Inflatable Question

**macrib46** · May 8th, 2011, 09:40 PM

As my job takes me down to the Vancouver area on a regular basis, I am starting to see a lot of people heading up here to the interior for day trips and weekends. A percentage of these folks are toting inflatable watercraft with them.
My question is, do these people deflate these craft some, before heading out from their home in the valley (basically at sea level) up over the coqu. (1244 ft in elevation), to allow for expansion due to elevation change. Then inflate to pressure once they arrive at their destination, thus avoiding the possibility of a catastrophic failure of one or more air chambers in said craft?

dave

**GA66** · May 17th, 2011, 08:55 AM

ya it says to leve them underinflated while storing them.

**knotnot** · May 17th, 2011, 02:50 PM

We drop the air pressure to about 75% for travel.
My dad has some formula about elevation and expansion.

**Zane** · May 22nd, 2011, 08:24 AM

One can only hope that they do deflate as altitude and the sun can do damage, as I found out years ago. My buddy and I were fishing at Garrison lake and had pulled out for lunch. As we were about to resume fishing I started hearing these loud popping noise but I didn't know what I was hearing until I started to climb into my belly boat and found that the air expansion from the sun had caused the tube to expand to the point that it was causing seams in the fabric to start popping. When we had started fishing that morning it was cloudy and cool but got sunny and hot pretty quick and I forgot about air pressure. I had to hike back to the vehicle and get a repair kit to sew up the blown seams, took about 2 hrs. This was not caused by altitude, only heat expansion.

**macrib46** · May 22nd, 2011, 05:48 PM

What got me wondering about all this is the the fact that I travel the coq. three times a week between Merritt and Vancouver, and I am starting to see more and more fishermen heading up here, and you can definitely tell the ones that are fully inflated( or over inflated for that matter ) and it has me wondering if anyone has arrived at their destination only to find out some thing had poped. Seeing as most manufactures recommend no more than 2 to 4 psi for belly boats, U-tubes or pontoons.

dave