Failing Non Skid

[Iron E]

I'd like some suggestions on how to approach this. We would like to paint our decks and cabin and our non skid

The Non Skid is failing only on a couple feet on the Port Side.
There are a couple of small 1/8 to 1/4 areas, but 85-95% of the deck Non Skid is holding fast

My initial thought was to Sand and Pressure wash the deck, removing all loose non skid. Scuff and Primer the entire deck. Then Kiwi Grip the Non Skid areas, building up where there are low spots.

But, I want to do this right, and I've read that Kiwi Grip fails in a couple of years and is very difficult to clean.

Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[psk125]

K.I.S.S. It looks like you have adhesion problems in a couple of spots. If the rest of the deck looks OK, fix the spots, not the whole deck. It would make sense to tape off the nonskid section, prep the spots by sanding and solvent washing, then applying whatever paint was used before with the same nonskid material as before. It would take about a day and about one batch of 2-part paint. Doing the whole deck is going to take many weeks, what with waiting for the right wind, humidity, temperature, taping everything off, sanding, solvent washing, resanding, re-solvent washing, painting and repainting the different coats.

[BillKny]

I have a different perspective on KiwiGrip than others, so take this as being worth exactly what you paid for it.

One of the "features" of KiwiGrip is that you can control the texture of the deck and aggressiveness of the resulting non-skid with the application technique. For me, that turned out to be one of the "bugs."

I was service manager for a large fleet of charter boats. Some of them, after decades of daily use, had nonskid that was, well.... kind of skiddy. We were convinced with the sales pitch and used KiwiGrip on them.

It wasn't a great success. It turned out to be REALLY hard to get a consistent "look" across the deck (and these were 24 foot boats!). They also tended to peel up at the edges.

Now, to be fair, these boats were in daily use, much more so than ANYTHING a owner occupied boat would experience. So the durability might be a tough test.

But I'd never put this product on my boat JUST becasue of the difficulty of getting an even and consistent texture and appearance. MAYBE if somebody applied this every day, they could do a job that would meet my cosmetic standards, but it's hard, well nigh impossible, for a DIY application to meet yacht quality standards.

As I said, worth what you paid for it.

[AKA-None]

Just had a neighbor do this to his tug looked great but far from cheap

As in about 8-10k

[GoneDiving]

Originally Posted by Iron E

My initial thought was to Sand and Pressure wash the deck, removing all loose non skid. Scuff and Primer the entire deck. Then Kiwi Grip the Non Skid areas, building up where there are low spots..

Do you 100% know what will be underneath after you water blast the old paint and non skid?

Don't ask me how I know that a rabbit hole of repairs can be created once you see what is under old coats of paint. 😳

Good luck

[Iron E]

Yeah, I've read a bunch of bad experiences with Kiwigrip. This cinches it... NOT going with the Kiwigrip

[James M B]

Interlux has a product called Intergrip you mix with paint. I used it mixed with Cetol on my back teak step (cetol is slippery when wet) with good results, other than appearance wise it didn't look as good as straight Cetol, but no more slipping and falling down.

[Franziska]

Originally Posted by James M B

Interlux has a product called Intergrip you mix with paint. I used it mixed with Cetol on my back teak step (cetol is slippery when wet) with good results, other than appearance wise it didn't look as good as straight Cetol, but no more slipping and falling down.

There is a similar powdered paint supplement which is meant for painting non slip on entry areas of pools.

Much cheaper than the overpriced international product and works with any paint (essentially its a sort of glass bubble powder and does not react with the paint).

Alternatively KiwiGrip, which is very easy to apply, lasts very well, makes great antislip, but is unfortunately a bit expensive.
We are very very happy with ours, as are several others here.
As always preparation is key, KiwiGrip needs an intact reliable paint underneath which need to be sanded/roughed up.

[clippercol]

I did not read all responses. YMMV. I’ve used the paint texture additives (kinda trash), nonskid paint (middle of the road) and the best was mixing straight sand from the beach in paint. Made the deck like stucco. Amazing.

[slugsgomoo]

I had failing sand based non-skid, and with 60 grit paper, I was going through 2 disks per square foot to get it down to a solid substrate. I switched to a flap-disc on a 7" grinder and had way better luck, but it made an incredible mess (I put up a tent to contain the dust, since we're in the water). It was hot, brutal work.

We haven't decided which direction we're going, but after seeing Mads experience on Athena with kiwigrip, I'm less against it- it really strikes me as something that prep and two+ people are needed for to do it well.

As GoneDiving suggests though- be ready for repair work underneath if it's truly failed, and again- sanding it off is a lot more of a pain than you expect it to be.

[Iron E]

Originally Posted by slugsgomoo

I had failing sand based non-skid, and with 60 grit paper, I was going through 2 disks per square foot to get it down to a solid substrate. I switched to a flap-disc on a 7" grinder and had way better luck, but it made an incredible mess (I put up a tent to contain the dust, since we're in the water). It was hot, brutal work.

We haven't decided which direction we're going, but after seeing Mads experience on Athena with kiwigrip, I'm less against it- it really strikes me as something that prep and two+ people are needed for to do it well.

As GoneDiving suggests though- be ready for repair work underneath if it's truly failed, and again- sanding it off is a lot more of a pain than you expect it to be.

Thanks for the removal process.

If I was at the completely prepped and cleaned point Mads was, I would use Alexseal + Soft Sand

I'm familiar with this type of application. In the Coast Guard we used Paint + Sand Blasting Grit of our preferred size

[B25Matt]

My PO used beach sand sprinckled onto tacky/wet two part epoxy paint followed by a second top coat once the first had semi cured.

This was bad for two reasons.

The sand grains are brittle and over time the top half of each grain breaks off, leaving a gray/black pimple hole. The aesthetics of it are not nice. Secondly, try working on a boat job while kneeling on 40 grit sand paper or dragging an elbow across it.

We've been slowly putting down kiwi grip over top the sand with mixed results. Firstly KIWI Grip is great stuff but surface preparation is key, as with any paint. Secondly, it has a very large shrinkage factor, so that in our case,, what initially looks like a fantastic finish over time (1 year) shrinks enough for the sand grains to still be visible. Thirdly, it doesn't like to go on thick (our remedy to #2 above), it doesn't seem to bond as well, takes a lot longer to dry, and the excessive shrinkage can cause minor cracks in the paint.

Lessons learned for future applications (yes, I will keep using it). It doesn't hide surface imperfections. We should have ground off the sand prior application. Don't go too thick as it just wastes expensive product.

Another mistake we made was to apply it on a cooler day and by nightfall it was not dry. Overnight a large accumulation of dew formed on it and penetrated its way down to the substrate. Initially it all looked OK when it fully dried the next day but now large flakes of it are peeling off. I need to grind this section all off and this time I will also strip off the sanded layer. I should have used a tarp to keep the dew off it.

Despite all this I really believe it's a good product but it doesn't fix stupidity!