Isle Royale Forums

I've never had one fail on me in over a decade of using a water bladder, but had new one out of box have pinhole recently. Got replacement and they didn't want the old one back. Now I'm never going to use the defective one outside of a short day hike if I could fix it etc etc... but seems to waste just to throw away so I'll salvage parts off it and experiment on it.

So with that said any suggestions of things that may work to repair this? Something lightweight enough that could potentially be carried in a repair kit for field repair?

Type of bag is top opening "ziplock" style with rigid plastic welded on the back. Pinhole near a rigid plastic section, so most likely a stress point during manufacture process that got a pinhole there. So a type of tape fix isn't practical in this specific case but if that has works practically for someone would be appreciated to know about it.

The brand Platypus at one time sold "Platy-Patch" kits which were little pre-cut adhesive patches for leaks in their brand. You could try a stick of hot-melt adhesive - a glob in the right spot might do the trick. The adhesive melting point is probably much lower than the bladder material melting point, but maybe test on the edge where it won't create a leak if this is not true.

In the field? Duct tape. If its in an inconvenient location (like your case) I have some sealeant in my air mattress puncture sealing kit. Just enough to get you out of the woods as it were. At home, replace

I patched a significant tear in a Platypus (my stupidity) successfully with duck tape that worked well for 4-5 days.

I wonder if the kind of patch that comes with a therma-rest type air mattress would do the trick?

Is it time to add a small piece of Gorilla Tape or Flex Tape to the repair kit? The old Red Green stand-by (Duct Tape) has been improved for these cases.

Another vote for some sort of duct tape here. I always have a couple of yards wrapped around a pencil stub in my first aid kit.