Arnaud
Contributor
After a leg injury kept me out of the water for too long, I decided to take advantage of my free time and build the excellent dry suit dryer by David M. Dalton. My dry suit, a DUI FLX 50/50 takes about a week to be fully dry. Being in SoCal, the perspiration during SI requires washing and drying inside out every time. I had been thinking about building this for a while.
What follows are a few notes for the non DIYers to complement DD's website. I was able to do this. Anybody can do it, too.
I read DD's instructions several times. If you don't have a clear picture of what you need to achieve, you'll never get there.
The fist step is to order the blower. Model and instructions are on DD's site. Then, you'll need to measure your suit: length of legs, torso and arms, as well as width. The one limitation you'll notice about the width is the size of the blower. You can't make the dryer very narrow, but if you make it too wide, your suit won't fit
I then created a drawing to prepare a list of the various stuff I needed from the hardware store. The one change I made from DD's design was to add some outlets for the arms. The blower is powerful enough.
Make sure you go to a store that has a big inventory. And then, be prepared for some compromises and use patience. They'll never have exactly what you're looking for in the size you need, so you'll have to use adaptors.
I bought a saw and a saw box for $12. You also need a rubber mallet or hammer to disassemble the PVC pipes from the various tee's and elbows. They can get pretty tight, even without glue. Finally, I have a small Black & Decker drill that's perfect to hang frames and drill small holes in the PVC.
I used 1 ½ PVC pipes for the main frame, 1 ¼ pipes to assemble the blower, but unlike DD's recommendation, I couldn't find all that I needed in ½ for the "deluxe option", so I used ¾ instead. It works well.
PVC is very forgiving. You should try to cut the pipe as precisely as possible, but you can always cheat a little. I used some of the super cheap towels Home Depot sells to clean the sawdust on each pipe's end after sawing them. This will help a lot if you need to disassemble the dryer, plus it looks cleaner.
Assembly was easy. The only thing is to not glue anything right away. You'll probably need some small adjustments later on. I didn't glue the tees that hold the blower at all. It's easier to remove it if I have to replace it. Also, make sure the tees are at a 45° angle to accommodate the shape of the blower (the exhausts are not straight).
Finally, I didn't glue the whole dryer together. That way, it can be disassembled in 3 different parts to make storage easier. It's pretty big.
I want to thank David M. Dalton for posting the idea and instructions on the dryer. This is a pretty cool project.
What follows are a few notes for the non DIYers to complement DD's website. I was able to do this. Anybody can do it, too.
I read DD's instructions several times. If you don't have a clear picture of what you need to achieve, you'll never get there.
The fist step is to order the blower. Model and instructions are on DD's site. Then, you'll need to measure your suit: length of legs, torso and arms, as well as width. The one limitation you'll notice about the width is the size of the blower. You can't make the dryer very narrow, but if you make it too wide, your suit won't fit
I then created a drawing to prepare a list of the various stuff I needed from the hardware store. The one change I made from DD's design was to add some outlets for the arms. The blower is powerful enough.
Make sure you go to a store that has a big inventory. And then, be prepared for some compromises and use patience. They'll never have exactly what you're looking for in the size you need, so you'll have to use adaptors.
I bought a saw and a saw box for $12. You also need a rubber mallet or hammer to disassemble the PVC pipes from the various tee's and elbows. They can get pretty tight, even without glue. Finally, I have a small Black & Decker drill that's perfect to hang frames and drill small holes in the PVC.
I used 1 ½ PVC pipes for the main frame, 1 ¼ pipes to assemble the blower, but unlike DD's recommendation, I couldn't find all that I needed in ½ for the "deluxe option", so I used ¾ instead. It works well.
PVC is very forgiving. You should try to cut the pipe as precisely as possible, but you can always cheat a little. I used some of the super cheap towels Home Depot sells to clean the sawdust on each pipe's end after sawing them. This will help a lot if you need to disassemble the dryer, plus it looks cleaner.
Assembly was easy. The only thing is to not glue anything right away. You'll probably need some small adjustments later on. I didn't glue the tees that hold the blower at all. It's easier to remove it if I have to replace it. Also, make sure the tees are at a 45° angle to accommodate the shape of the blower (the exhausts are not straight).
Finally, I didn't glue the whole dryer together. That way, it can be disassembled in 3 different parts to make storage easier. It's pretty big.
I want to thank David M. Dalton for posting the idea and instructions on the dryer. This is a pretty cool project.
