Chasing Leaks

Most of Friday was spent taping on the vacuum film after finishing up the infusion stack.
I fired up the pump and started pulling it down to get an idea of what I might be up against this time around.

I was able to quickly isolate and rub out a few leaks around the sealant tape area, but that didn't do much for me as I was still sitting at near 135mb. I then located a pretty big leak below the foam along a seam and simply cut away a piece of the batten to get to it and plug it with some putty.

That one leak brought be down to 75mb, but I was done for the day and it was high time to clean the shop! I've been putting that off for a couple of weeks now because I didn't want to kick up a lot of dust that would contaminate the fabrics. But now that I had a layer of vacuum film over the float it was safe to do some cleaning. I got all my tools put away and the floors swept up before shutting off the lights for the evening.

The next morning I had set a goal of locating and fixing one leak before hitting the swimming pool with the family. With that in mind, I rigged the pump for "silent running" (I pushed it outside and closed the door) and then brought my 8yo Austen into the shop to help me find a leak. We found and fixed one which brought me down to 51mb and then quickly found another one which brought me down to 31mb. Both of these leaks were below the foam along a seam.

With that done, I hit the pool for a few hours before spending the next five hours over two days going over the entire hull with no further success. The remaining leak(s) are pretty big since I lose vacuum really fast, but I'm guessing it must be a nice clean hole or something because I cannot hear any turbulence whatsoever.

I did some research on my options and I'm taking a chance on an "electronic mechanics stethoscope".
It's not an Ultrasonic Noise Detector (which only works on the very small leaks that are inaudible to humans), but rather it simply amplifies sound across all frequencies using a directional microphone. If that doesn't help, I guess I can just return it...

My idea is:
 - Normal Hearing (my ears)
 - Enhanced Hearing (the electronic stethoscope)
 - Super Hearing (the Ultrasonic Detector)

I plan on spending the rest of this week looking for the leak(s), but in the end I may have to just shoot the float and patch the leaks along the way by locating the bubble trail. I do have the ability to insert a localized vacuum source to pull resin back into those areas and I can use a syringe filled with epoxy to insert resin if necessary. However, I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

In the absolute worse case scenario - i.e the whole float is a foaming bubbly mess, I guess I can just shut it down and rip everything off. Then squeegee down the float surface and go to bed cursing.

:/

Last of the stack in place before adding the lines and vacuum film

Lines and Vacuum film in place - pulling it down and checking for leaks

My daughter Leanna found a leak behind this batten

Removed a section of batten before cutting in a V-Notch and packing with putty to seal it up.
This area actually had another leak down further which resulted in three battens being cut out of the way to allow room for patching.
(Sorry for the blurry pic)