here's how to find and repair air leaks with your inflatable stand up paddle board
as you recall from my earlier video i ended up choosing the connolly inflatable stand-up
paddleboard with the flip up seat and the reasons for that are in that earlier video and there's a
link below in the description for it but what i'm going to show you will apply to any inflatable
stand-up paddleboard the connolly board came with this little kit in the orange container
that includes both patches and the repair sealant what i noticed the last time i used it is that the
seat cushion on the bottom seemed to have some kind of a leak when i was trying to fill it up
with the compressor so i'm going to remove that from the rest of the paddle board i have the 12
volt compressor and the seat cushion out in the driveway so that i can use the car to power the
compressor and look for these air leaks now this compressor has an adapter that inserts
and spins into the seat cushion now you can see it inflating now when i turn it it instantly deflates
what happened is the end of the hose came off from the rest of the hose and
stayed inside the fitting going into the cushion that fitting was in place holding
the valve stem down and that caused all the air to leak out so now we fill it back up again and
this time i twisted it out by grabbing onto the very bottom or end of the hose instead of that
next piece which is kind of easier to use and the cushions stayed filled so i'm going to go
ahead and put the cap back in place now even though my cushion doesn't appear to be leaking
after all and the issue is more with the hose which i'll talk about repairing in a minute
this is how you would check for air leaks is get a little bit of dish soap and water and just kind
of smear it around everything where you think the leak may be happening now you may not know where
the leak is and you'll end up basically rubbing it around the entire cushion but you should be able
to hear an air leak now you can see when i push that valve stem in all the air comes back out
so now i'm going to put the hose back in place and i'm going to turn on the compressor
i'm going to get some more dish soap and water and kind of smear it around the edge of the hose not
fitting and now when you look closely you can see those air bubbles coming to the surface right
and so what's happening is air is leaking out of that hose and fitting
and it's blowing air into that film of dish soap which lets you see where the leak is so we can
see that the actual leak was not in the cushion at all the leak happened at the end of this hose
where the material goes over the fitting and the joint between the two end fittings now we're going
to do is try to repair the hose where it's leaking if you look at the end again there's the fitting
that goes into the end of the hose and then into the fitting in the cushion or paddle board
and then you have a cap that you don't really need so i'm going to get rid of that cap because it's
just in the way after i've washed rinsed and dried off the fittings and everything
got all the water out of the way i'm just going to use some regular super glue to seal this
i'm going to take the super glue and put it around the outside edge of the inner fitting so think
about where the two surfaces go together it's on the inside so it's going to form an adhesive bond
between the inside of the main hose and the outside of that fitting and the idea with this is
we don't want that thing to keep twisting out or leaking when we're inserting it in and out of the
different ports on the paddle board i'm also going to apply some super glue to the bottom of that
tubing where it touches the fitting because it looked like there was some bubbles being generated
out there as well and i want to make this thing as sealed as air tight as i can so i'm going to
lay a bead of super glue all the way around that edge even though i had super glue between the two
surfaces where they lock together i'm also going to put some around this edge between them as well
because that's just going to make the bond that much stronger and minimize the chance of leaks
i'm rotating it around just in case there's any thick areas so it kind of rotates and evens out
and then i'm going to lay it here to dry in a place where i know that the glue won't get stuck
to anything like a table and when i do use this in the future i'm going to try to be more conscious
about holding by the bottom if you do that hold it by the very end that last fitting it'll be more
apt to go in and out correctly without starting to spin in there you'll put less pressure on that
joint that's now been glued because it got too loose before now let's say we had found a leak in
the seat cushion i want to make sure we cover how to repair those leaks as well so the first thing i
would do is have a black marker and identify let's say the hole is right there then i would take the
marker and draw a circle around it that way when i wash off the dish soap that we used to find the
hole you can still see where the hole is now we go into our kit and again the con only comes with it
other paddle boards may have different setups but really what you need is your repair sealant and
the patch and the patches are made to match the color of the different pieces so that it doesn't
look all scabbed together like duct tape and you simply wash the area make sure it's dry then put
the sealant on the back of the pouch and center it over the hole and that's all there is to it
so now that everything's repaired let all the sealant dry and then get back out on the water
and take your fuzzy buddy if you've got one and enjoy a little exercise in the beautiful weather
subscribe to my youtube channel below and let's celebrate turning fuel and air into adrenaline