I have a Sweetwater Pontoon Boat?

Question

I have been told in order to put it into survey I need to fill the Tubes with foam. Can anyone advise who I need to contact to have this done . I live in NSW Australia

Answer 1

I live in America so not sure what you have available. I tell you how I understand this. Normally this a Chemical Reaction. Two separate liquids are sprayed together and they will foam up and fill the tubes. If, it were myself. First I would contact an industrial supply store. Here they have everything from motors to welding supplies. Explain what you need and see if they supply these chemicals. If, they do not, they may know who does. Once you locate a supplier you can ask if they sell this to you and do it yourself "OR" ask who they do sell it to and see if that company will do this for you.

Another approach to this, is contact the manufacture and discuss this with them. They may do this now and fix you up as an ongoing customer service. True it may cost, but, they may give you a good deal.

Depending on how the tubes are constructed, whoever do this may have to make 2-3 holes in the tops to apply the foam. This would require welding a plug into the hole for a s***w cap. When they finish, they can just s***w in the plug and it be sealed from water again. If you understand.

I wish I knew more, good luck.

Answer 2

The foam you will want is a 2lb. 2-part polyurethane foam kit big enough for both of your pontoons.  Hopefully your pontoons have the means to fill each chamber, as 5 chambers are the standard here in the US and I am sure it is very similar in your part of the world.  

Here in the US, US Composites Inc has an excellent selection of this type of foam.

There are spray foams available, just that most of what I have seen are limited to a can or premixer unit that has a limited capacity.  I just prefer what I call the 3 cup method of pouring foam.  

I use very inexpensive paper cups and put 1 part A and one part B in each then mix the two cups into one larger cup and pour.  

Just make very sure that little to no water at all gets into the pontoon chambers, or the foam will eventually get brittle in the areas that have soaked in the most water.  Worse yet, you have added weightr of the water trapped in the pontoons.

On a special note, your payload will drop a bit.  An air chambered pontoon has about 64lbs per cubic feet of floatation power.  While the 2lb stuff I mentioned (and it is the lightest and best to use for floatation) has 60lb per cubic feet of floatation power.

Also note, your boat will gain a little weight as well.  Sorry I do not have a metric conversion to demonstrate my aforementioned suggestion.