SeaDek flooring GW Freedom 275

[CaptainG]

If you have applied SeaDek or a similar product in a Freedom 275 can you reply to this post? Hopefully I can find templates that are already done.
Thank you.

 

[DennisG01]

I've posted this before, so I'll keep this short - but DO NOT rely on templates. You can check with SeaDek to see if they have it. But order the "dry fit". Lay it out and make corrections, if need be. Templates come from "somebody" else doing it for their boat... and they're not always that accurate.

FYI, read up on the pros/cons about SeaDek with "fishing" boats... both on the net and on this website (recent posts). I'm not saying do or do not get it - just do your research, centered around how YOU will use the boat.

 

[Fishtales]

Not a fan. If you have it installed it looks great but time will take its toll. Getting it up is wildcard. I've heard horror stories of left residue and glue that makes subsequent painting or gelcoat applications quite expensive. Buyer beware. I'd look at something that is a floating solution if I were to ever do it (which I'm not).

 

[brdawg2001]

I debated the same this year and decides to redo the nonskid...very happy with my decision since I mainly fish offshore..

 

[Mustang65fbk]

I agree with Fishtales. If I ever thought about doing it, which I highly doubt I'll ever do, I'd likely go with a company like Marine Mat or someone similar where you have the "snap down" option as well as medium grade adhesion. From the brief research that I've done on Marine Mat, you can fairly easily pull up the old material since they have a "snap down" option and it's not essentially a permanent thing like SeaDek, where you need to use a heat gun to get the old stuff up. There was a video I linked to another thread that I'll post below about this where a couple used Marine Mat and you can put it down, pull it back up and replace individual sections at a time. They also had SeaDek on their boat before and talked about how they paid the neighbor kid to get the old SeaDek material off by using a pressure washer and I guess he spent like 14 hours pressure washing each boat to get the old SeaDek off.

 

[blindmullet]

I would be more concerned with the non-pressure sensitive 3m adhesives used in some of the off brands. I found it pretty easy to cleanup. Think of stickers that come off and leave a little residue vs stickers that don't and the paper is part of the mess. The 3m came up and cleaned up.

I like it used sparingly and without a lot of seams. I would go with Kiwigrip over Eva for a entire deck. Feels great on the feet and is an actual non-skid. In the middle of a project with my kid. Did this 10+ years ago and doing it again after some changes.

 

[DennisG01]

As a side note, I think I've mentioned this before, as well... SeaDek can be done in a snap-in version, as well. It's just snaps - there's nothing special to it. Being snap-in, or not, is not "brand" dependent.

I don't know about the other brands, but SeaDek can be had in different thicknesses, as well.

 

[blindmullet]

As a side note, I think I've mentioned this before, as well... SeaDek can be done in a snap-in version, as well. It's just snaps - there's nothing special to it. Being snap-in, or not, is not "brand" dependent.

I don't know about the other brands, but SeaDek can be had in different thicknesses, as well.

I wonder how the Eva does without complete adhesion. That stuff seems to curl at the edges.

 

[DennisG01]

I wonder how the Eva does without complete adhesion. That stuff seems to curl at the edges.

I see a lot of this stuff on a lot of boats that come through the shop. I haven't really seen curling to be a problem, per se, but I suppose another couple of snaps would take care of that. What I have seen is that it can expand very slightly in warmer weather. So if it's installed without a small gap between two pieces, the two pieces end up buckling against each other a bit.