neoprene skirt vs chlorine

Any truth to what I’ve heard about chlorine damaging neoprene? I’m thinking of taking a class in an indoor pool.

Rinse it out
Right after, like poolside if they have a hose or wear it into the shower. Yeah, chlorine isn’t nice to neoprene but it won’t fall apart if you do the rinsing.

It will damage it, but not too serious.
Chlorine is an oxidizing agent that will attack neoprene and age your skirt prematurely, it forms new crosslinks that make the skirt brittle, and may make it leak more. If you wash it well with water after a pool session you stop the problem. If you spent a lot of time in a pool your skirt would really start to show it. Some people have a cheap skirt they use for rolling practice. I have a very expensive skirt that was custom made for my surfboat that I don’t get in the pool. I have a cheap skirt that I use in the pool.

I have been wearing
my neoprene farmer john and neoprene spray skirt to pool sessions for six years and haven’t rinsed them for the past three years because the pool water doesn’t seem to effect them. I don’t see any deterioration at all. Maybe some pools will have a much higher level of chlorine in them than the pools I’ve been using.

food for thought…
There are pretty good odds that the tap water coming out of your faucet has the same chlorine levels as what most YMCAs and schools use in their pools. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in some really strong pools that have really beat up my neoprene after a single winter but others I have been in for years without problems. Ask your pool what levels they chlorinate to and if you’re lucky, your pool may not even use chlorine at all but rather an alternate method.

Search the Archives
I believe Kris (Greyak) posted some information about a year ago on pool chlorine. I’ve stopped rinsing my gear after pool sessions because the data showed that tap water chlorine was higher than the type used in the pool. Check the numbers before assuming there is a problem.

~wetzool