Repairing bubbles: Tear-Aid A vs. Tear-Aid B

There is a lot of chatter in the bubblesphere about how to repair bubbles. For over a year now, we’ve done more than our share of R&D on glues, patches, goops, and tapes. And we’re still doing research.

For fast (but temporary) keep-it-in-the-game patches, there’s nothing better than this tape.

For fast but permanent repairs to small tears and holes that you can fix in the field before or after an event, Tear-Aid products work well.

The Problem

The perennial question continues to be asked by bubble businesses everywhere: Should I use Tear-Aid A or Tear-Aid B? And should I choose differently for TPU and PVC?

From what we understand, the Tear-Aid folks themselves recommend the B-variety for PVC, which makes sense, because PVC is vinyl, the target surface of B-variety. We haven’t heard directly from them regarding what to use with TPU.

The bubble community around the world has mixed opinions. Some swear by A, some swear by B. Some are fixing TPU. Some are fixing PVC.

We decided to get to the bottom of it once and for all.

The Science

We applied patches of both A and B to both PVC and TPU and left them for 24 hours, and then pulled them apart to see how well all combinations adhered. (For good measure, we also stuck both varieties to the clear, rope-anchor circles on the bubbles, since we aren’t sure what those are made of, and we’ve had trouble getting patches to stay stuck to them in the past.)

The Results

Inconclusive! Uggghhh. Well, we do have a preference, but there wasn’t a clear winner.

On both TPU and PVC, both A and B varieties adhered pretty well. It was hard to tell any difference in how well they stuck. The difference was that, on both surfaces, B-variety comes off cleanly, without mess, and A-variety comes off goopy and kind of messy, leaving a sticky residue behind on the surface.

What does this mean for us bubblers? The good news is, you’re probably ok using either variety on either surface. It occurs to us that the gooey-ness of A-variety might be an advantage, because it might help get down into crannies between seams and keep air from sneaking out. On the other hand, B-variety is much cleaner to remove if you should need to re-patch the area.

We’ve decided for now to stick with B-variety for both surfaces, which is what we have been using.

Regardless of whether you use Tear-Aid A or Tear-Aid B, we recommend applying a double-layer patch, with the bottom patch being more than completely covered by the top one on all sides. We’ll try to post a video of our technique one of these days.

Sanitizing bubbles

Keeping bubbles clean and sanitized is a topic of much discussion by bubble soccer businesses. We all want to keep bubbles clean and germ-free, but we want to avoid damage to the equipment with caustic chemicals like bleach. In an earlier post, we talked about some of the sanitizing products we’ve tried.

In this post, we want to introduce a promising product we’ve found for this purpose, under the advice of our friends in the textile-cleaning business.

Hydrogen peroxide is a very effective, medical-grade disinfectant, and it has the advantage of being safe to people and materials, since it just evaporates off as hydrogen and oxygen.

Even better, consider this information from an article on Wikipedia discussing Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide:

The antimicrobial action of hydrogen peroxide can be enhanced by surfactants and organic acids. The resulting chemistry is known as Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide. A 2% solution, stabilized for extended use, achieves high-level disinfection in 5 minutes, and is suitable for disinfecting medical equipment made from hard plastic, such as in endoscopes.[18] The evidence available suggests that products based on Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide, apart from being good germicides, are safer for humans and benign to the environment.[19]

We had some bubbles that had been in the rain and sat bundled up wet for many days and became extremely stinky. (Lesson: Don’t ever leave wet bubbles bundled up more than 24 hours!) After failing with several products to disinfect and clean, including Lysol spray and Pine-Sol type floor cleaner, we finally achieved success by drenching the straps in hydrogen peroxide (and eventually moved on to use accelerated hydrogen peroxide).

Going forward, this will definitely be our go-to chemical for de-stinking straps in the shop, and we will also be using it in a spray bottle as a light, routine disinfectant of bubble straps, handles, and interiors. Wipes are also available as an option.

Accelerated hydrogen peroxide is available under various brand names, including Accel, which you can buy from Amazon here.

(Regular hydrogen peroxide is available from Amazon here.)

Happy cleaning!