How To Make Your Wetsuit Last Twice As Long
Most wetsuits die from avoidable damage, not age. Nine habits that add years to a suit, from the workshop that repairs them.
The Wetsuit Repair Shack·4 min read
The bench · Ocean Grove
The average wetsuit lasts about five years. We see suits at seven and eight that are still going, and suits at eighteen months that are finished.
The difference is almost never the brand. It is what happens in the ten minutes after you get out of the water, and how you put the thing on.
1. Get in and out of it gently
More suits get wrecked in the car park than in the ocean.
Take your rings off. Grab handfuls of material rather than pinching with fingertips, and work the suit up in stages instead of hauling it from one point. Fingernails and thumbnails through the inner jersey are one of the most common jobs on our bench, and they are entirely avoidable.
Never stand on a suit to peel it off your feet. Roll it inside out and step out.
2. Rinse in fresh water, properly
A quick hose over the outside does not do it. Salt crystals sit inside the fibres, and as they dry they act like tiny blades against the foam and the seam glue.
Fill a tub with cool fresh water and soak the suit for a few minutes, inside and out. Turn it, move it around, let the water get through. Do this every session, not once a month.
Never use hot water. Heat breaks down neoprene and softens the adhesive holding your seams together.
3. Dry it out of the sun
UV is the fastest way to age neoprene. Direct Australian sun on a wet suit will harden the foam and fade the jersey inside a season.
Hang it in shade with air moving around it. Dry the inside first with the suit turned inside out, then flip it and dry the outside. A suit that goes into a boot half wet grows mould, smells, and degrades faster.
4. Use a wide hanger
A wire coat hanger concentrates the entire weight of a soaked suit onto two narrow points at the shoulders. Over months that stretches and permanently distorts the neoprene.
A broad shouldered wetsuit hanger spreads the load. Better still, fold the suit at the waist over a thick bar so nothing carries weight at all. Never hang a wet suit from a fence, a railing or a car door.
5. Look after the zip
Zips retire more good suits than any other single component.
Rinse the zip every session, then lubricate the teeth with a proper zip lube every few weeks. Close it fully before you hang the suit. Do not force it when it catches, back it off and clear whatever is in there, usually sand or a caught piece of jersey.
6. Never leave it in the car
The boot of a car on a summer day hits temperatures that cook neoprene and melt seam glue. One long afternoon can do more damage than a whole winter of surfing.
The same applies to washing machines, dryers, direct heaters and hot showers.
7. Fix small damage immediately
This is the one that matters most.
Every tear in neoprene wants to become a bigger tear. A one centimetre nick in the inner jersey will run into a ten centimetre split within a handful of sessions, because you stretch that exact spot every time you pull the suit on.
A small patch is cheap. A blown out panel is not. Bring it in while it is small.
8. Rotate if you can
Two suits alternating will each last much longer than one suit doing every session, because the foam gets time to fully dry and recover between uses. If you surf several times a week, a decent second suit is a genuine investment rather than an indulgence.
An older suit kept as a backup also covers the two weeks your main one is in for repair.
9. Get it serviced before winter, not during
Every repair workshop in the country is buried from the first cold swell onwards. Suits sent in autumn come back before you need them. Suits sent in July wait.
Pull your suit out in March, check the seams, check the knees, check the zip, and deal with anything you find.
Why this is worth doing
Nearly all of a wetsuit's environmental footprint is created in the factory. Making polychloroprene is energy intensive and chemically heavy, and there is no recycling stream for neoprene in Australia when the suit is finished. Roughly a million wetsuits a year reach end of life worldwide, and almost all of them go to landfill for the next few centuries.
Research from WRAP shows that extending the active life of a garment by nine months cuts its carbon, water and waste footprints by 20 to 30 percent. For a wetsuit the effect is larger, because running one costs a rinse and a hanger.
Every extra season you get is the cheapest environmental win available to you, and it costs a tub of fresh water and a decent hanger.
