Compare inflatable boats made of rubber and PVC

Inflat­able boats sold today in many stores dif­fer not only in a diverse price range, but also in the mate­ri­als used in the man­u­fac­ture. The most pop­u­lar among con­nois­seurs of hunt­ing, fish­ing and water tourism are prod­ucts made of rub­ber-fab­ric mate­r­i­al and PVC. Which one is bet­ter and what is the dif­fer­ence between them? Our experts fig­ured it out.

About rubber boats

The basis of the mate­r­i­al used in the cre­ation of rub­ber boats is a fab­ric fab­ric, con­nect­ed by a spe­cial tech­nol­o­gy with rub­ber. The rub­ber shell pro­vides the fab­ric with reli­able pro­tec­tion against mois­ture and main­tains the tight­ness of the struc­ture. The degree of dura­bil­i­ty of a rub­ber boat and its func­tion­al­i­ty in gen­er­al depend on the type of fab­ric base used.

Do not for­get that any fab­ric, regard­less of strength, begins to decom­pose over time, los­ing its bear­ing capac­i­ty. The rub­ber out­er coat­ing is grad­u­al­ly cov­ered with cracks under reg­u­lar expo­sure to sun­light and tem­per­a­ture changes, and mois­ture enter­ing through the cracks fur­ther enhances the process of tis­sue decom­po­si­tion.

With prop­er oper­a­tion, a rub­ber boat will last about 10 years, although some own­ers man­age to swim on such prod­ucts much longer (do not for­get that this sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es the risk of sail­ing in an expired struc­ture).

ON A NOTE. There are two things to keep in mind when oper­at­ing a rub­ber boat. First: with sig­nif­i­cant tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions, a change in the vol­ume of air in the cylin­ders is pos­si­ble. And this, in turn, is fraught with a rup­ture of the boat. Sec­ond: rub­ber is not very “friend­ly” with salt water — the rub­ber-fab­ric mate­r­i­al, upon pro­longed con­tact with sea water, will sim­ply delam­i­nate and become unus­able.

Rub­ber boats require spe­cial care:

1. After use, the prod­uct must be thor­ough­ly dried before being placed in a back­pack;

2. When stor­ing a rub­ber struc­ture, we rec­om­mend peri­od­i­cal­ly tak­ing it out and inflat­ing it for thor­ough dry­ing (an alter­na­tive is to store it inflat­ed, which is not always con­ve­nient);

3. It is not allowed to store the prod­uct at low tem­per­a­tures (mean­ing minus) or high humid­i­ty;

4. To pre­vent delam­i­na­tion / overdry­ing of the mate­r­i­al, we rec­om­mend peri­od­i­cal­ly sprin­kling the prod­uct with tal­cum pow­der.

About PVC boats

PVC inflat­able boats are sim­i­lar in man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy to rub­ber boats: a fab­ric is used as a base. Only instead of rub­ber, it is cov­ered on both sides with polyvinyl chlo­ride. This mate­r­i­al is char­ac­ter­ized by high strength and high chem­i­cal resis­tance.

The main indi­ca­tor of the qual­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty of a PVC boat is the den­si­ty of the fab­ric used. Man­u­fac­tur­ers of qual­i­ty prod­ucts use extreme­ly prac­ti­cal reli­able mate­r­i­al with a den­si­ty of 750 to 1200 g/m². Such a fab­ric is high­ly resis­tant to mechan­i­cal tear­ing, but at the same time it has a sig­nif­i­cant weight, is rather incon­ve­nient in trans­porta­tion, and is dif­fi­cult to lay.

Unlike rub­ber, PVC fab­rics are more com­pact, are not afraid of mois­ture, fun­gus, do not rot, and tol­er­ate low tem­per­a­tures per­fect­ly. What are PVC boats actu­al­ly made of? In their man­u­fac­ture, rein­forced fab­ric is used, which is tight­ly con­nect­ed syn­thet­ic fibers coat­ed with sev­er­al lay­ers of polyvinyl chlo­ride. The lat­ter are fixed to each oth­er with an adhe­sive sub­stance, which makes it pos­si­ble to achieve a con­nec­tion at the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el. As a result, the mate­r­i­al is incred­i­bly dense.

Boats made of PVC have a num­ber of pos­i­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics:

1. Dura­bil­i­ty — due to its high strength, inflat­able boats made of PVC can be used in con­di­tions close to extreme;

2. High load capac­i­ty — the prod­uct has a fair­ly com­pact size and at the same time has good phys­i­cal “endurance”;

3. Ease of main­te­nance — PVC prod­ucts are not afraid of mois­ture, dust, can be stored fold­ed for a long time, do not need spe­cial care con­di­tions;

4. No set­tling — a prod­uct made of PVC can eas­i­ly over­come shal­low areas with float­ing veg­e­ta­tion.

Comparative characteristics

Hav­ing con­sid­ered the fea­tures of both types of inflat­able boats, our experts have com­piled a detailed com­par­a­tive descrip­tion.

What to choose?

When choos­ing the right inflat­able boat, you should first of all be guid­ed by per­son­al pref­er­ences, and not by extra­ne­ous advice. An incor­rect­ly select­ed prod­uct and thought­less oper­a­tion will lead to the unus­abil­i­ty of the pur­chased boat, regard­less of whether it is made of rub­ber or PVC.

If we are talk­ing about the oper­a­tion of the boat under extreme con­di­tions, there is noth­ing to think about — feel free to opt for a PVC prod­uct, and far from cheap — it is bet­ter to pay atten­tion to famous brands.

If an out­board boat is a pri­or­i­ty, again, all the atten­tion is on a PVC prod­uct, not rub­ber, since the lat­ter can­not boast such a strong frame. It is PVC boats that are more maneu­ver­able, dynam­ic and safe.

If you need a boat for water tourism or fish­ing, and at the same time will be used only a few times a year, choose the rub­ber option with­out hes­i­ta­tion. The same prod­uct will be quite appro­pri­ate when used for walk­ing on open water.