Leaks in bladder around valves

[posty]

So i have a leading edge bladder where all the valves needed to be glued on.
When inflating i found out around every valve in a radius of 2-3 cm's there are little leaks.
Could this happen by salt in the bladder?
Right now im glueing all pieces of bladder around it amd hopefully that's it.
There is quite some salt in the bladder which i will try to get out.

[lovethepirk]

I bought one kite used and couldn't believe the amount of large salt crystals inside the LE bladder and one strut. The previous owner must have self rescued and got significant water in the kite. I don't think your valve issues are related to the salt crystals. Also if I were you I would try to remove the valves and clean up the residue and reglue them carefully making sure you don't glue the valve and bladder to the other side of the bladder. I used wax paper inside the bladder to prevent that. I've had success with a hair dryer getting valves off taking it very slow. Others will dunk them in hot almost boiling water for a brief moment. That scares me a bit. If you aren't real careful during the process you can tear the bladder more, but can still be repaired...that may be a case for using hot water as that could make things work easier.

Here is my experience and a thought on what I would do differently. If you leave the salt crystals in the bladder eventually you just keep getting pin holes....sometimes not enough to end a session, but the kite will be soft after an hour. So you patch that up, then a month later another hole appears...etc. I fought my center strut for over a year patching it up at least 20x and finally decided to slice the bladder and fill it with water and dissolve the crystals and wash them out.

That all went to plan except I made the cut in the bladder way too large and when I patched it it blew up just a tad weird..had a weird buldge in it, plus it had 20 patches lmfao. The kite flew horrible after that. So I bought a new strut from airtime, problem solved.

So my suggestion is cut a very small hole and get rid of the crystals or save yourself time and buy a new bladder from airtime. The larger cut you put in the bladder the more the patch job is going to warp the inflated bladder and possibly cause issues.

[GregK]

No need to cut the bladder to remove salt crystals. Get a funnel and put a few liters of warm water into the LE or strut bladder ( pinch off the struts if doing a LE ) and gently move the water around. Then drain it out by elevating the tip(s) and make the dump / big inflate / 1-pump valve the lowest point. Taste the last little bit of water coming out, if it tastes salty, repeat the flushing until the water coming out tastes fresh.

Not all of the water will drain out, there will be some droplets left inside. However, if the air is fairly dry, a few cycles of pumping up the kite and letting it sit for an hour or two will evaporate the remaining droplets inside the bladder.

[kitexpert]

So i have a leading edge bladder where all the valves needed to be glued on.
When inflating i found out around every valve in a radius of 2-3 cm's there are little leaks.

Interesting, I've had same. Gluing the valve has worked out fine but mysterious new leaks have appeared near the valve, couple of cm's from the valve edge. I do use some pressure while gluing sets so if there has been something inside of the bladder perhaps it has caused new leaks. I haven't seen anything though, not sand or salt crystals.

If there is sand (or salt) inside I think it is best to cut bladder at the tip and turn bladder inside out and wash it thoroughly. Before operation there must not be air inside, because if you push it forward it may be impossible to complete turning. Tip of the bladder is easy to re-seam .

[posty]

Thanks for the reply guys.
Gluing back the valves was no issue.
I removed the salt easily through the inflate valve since the crystals were all dry.
I can imagine salt crystals can cause leaks in an old bladder but only around (every) valve is very strange.
Still need to test it so we will see what the outcome is...