Is EVA Foam Teak any good, the result after a years use.
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- Опубликовано: 13 окт 2024
- You can buy stick on EVA Foam Teak Decking from Ebay, Amazon and various other suppliers. It's quite cheap. But is it any good ?. I fitted some to the Bridge Deck on Zephyr IV last year so it's had a busy year of use since then. How did it fare under proper sailing conditions ?. Watch this video and find out !
This stuff is great. I have this exact same product on a large paddle board in Florida that’s been stored outside uncovered for 3 years now, and still looks like new. I experienced no issues with build-up in the grooves like you were concerned about. It’s very easy to clean & very durable. Only marks on it with hard use are a few very small puncture marks from a very angry mackerel 😅
It does seem to wear well. I just wish they'd make a version where the gaps are filled. Wow ! Dangerous Angry Mackerel :-)
Thank you for the update Dave! Much appreciated! I will now have a bash at replacing my Griffon’s cockpit teak seating using this approach !
Ah Max, good to see you've found the video, I pretty much did it for you :-) I've just done a check on renting/hiring a motorised sealant gun and found someone who will hire one for £22 a day. They cost anything from £100 - £400. As always google is your friend when finding someone. BTW, another tip. Have a small container of water with a few drop of Fairy liquid. If you dip your finger in that you can smooth any irregularities after you've pushed the seam down with a scraper. I wish I'd known that when I did mine, it would be a bit neater :-) Let me know how you get on Max ... Dave
this is a really good idea. I ve just bought the eva decking and throught the depressions between the "wood planks"would tear easily or collect dirt..this is a very good solution..thanks for the upload sir!
Hi Roger, glad it was of some use. It takes a long time to add the seams but it does appear to work. There's a longer, more detailed video that I did a year earlier, which might be of interest too - ruclips.net/video/47wt76_537A/видео.html
Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I have the same stuff stuck to sheet ply in the lower hulls of my yacht so that I can lift the ply out if need and throw away. But so far so good it hasn't lost any adhesion is out of the weather and gets trampled on. Feels soft and grips your feet well when in rough weather.
The saloon floor I just stuck it down directly to white gelcoat after a good wipe with Acetone. No sign of it losing adhesion there aswell.
I sprayed some 303 protectant twice in one year on the Eva foam and wiped any spills asap. It looks amazing but be mindful of resting heavy items with edges as they will leave an imprint. The imprint will vanish after a week give or take depending on the severity. Great for walking on but not for a work boat where rigging gear tools and equipment are being dragged about on it.
I am very happy with the foam and it weighs nothing is cheap and easy to work with and apply with some careful pre installation planning. Not caulked it but may do but 18v 😊vacuum cleaner still works a treat
Hi Moana, thanks for your comprehensive comment. I think caulking is a bit of a compromise, but I didn't want the channels between the strips of teak looking foam. One of the commenters on here, mentioned a self levelling caulking material but has not come back to me with a specific brand. More research required. I agree the adhesive is very strong. The only time I've seen people complaining about it coming unstuck is when it got very hot. My little square bridge deck shows no sign of lifting after 3 years. Thanks again for your comment .... Best Wishes .... Dave
Very impressed with you caulking the flex decking. Looks wonderful as well as keeping the crud out. Very nicely done 😊
Thank you Iain. It was hard work using an ordinary sealant gun. There is a follow up video on the stocks. For some reason the caulking material started breaking down and getting sticky. I may have spilt some paint thinner on it, whilst renovating Zephyr IV's deck. Any way I dug it out and re-caulked it, using a power gun. So much easier. The EVA foam is still ok though.
Yes, I can imagine doing that length of caulking with a manual gun would give you a degree of hand ache, plus I guess a power gun would provide a more continuous flow @@davesailing. Sad about having to re-do it as it looked wonderful
Just a handy hint if you ate struggling with sealant then popping it into a bucket of hot water before hand loosens it up lovely...
Hi Chris, thanks for the tip. I did warm the tubes but it was still hard work :-(
check out the earlier video - ruclips.net/video/47wt76_537A/видео.html
Glad to hear it held up.
A suggestion for an alternative caulking is to try a self leveling version. Its the same stuff but it flows like a thick resin when warm. Cheers Warren
Hi Warren, Thanks for the comment. I'm curious about the self levelling caulking material. It certainly might make the job easier. It also might stick better to the EVA foam. Is it available internationally ? Do you have a makers name and model number ? .... Best wishes ... Dave
I’ve used in on 2 of my boats. I even got creative and did edging and trimming with a very sharp blade and yes you can wash blood off of it. Personally I love the stuff.
If the Chinese manufacturer could sort the channels out, maybe make the backing with ridges so the imitation teak fitted between them, it would be the bees knees.
I was hoping to find information like this. What you did with the sealant really makes it look proper.
Any ideas what you might use for a teak and holly effect? I think a white silicone wouldn't last very long.
Hi Marcel, Glad you found the video useful. I did a quick search for White caulking material and came up with Stelmax 1961 White Gap Filler 300g. It's primarily used for sealing double glazed windows and it just might work. When I was experimenting with the samples I tried four or five sealants that I purchased in B&Q. One was a total disaster :-) I'm still not sure I've got the best. Good luck with it anyway. I'd be pleased to hear how you get on... Best Wishes Dave
Appreciate update as have been pondering using this product in some places on my yacht, was especially encouraged after watching your first video. Thanks
You're very welcome, I hope you get a positive result if you bite the bullet and try it. Thanks for all your comments.. Dave
Schitterend resultaat. De kosten vallen inderdaad mee. Ik ga het proberen op mijn Bavaria 38-3!
Bedankt voor de tips!
Heel graag gedaan.
Ik hoop dat het goed gaat. Een gemotoriseerd kitpistool is een must voor alles dat groter is dan het gebied dat ik heb gedaan.
Pas op.. Dave
Great update! Another job well done. Do you think having the canopy above helps moderate the sun affect? Your cabin looks delightfully comfortable.
Hi Sally, it's not quite as neat as I would like but infinitely better than the weatherbeaten and rotten Teak faced ply that was there before. The canopy definitely helps but I don't think Black is a good choice for a deck. The interior is nice, a bit careworn in places but I'm gradually bringing it up to scratch. Good to hear from you .. Dave
Going to have to do this. I went with Cork on my refit 5 years ago and on the whole it still looks great but the seabirds have pecked at it in places so it has bits missing! I think they have been using it as nesting material!
I used it with custom boarding steps and it looks great, but a sea bird of some kind seems to like clawing at it, unfortunately. There are hundreds of little cuts in it now. I think the PVA stuff is a lot harder and would hold up better than the EVA foam.
I guess it's a situation where you get what you pay for. The PVA equivalent would be quite a bit more expensive I think. I couldn't find anyone in the UK who would sell me the small piece I needed without installing it too. I found a company in Europe who would sell me a piece for about £80 but wanted £120 for carriage. Thanks for your comment, Dave
Thank you sir ! This helped a lot
You're welcome Ryan, nice to help a fellow mariner out. You would make me very happy if you subscribed too 🙂
I was thinking of using this inside but as it needs caulking I don't think I'll bother,might just go with a wood veneer instead
If you heat the sealant before applying it it’s much easier to squeeze.
Ah, you need to look at the first video where I show, in depth, how I went about installing the section of bridge deck. There you'll see that the caulking tubes were stored in a bucket of hot water for an hour before being extruded. I didn't find it made a huge difference but that was what was recommended 😅
There is a huge difference between generic sourced foam from eBay/Asia and the us sourced products such as SeaDek. In the Honolulu UV the eBay stuff seriously degraded in 1 year while the SeaDek is holding up after 5 years. They estimate 5-7 years and that seems correct. Something about the composition is different. I still use the eBay stuff below deck, but not in the sun.
Hi Karl, thank you for your comment and I sort of expected it. I guess, as always you get what you pay for. I tried to buy something better but at the time nobody in the UK was prepared to sell me anything, unless they came and installed it. The installation estimate far exceeded to cost of the decking.
I did find a company in the EU, Belgium from memory, who would sell me the small piece I needed but it was quite expensive. I could deal with that, but when they wanted to charge me £150.00 for carriage, I suspected I was being ripped off and went along with the cheaper EV Foam. I guess the EV Foam will wear out, and when it does I'll try again to buy something better. Best Wishes .... Dave
Great useful video thanks
Hi John, glad you found it useful.. Best wishes .. Dave
Very useful. Thank you.
You're very welcome ☺
Great job!
Thank you kind Sir ... Best Wishes Dave
Thank you
You're very welcome Gary :-)
Does it seem hard like teak? Or plastic rubbery?
Hi Paul, it's not hard like teak. Apparently it's similar to the soles of flip flops, so firm but with some give. It's really nice to kneel on, especially if you have boney knees like me.
It's very cheap, buy yourself a small piece and test it. Best wishes.. Dave
@@davesailing Thank-you
Are these soaky in wet conditions? I've heard that
I'm not sure what you mean by soaky ?
They don't seem to absorb water but water will lay on the surface until it drains away. The EV foam is similar to the foam you find on flip flops and similar footwear.
What about now?
Take a look at ruclips.net/video/fOZQ3qY8hiM/видео.html I posted that a few days ago.
i dont recomment this product for some reason when boating and and swimming you cant step on it wet because a start discoloring everything turn a mess more color appear when you wash the floors by the end of the day everything get the color bags cloth floors whatever you bring on board going to have a stain from eva foam no good
I think you must have a different product. Basic EVA foam is very colour fast, it may have it's deficiencies but that isn't one of them. Sounds like you have something that has been stained or painted after application. Thanks for the comment ... Best Wishes ... Dave
Glue tipe?
Hi, I'm not sure what you are asking ? The foam sheet is sticky backed, you remove the backing paper and just stick it down, it's VERY STICKY :-) Does that help ?? Best Wishes .. Dave
Why on earth would you want black decks.
Hi Robert - well I ask myself the same question. But then I'm a pretty staunch traditionalist and not so keen on some of the more recent trends in boating.. Thanks for watching. Best wishes .... Dave
Come back in five years, when its timeto remove it. Tellusabout it then.
So you went to all that extra labor without first testing if the product would perform well on it's on??? You just assumed it would not. You've performed NO test. Definitely not a reasonable scientific one.
Nice to hear from you. A question for you. Have you spent much time on a sailing boat ?
My deduction was based on my experience of the endless cleaning of detritus - stones and dirt from shoes, salt crystals, bird excrement and the dirt that is left after the rain has evaporated from the deck of my boats.
The foam teak in it's basic form has nice channels which provide an ideal refuge for this unpleasant mixture. So I looked at ways of improving it.
The traditional wooden teak deck is caulked, originally with pitch and latterly with the synthetic materials that I describe in my video and it seemed logical to try and emulate that.
It has worked quite well and at first glance looks surprisingly like a real teak deck. Any detritus that falls on the deck is easily brushed off and most people who have seen it thought it was a great idea and a big improvement.
The video was never intended to be a scientific experiment, really just a demonstration of what I had done on my boat Zephyr IV. I think I gave a good appraisal of the product and my conclusions of it's performance for the last year.
Best WIshes .... Dave ... By the way it would be lovely to have you as a subscriber :-)
@@davesailing I don’t need to ever step on a sailing boat to know you just made an assumption that cost you a great deal of effort and time. You may be right in your assumption but it’s still an assumption. Millions of EVA users seem to be happy without that extra labor. If your assumption is incorrect imagine how much more scenery, etc. you could have enjoyed instead of taping, caulking, etc? I’m about to install some on a center console. I’ll let you know if I find I wished I had followed your laborious adventure.
@@stickermigtigger Why are you being so judgemental?
I wasn't happy with the appearance of the unmodified EVA foam so I experimented with caulking it, which for me, is an improvement. I shared that with the 1000 or so of my subscribers and it's obviously been interesting to others as the video has had 37,000 plus views.
If I spent a lot of energy and time with the experiment then with all due respect, it was my decision and my time to spend. I don't see why it should concern you if I chose to spend that time experimenting with the EVA foam.
Please do use the EVA foam in any way you wish on your centre console, I hope it works OK for you. Maybe you should spend some of your time creating a video of the process and sharing your experience for the potential benefit of your fellow boaters. Take care ... Dave
@@davesailing
Best test is a real world test. Well done. Cheers and thanks for the video, as I'm thinking of using it.
Thanks Robert, so glad to hear it was of some use. I hope your project goes well. Best wishes - Dave
You are using the rong product
Maybe, what do you suggest I should use ?
Aqua traction is the best product on the market in my opinion water proof stain resistant non-slip and you get a one year guarantee.
@@jandrmarinefabrics2425 You could well be right. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a dealer in he UK.
You got that rong
I will also send you a sample