Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

What are the pros and cons to having sealed sections or a single drain plug? This would be for a 26 or 28 ft. houseboat.
Do most pontoon mfgs. put foam in the toons or just use sealed sections? Thanks Tom

Most used seal sections at the tops with a hole at the bottom to drain all at once. u-tubes were the ones foam filled

See attached pic of those used on the Premier brand.

My old toon had sealed chambers with caps in the top center of each chamber. Disadvantage to those were removing any water. I was able to remove most but not all with siphon hose. The current toon has one drain plug in the rear for the entire log. They are baffles separating each section but has a hole about 3/4 in in the bottom of each. Advantage easy to drain. Think the premise on these is they are suppose to trap air an keep you afloat if a section is damaged. When I ripped the end cap off the port toon the boat listed to the rubrail or about. Think the fact it was a tritoon really helped. The bow did stay up as I remember, but was kind of in a hurry to get it back to the ramp than accessing what happened or how the boat was sitting. Didn't know until I got it back on the trailer exactly what happened. Heard there are disadvantages of the foam filled but if I was constantly far off shore it would be bad to have. Oh need to add if something like that happens to you,get it back up to speed as soon as possible. Once I was underway the boat planed out an even though the entire rear of the toon was open it righted itself.
It didn't go back down until I slowed at the boat ramp.
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