled temperature)
9. Apply Antifouling
10. Have a boat most probably better than new

You can either rent this system with an operator or ask for a quote for osmosis treatment.

Also contact us if you want to know more detailled informations about osmosis and osmosis treatment, as this is only a short and incomplete overview.