Inflator Reccomendation?

[andrewburcham]

I have a 9'6" high-pressure inflatable floor dingy. I've gotten tired of having to hand pump the thing all the time (I take it down and store it below decks on all passages). I'm interested in buying a 12V inflator to do some of the grunt work for me, though I'm still resigned to topping all compartments off, and inflating the floor, with the hand pump.

There are a lot of products on the market ranging from very cheap to prohibitively expensive. Any reccomendations on what actually works?

Andy

[labatt]

We've got an Avon R280HP with the high pressure floor (hence the HP). I looked into this and very few pumps supported also pumping the floors. I was also told it was easy to overinflate using a 12v pump and you could rip apart seals. Lastly, I only found a couple of 12v pumps capable of doing the HP floor, and while they were 12v they had to hook up to a car battery using clips. I admit - I didn't look tooooo hard, but I did look at all the pumps at West and Defender.

[sailingdog]

I think you'd be better off with a foot pump than an electric pump. A foot pump is less likely to damage the RIB by overinflating it... and isn't dependent on the boat having power to use it.

[JimHawkins]

River rafters often use 12V pumps off their car batteries. It's a lot easier and faster than hand pumping, and you can use them to unpump too. I don't know how much the ones I've seen cost, but I think they're pretty cheap. Check a river raft supply store or website.