What is wetsuits used for

However, a wetsuit should not be too baggy because too much water will access the suit. Wetsuits are used by swimmers because they provide more buoyancy. The extra buoyancy gives a swimmer less drag. All wetsuits are made from a neoprene rubber.

This particular rubber is naturally buoyant. Various kinds of neoprene, however, have different buoyancy rates. Wetsuits that are designed for swimming have a lot of air cells. The rubber contains many tiny air bubbles, so the material is light and very flexible. Wetsuits that are used for diving purposes are laminated with nylon fabric.

Abrasion will not be a problem because the neoprene provides protection. However, wetsuits that are designed for swimming have a different design. One side of the wetsuit has a raw, rubber surface. Both are very popular for year round river surfing, wakesurfing and standup paddleboarding. Here in Idaho we know that surfing during the winter is pretty much impossible, but come spring time, we all get spring fever pretty badly!

Often we're ready to get out on the boat and get back to the surfing and wakeboarding before the water temperatures are even close to comfortable. If you are as impatient as me and are ready to get out on the river and have some fun, it's important that you keep warm and safe. Both wetsuits and drysuits are designed to keep you warm. Wetsuits are made of rubber neoprene and are designed to keep you warm when wet, but unlike drysuits, they are not waterproof.

So, if you have a loose fitting wetsuit you will get cold. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

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Encyclopedic Entry Vocabulary. Wetsuits help keep the body warm. Photograph by Mark Theissen. Jack O'Neill. Now lets take the first scenario; the tight fitting wetsuit: Here the thin layer of cold water that has squeezed into the suit is warmed up by your body heat. Because there's not a lot of water it doesn't take long to warm up and doesn't rob your body of a huge amount of heat.

When you move about in the water, fresh water from outside is largely prevented from entering the suit as the suit is already 'full'. Having a good fit at the ankles, wrists and neck of the suit will help this resistance to fresh water entry, or 'flushing' as it is known. In the second scenario, that of a baggy wetsuit, much more water will be inside the suit to begin with. Your body will take much longer to warm it up and the process will rob your body of much more heat.

In fact your body may never be able to warm the water up significantly. When you are immersed in water and start to move around fresh water from outside easily flushes through the suit and displaces or dilutes the water that your body worked so hard to warm up. This constant flushing of cold water will make it impossible to maintain much body heat and will reduce the effectiveness of the wetsuit hugely. So the first thing about wetsuits to understand is that a tight fitting wetsuit is critical to staying warm and a baggy wetsuit is unlikely to keep you warm.

In fact it is fair to say that a well fitted thin wetsuit will probably be warmer than a baggy thick wetsuit.. So now we have a well fitted wetsuit and your body has warmed up the water that is in it.

Both your body and the thin film of water around it are pressed hard up against a thin layer of neoprene. On the other side of the neoprene is icy cold water. As this happens it cools down, and you in turn cool down. So there is constant heat loss through the material if the water outside is cold.

This is where thickness comes into play. Thicker neoprene will lose less heat through it that thin neoprene so in simple terms a 5mm wetsuit will be warmer than a 3mm wetsuit of the same fit as less heat is lost through the material as your warmth is better insulated from the outer cold.. If you have ever felt the warmth of the sun on an otherwise cold day you'll know what radiant heat is.

It is heat in the form of infra red energy. The sun emits it, the bars on an electric fire emit it , even light bulbs emit it..

Space blankets handed out at race events etc claim to reflect this radiant body heat back towards your body and thus keep you warm. Some wetsuits have a titanium lining, which is a silvery material with a degree of reflecting ability. We have seen allsorts of claims about what this material does. Some manufacturers claim that the titanium lining can reflect cold!

A claim that would change the laws of physics as cold in itself does not exist; cold is merely the absence of heat and you cant reflect something that doesn't exist. Many wetsuit diagrams will show the body's heat being reflected back towards itself by this material and the graphics certainly look impressive. However in our tests, the benefits of having a titanium lining for the purposes of reflecting the body's heat back towards itself are negligible.

Firstly the titanium is not an efficient reflector.