I'm looking for pros/cons with this stuff...
We have a steel-hulled houseboat (50' SkipperLiner), we've owned it for 9 years, and was in the water the past 4 years. It started taking on water on Father's day. Short version is, this boat has a DC power leak to the water, and the hull has has been getting eaten away by stray current corrosion. Couple of pics attached. NOTE that while the hull looks like it's been eaten away by rust cancer, the only rust whatsoever is the surface 'flash' rust on the steel that's been bared by the the electric corrosion. There isn't a bit of rust-caused corrosion. Of course, as I do the repairs, keeping rust corrosion from starting is priority 1 :)
Once an area is repaired I'll be down to bare metal that will need to be treated almost immediately...
Once all the repairs are done-- about 25% of the entire hull- then comes prep of the remaining hull for new coatings.
The tried & true coating for steel boats is coal tar epoxy. It's cheap and it works.
So- is POR-15 all it's cracked up to be? My thinking is to use their etching prep and basic coating over my repairs, and then 2 coats of coal tar epoxy over the entire hull...
Next question, I notice POR-15 also comes in a DIY brush-on bedliner. I've heard good things about coating boat hulls with other liners like Rhino lining, etc. Just wondering if anyone has an experience with the POR-15 bedliner? At $100 a gallon I can 2-coat the hull for $1200 or less, which is a bargain if it's do-able. I would think it should adhere very nicely to freshly applied and dry coal tar epoxy- but I don't know. A couple of benefits of adding POR-15 bedliner to the coal tar epoxy will be the thickness of the coating, should be more than 1/32" thick. This will act as electrical insulation in the future. (I'm still looking into the source of the DC leak). There's also the rust-preventative qualities...
Stray current corrosion mostly affects sharp edges, that's the easiest place for current to escape into the water to search for a ground. As the current leaves the boat, it takes metal with it. First pic shows the starboard (worst) side, the closeup is the area under the blue fender. The bottom has several places that need repairs also, but in most cases the corrosion damage is pretty minimal. I've treated the exposed rust with tannic acid to keep it in check for now, that's why it's dark...
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Anyone with any real world experience with POR-15 products? Any other product suggestions would be welcome also!
