Glass Reinforced Plastic.
Surface Preparation – Nationwide
GRP – Glass Reinforced Plastic
We specialise in using a low pressure sand jetting system that has been used nationwide for boat cleaning. Obviously we do this sort of work mainly in Yorkshire, but have worked in Nottinghamshire, Huntingdonshire and Derbyshire – inland counties! We cleaned another boat at Lake Windermere in Cumbria some years ago.
The low pressure sand jet can clean GRP and wood with minimal surface damage, at the same time, the ‘damp’ system also captures dirt, paint, and abrasive, preventing the health and safety risks associated with dry blasting.
A further advantage of the system we use is that it also uses far less abrasive than traditional techniques, making expensive abrasives cost effective, but more significantly reducing waste. Abrasive does not need to be recycled, preventing cross contamination between jobs, and apart from in specialist cases, is not a major part of the running costs.
Dry Ice Blasting
There are times when alternative methods are called for, one of which is Dry Ice blasting. Here a surface to be cleaned is blasted with solid CO2 particles, and the surface is cleaned through thermal shock, the massive volume change as dry ice particles turn into gas, and some abrasion of the surface contaminant, making the process ‘grit or sand free’.
The advantage of this system is that the ‘abrasive’ evaporates on impact, so the only ‘debris’ is the material being removed. It is nearly ‘dustless’ – about as dustless as it is possible to get for an open blast system – however it will still blow cobwebs, birds nests, paint debris etc. fairly liberally!
It is an expensive option – but has been found to be an effective tool – and is particularly good at finding and bursting osmosis blisters.
Superheated Steam Cleaning
In the past couple of years we have discovered that superheated steam offers a good alternative to the sand jet for the removal of deck paint which can be extremely hard compared to a soft gel coat on upperworks. It is impressively slow as a technique – but seems to leave a good surface for repainting.
