Repairing a bouncy castle: Here's how to do it yourself
Repairing a bouncy castle: This is how you do it yourself. Wherever people play or do sports, damage can happen. This also applies to bouncy castles. Stone chips, vandalism, intensive use: a crack, scratch or hole can sometimes happen quickly. Luckily, you can often fix minor damage yourself. The PVC cloth of a bouncy castle is ideal for this. This saves additional repair costs and a trip to our workshop.
Damage to the seams? Then to work
Before we get into a little more detail about the repair work, we want to point out that there is one type of damage that you cannot repair yourself: damage to the seams. A seam cannot be welded or glued. This actually needs to be re-stitched to keep the bouncy castle strong and secure. And only our repair department can fix that.
Repair it yourself
No damage to the seams, but to the PVC cloth? Then there are two ways to repair these corruptions.
Welding with a hair dryer (but you need a hot air gun for this) or gluing with special PVC glue. Glue and an extra piece of PVC cloth can be found in the repair kit that came with the inflatable product.
Two techniques in focus
The images below show how you can use two techniques to easily repair damage yourself. These illustrations are from a presentation for ice masters on repairing boards: but these apply to repairing a bouncy castle as well.
Let the air out first...
It is always important to let the air out of the bouncy castles before you start repairing them. This allows you to repair the broken parts more cleanly. The most beautiful thing is to carry out a repair from the inside out. If the interior of a bouncy castle is large enough, you can crawl into it. Turning the inside out is of course also possible, but this is difficult with the larger bouncy castles. In connection with smoke development, a repair from the inside out cannot be welded, but must be glued with PVC glue.
Can't repair from the inside out? Then opt for a repair on the outside. Of course, before you start the repair, you can ask Valwix how best to deal with the damage.
Option 1. Weld PVC cloth with a hair dryer
Requirement: Hot-air device with a wide-slit mouthpiece, pressure roller, clean (wooden) surface
Step 1. Cut a piece of cloth to the size of the tear, meanwhile let the hair dryer warm up
Step 2. Round the corners
Step 3. Place the piece of cloth over the tear(s).
Step 4. Place the roller in the middle of the towel so the blow dryer doesn't blow the towel off
Step 5. Run the blow dryer under the towel from the center towards the edge,
Step 6. and follow this with the roller
Step 7. Pull out side edges up to weld
Step 8. Place the roller on the welded part and go under the cloth again with the blow dryer.
Option 2. Glue PVC cloth with Saba PVC glue
Requirements: Saba PVC glue, pressure roller or spoon, clean (wooden) surface
Step 1. Depending on the size of the tear, cut out a piece of cloth that has at least 3cm of free adhesive around the tear.
Step 2. Remove existing and underlying stickers, for example with acetone.
Be careful with acetone as it can damage the PVC cloth.
Step 3. Clean and degrease the adhesive surface as much as possible.
Step 4. Cut out the sticker, leaving it slightly larger than today's sticker all around.
Step 5. If necessary, mask off the adhesive surface with adhesive tape.
Step 6. Apply glue to both pieces and let dry until dry to the touch.
Step 7. Press the sticker with a spoon, for example, from the inside out to get the air out.
Step 8. Then place weight on the decal, making sure it (color wise) doesn't spread on the web.
Step 9. Allow to dry for 24 hours with weight on.
Step 10. Remove any glue residue all around with acetone.
Step 11. The product is ready for use again.
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