Drying out a sunfish idea

shorefun

Well-Known Member
While looking random local items on Facebook marketplace I saw a good old fashioned hair drier. The kind with a hose and a bonnet.

I am thinking perfect idea. The hose lets you focus the air and it has an internal heater that should not be too hot.

So if you are planning on drying out a fish look around for an old air drier. Thriftstores have them from time to time, I was just at one and commenting to my son about the old type hairdryer they had.

One word of warning, you must have good airflow down the hose. If the connection creates back flow you can over heat the coils.

Anyway just an idea, let me know if you try it and it works. None of mine are wet enough to worry.
 
Bring a chair and some reading material. ;)

Depending on the internal amount of water that migrates through the foam "medium", the volume of air moved across the affected surfaces is more important than heat. IMHO.

However, as a suggestion to a final step, I'm thinking a hair dryer could be used, and the moisture content could be checked by holding a cold mirror (or glass) over the warm air being sent out..

My five boats are all dry, but someone trying the above suggestion could have this step added to a complete dry-out.
 
My new project boat is dry and I don't know a lot about this subject but do you think it would accomplish anything by having your new access ports, fore and aft cut, and seal a shop vac on one end and run a constant vacume of outside air through the hull at high volume. No heat. Just leave it run and walk away. Wonder if it would pull moisture enough? Maybe even put a small heater at the intake port where the heated air is sucked in but not forced. I could be nuts. I didnt take my meds yet tonight.
 
My system uses a 6" duct fan in 6" inspection port on the deck between the forward edge of th daggerboard trunk and aft of the inner "V" of the coaming
exiting to a 4" inspection port on the aft deck about 2" forward of the transom. Added is a 40 w. light bulb inside the hull for a little (safe) heat. The 4' dia. exit hole insures there is a little pressure from the 6" blower hole forcing the air inside unto the entire interior. Forcing heated air strikes me as potentially dangerous as the heater could overheat risking a fire.

Alan Glos
Cazenovia, NY
 
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I tend to agree that leaving a hair dryer running unattended could be dangerous., especially an older unit.

Years ago I successfully dried out a very wet 1971 hull using a dehumidifier, a large cardboard box, some 4” dryer vent hose and duct tape.

I placed the dehumidifier in the box and cut extra pieces of cardboard to divide the box in half, separating the front and back of the unit. The dehumidifier pulls “fresh” air in from the front and discharges warm dry air out of the back. I cut a 4” hole in the front of the box and led a piece of vent hose to the inspection port behind the splash rail, I left it long and pushed up towards the bow as far as I could. I then cut another 4” hole in the back of the box and ran another piece of vent hose to the inspection port near the transom (installed for the rudder conversion). I taped everything up to make the system self-contained.

I had the boat facing deck down on saw horses and the box was sitting under the cockpit. I left it running for weeks and it worked like a charm, the unit held about 1.5 gallons at a time and I emptied it at least 4 or 5 times. Every few days I would remove the vent hoses from the box and rotate it to reverse the air flow inside the boat.

Between the removal of the bronze hardware and this drying method the boat lost a little over 40 pounds…well worth the effort.
 
The dryer can be set up safe. It has a tube keeping it away from the hull. It has been my experience that the dryers fail by something breaking and they just stop. So away from things the could burn up it would likely just melt a bit and stop working. A few hours a day while supervised might speed up the process.

Keep in mind the pancake fans you are using can burn up and melt. I have replaced some that have done this.
 
I stumbled on a little round solar fan I'd bought several years ago. ($1) :cool:

Just for the photo, it's mounted running—while powered by the sun—in the rear window of my pickup truck. The method of attachment, I'll call a "clothespin" mount.

Shielded from rain, it would provide enough air movement to maintain a dry Sunfish, provided the Sunfish is stored right-side up—and exposed to the sun.

Fullscreen capture 3112021 53841 PM.bmp.jpg
 
The issue I’d have with either the hairdryer or the shop vac method is that they both would seem to draw a lot of power.
I’m using a bathroom ceiling fan with a length of flex vent going into the hull to get air in as deep as possible, in conjunction with a ceramic heater used for reptile tanks.
I’m hoping with the low relative humidity of NE winter this set up will lighten up my leviathan.
 
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