how much does water logged foam weigh????

[FJ_Russo]

Thats the question I asked myself as I was tearing out the floor of my 1986 Sylvan V171. So as I removed foam I placed it in a plastic tote and weighed the tote as it got full. After being yelled at when the misses came home and found her bathroom scale in the drive way covered in mud, sludge, and foam. I added all the numbers together. I came up with 525Lbs!!!!!!! I had no idea I had that much extra weight in the boat. not to mention I took a chunk of it and threw it in a bucket of water and it went straight to the the bottom. Just thought that was an interesting bit of info I would share with you guys. Take care and pleasant boating!

 

[jasoutside]

Re: how much does water logged foam weigh????

This post needs to be moved

http://forums.iboats.com/showthread.php?t=547630

 

[FJ_Russo]

Re: how much does water logged foam weigh????

Jas you started quite the conversation there LOL. I didnt even look at yours before posting. I just thought it amazing that you could have that much added weight to the set up with just wet foam.

 

[fmjnax]

Re: how much does water logged foam weigh????

I didn't weigh mine, but the figure doesn't surprise me one bit. On my little 16 footer, all of my water logged foam had to weight at least 200 pounds, if not much more! Water weighs in at about 8 lb/gal so to hit 500 gallons, that's about 60 gallons of water, give or take. I could easily see a boat (err, the foam in the boat) soaking that up and holding on to it.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Re: how much does water logged foam weigh????

FJ, do you know how many cubic feet of foam you had?

 

[carpedium]

Re: how much does water logged foam weigh????

FJ, do you know how many cubic feet of foam you had?

one cubic foot of foam weighs a little over 60 lbs when completely saturated.

 

[FJ_Russo]

Re: how much does water logged foam weigh????

Scott, I dont know exactly how many cubic feet. But I could figure it out fairly easily. I will get back to you and let ya know.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Re: how much does water logged foam weigh????

one cubic foot of foam weighs a little over 60 lbs when completely saturated.

one cubic foot of water is #62.3 since the foam has volume, my educated guess is closer to 55#

 

[carpedium]

Re: how much does water logged foam weigh????

one cubic foot of water is #62.3 since the foam has volume, my educated guess is closer to 55#

Well... If we are going to split hairs- there is no reason to guess.

Foam expands 30x per the manufacturer.

That means that the volume of solids that make up one cubic foot of foam equals 1/30 - or .03333333333 cu.ft. This is the actual volume of foam solids that cannot be water in that cubic foot of expanded foam. If we take that volume and multiply it by the density of water, we learn that the amount of water that would occupy that volume would weigh 2.076 lbs.

We can subtract that from 62.3 (the weight of one cu.ft. of water - since that is the weight of the water that won't fit in the cubic foot because the foam is there). We get 60.22 Lbs.

But wait... The foam has weight too, killer.

Exactly 2 lbs/cu-ft.

which brings our total weight of fully saturated foam to.... you guessed it. ehh...

62.22 lbs