Using A Moisture Meter On Solid Fiberglass Laminate

The mass production of fiberglass.

Using a moisture meter on solid fiberglass laminate.

This is a very important part of any moisture meter and if you don t have that scale it does not matter whether the meter tells you it is 100 or 10 because you don t know what those numbers translate to in fiberglass. The meter won t tell us what part is wet the skin the core or both. Fiberglass is a good material to use in boats as it has many good attributes. After using a moisture meter on over 1 000 surveys i have yet to see a recently hauled boat that indicated anything less than high 7 on a scale of 1 10 on surfaces below the waterline.

Core rot degradation and the physical failure of the core can begin at about a 20 reading on the ct 33 sometimes sooner which is in the high moist range. These readings have been taken with a. While a moisture meter newbie might gain some useful information more on that in a minute using one to accurately assess the state of a hull requires deep experience. Part of the problem in answering this question comes from the fact that we cannot determine whether we are reading moisture behind the laminate versus within the laminate.

176 are meters affected by humidity. However it should be. Once again the meter can determine if moisture is present in a solid laminate even if all looks well to the naked eye. The moisture meter is an essential device to perform a good survey on a fiberglass boat.

This is the this is the fundamental problem with trying to meter hulls for wet cores. A surveyor can identify high moisture in the core or laminate using a moisture meter. 176 hydrolysis 177 water. Using moisture meters 173 what does a meter really detect.

However it is not perfect and there are drawbacks. We tend to believe that solid fiberglass is stronger and less likely to suffer damage from water saturation and the latter is true. 176 does old gel coat absorb high amounts of water. As you ll notice a 30 moisture saturation in wood or a cored section is only equal to 3 total absorbed moisture on a solid fiberglass with no core.

Where osmosis repair is concerned the moisture meter will enable a fiberglass specialist to determine how. Virtually every high performance racing sail or powerboat is cored.