sand bags??????

i have not looked into the price of fat sacks so i am not sure. but what do you guys think of 50lb. sand bags from home depot they are very cheap?

They are like $3 a bag and work okay. They are a pain to move and are not good for your trailer if you try to pull too many. They also leak and will mess your carpet up. They are cheap, but its worth it to spend the $100 on a real sack.

can somebody show me a picture of a fat sack to see what they look like or a company or a good place to buy online? going for the cheapest route. can you fill em with a garden hose? if someone has a picture it would be great!!!

www.barefootinternational.com

I bought a fat sack off of e-bay for $46.00. It is in killer shape. It looks like it was never used. The same one at the local boat shop sells for over $100.00. I have an adapter on my pump that you can hook a garden hose to. I got that on e-bay also for $45.00. Again major savings off retail price.
Board More/Work Less!
John$

Bullet lines sells 600 pound sacs on ebay for about 70 bucks. I have one and it works great. You can also get them in different colors. Do a search of this discussion board or even on google. There are lots of them out there.

I used some sand bags for a while and definitely worked well for me. The ones I bought at home depot didn't leak and 50 pounds is about the best weight for not being too hard to move around

I agree with you wholeheartedly Larry. I've kept 600lbs of lead in my boat over the last few years. Make time for it, and keep it properly distributed over the axles. Otherwise, you can be getting into the limits of the boat on the trailer.

Ryan:

Sand bags will leak. If you are talking about the simple bag of sand that you can buy they will leak a LOT when they are intact and rip so easy. That just wouldn't work at all. The plastic sand bags (that you have to fill with sand) are slightly better, but they are not intended to be a long term container and will rip fairly easy.

You also need a fair amount of sand to get a reasonable amount of weight. You would certainly fill all your locker space up with sand bags.

A fat sac takes up a lot more room when it is filled, but at least you can drain it when you don't want it. Unless you only use the boat for wakeboarding (like, no cruising around, no skiing, tubing, etc) weighting your boat down like that may not be a good idea.

Rod

Ryan,

I bought 4 90lb. sacks of sand to do some weight testing in my boat before installing my ballast system. I just put them inside a duffel bags, a pain to move but I ended up leaving a couple of them on the swim platform for most of the summer. Like the others have said, don't trailer too much weight very far or you may have troubles.

Ryan,

Ty Bonner at Flexible Alternatives has custom built my tanks. He custom builds them based on your dimensions and i have to admit that they are sweet. I removed the 2 mc hard tanks and replaced with his products. They are top notch, do not expand past the dimensions that they are built to. The fittings have threads so that you can ensure a water tight connection.

check them out at www.flexiblealternatives.com.

They are reasonably priced as well.

If you use sand, be sure to wrap them in trash bags tightly and duck tape them to prevent leaks. I tested with sand first.

I bought two Launchpad 540lb sacks for $45 each which i put in the compartments next to my V-drive. Good, solid sacks. You could easily fill them with a garden hose.

if your looking for a cheap alternative to 50-100 sac buy collapsable water container in the camping dept of your local wal-mart. they hold 5 gallons which is about 50lbs.

The sandbags I had purchased were thin plastic bags under an outer layer of stuff just like blue tarps are made of. They didn't leak for a long time. They were also very strong. I wouldn't walk on them or put sharp items on them, however. For a grand total of $15 bucks, I was able to see what 400 pounds would do for my boat.

I'd definitely go with sacks like I use. For $90 I can add 1,080lbs of water ballast. While sand is cheaper to buy, the advantage of water ballast is you can dump it and save boat fuel when cruising and you add no additional weight when trailering the boat. I haven't done the numbers, but at $2+/gallon of fuel, the difference between like sand ballast versus water ballast could make the initial purchase price even out pretty quickly.

thankyou all for the input i appreciate it. basically from what little i know about sacs. i have the following questions how much is this pump in adittion to the sac that pumps water in and out? are they 12 volt or what? thanks again

Ryan,
The one I have is a Launchpad 1100gpm 12v pump specifically for filling sacks. It cost around $60 and works very well - just plug it in to the 12v outlet on the dash. For filling the blue nozzle is on the clear plastic hose with the pump itself underwater. For emptying, you put the blue nozzle on the pump end with the clear plastic hose outside the boat. It takes about 3-5 minutes to fill/empty each 540lb sack (including unscrewing/screwing the caps on/off, etc).

(Message edited by wakeshoe on October 26, 2004)

(Message edited by wakeshoe on October 26, 2004)