Alcanboats Forum

Hi,

We bought our Alcan boat last summer and we are currently working on it over the winter. There is a very worn out fake grass carpet glued to every square inch of our exterior deck. It looks very bad and we want to replace it with something new (ideally, not another carpet). Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on 1) how to remove that glued carpet (we don't know what type of glue they used and what solvent or method to remove it without having to do a paint job) and 2) what other product we could put on our exterior deck (ideally, something other than carpet).

Your ideas and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

Good morning - Our ALCAN had carpet when we bought it. It held a few tons of water. We decided to remove the carpet and asked carpet installation companies and others how to remove the carpet. Our carpet had a rubber like baking and was held down with a thickm black, glue. The only sucess we had was by using a steel scraper and lots of elbow grease. Luckily my wife was up to the job. I believe we worked at over a whole summer. The following Spring we sanded off the remainder of the glue and then painted.
We found the the painted decks, including the Sun Deck, to be durable and with silcon sand in the paint mix, the decks are not silppery.
It is a lot of work to remove the carpet, but our advice would be to get on with it.

BRIAN 'SIOUX'

Just about every Alcan/Alwest has had carpeted decks at one time
As Brian says, getting the deteriorated carpet and the glue off, requires lots of "elbow grease"
I tried every solvent and anything that would cut the glue, would destroy the surrounding paint.
Sanding will not work, because it generates heat which softens the glue which clogs the sandpaper.
Scraping is the only alternative . . .
On my Alwest upper deck, I actually used a router to cut the carpet and glue away without melting it.
I solved the problem but it was a lot of work . . . and a lot of money.
See http://www.alcanboats.com/teak_decks.htm
Since I did my decks, I have seen "synthetic teak" decking that would probably work well and be more durable than the real teak that I used.

Rob

Thank you all for your replies.

Another question: to repaint the deck, what paint did you use ? How many coats ? What prep needed to be done ? How was it applied (roller, paint gun, etc). ?

By the way, the teak deck done by Rob looks great. That must of been quite a big project ! We looked at the fake teak that is on the market and it is pretty expensive but the look and finish is great. It's an option that we'll consider.

Thanks.

Concerning our deck resurfacing, the project is almost over. It took us 2 1/2 days to scrape off the glue and a lot of elbow grease (and soar muscles afterwards) !!! The glue was pretty hard to get off but the only thing that worked well was to scrape it off, as you guys had suggested. The top deck was the worst and took 1 1/2 day just for that. We then sanded and prepared the deck for painting. We used Interdeck paint by Interlux. Tomorrow, I will give it a final coat of paint and then it's all done and ready to go for the summer ! It looks very good and we're very proud of the result. Will post some pictures when the project will be finished.

Hi all.

We've recently bought our Alwest, and, like eveyone else, we're pulling off the nasty carpet. (We were lucky - ours is stuck down with double-sided tape, so we don't have to scrape goo off evey inch.)

I have a safety question re sanding to prep the surface: Is there any way to check whether the existing (original?) paint contains lead? I hate to think of the health hazard we have all been creating if it does!

Thanks,
Laura Doliner

Hi Laura,
At the time these boats were built (early 70s) most "durable" paints contained lead. Even if more recent top coats are lead-free, there is quite possibly older paint containing lead (and other metals) under these. I am not aware of any (inexpensive) test to determine if lead is present. Prep for painting any part of these boats should always assume a potentially toxic substrate. Aluminum, zinc, tin, other antifouling compounds (and even copper) are all in there somewhere. Filtered breathing respirators (better than just a dust mask) are always a good idea and if possible, wet sanding to minimize airbourne dust. Remember, to get the new primer to bond properly with the aluminum, you have to sand right down into the aluminum. Bare aluminum (which may appear "clean") quickly develops an aluminum oxide surface. Mosts primers and paints will not bond properly to aluminum oxide.
Rob