As the title suggests I’ve always hated getting into cold water and have been told a wetsuit keeps you warm, how exactly does that work?
In: Biology
Eli5 explanation is this:
Without a wetsuit, you have cold water continually washing away your body heat as you swim.
With a wetsuit, you have a protective layer of the SAME water-soaked material that your body heat can warm. The cold water washing over you doesn’t wash away your body heat.
You are kept “relatively” warm compared to the surrounding water but obviously won’t be warmed up like you would be under a blanket next to a roaring fire.
From what I understand, a wetsuit traps a thin layer of water between your skin and the suit, which your body heats up. The suit then acts as insulation to keep that warm water close to your body. Pretty amazing how something as simple as water can help keep you warm!
Same way a string vest and a sweater with lots of holes keeps you warm. Those trap air that your body heats up and which insulate you. A wetsuit traps water that does the same.
They really don’t keep you warm, that’s why dry suits exist.
Because how cold is “cold” here? You’re recommended not to use the wetsuit in water less than 60°F, cause it doesn’t do enough to insulate. That’s honestly lukewarm at best
The only reason I’m commenting on top of what’s already been said is the water that gets in doesn’t really matter that much. It definitely helps, but is not crucial to the suit keeping you warm, and I didn’t see that specifically stated in the comments I scrolled down through. Some water always gets in by design, sometimes parts of the user stay dry, depends on the activity and how tight the suit is and the quality of the seams, etc. The main reason they work is they are made of a synthetic rubber called neoprene with nitrogen bubbles intentionally trapped inside it like a foam, and that makes the material a good insulator.
All of the ones I’ve used were coated with some kind of fabric on the inside and outside to protect the neoprene and make them more comfortable to wear and easier to get in and out of, so you won’t see the tiny air pockets unless it rips or get cut or something.
Edit: there are neoprene alternatives out there because it’s not an environmentally friendly material, but they have tiny bubbles inside too and work the same way.
Am I going to be the only surfer here that admits to pissing in their wetsuit and pulling on their chest to get that warmth up there?
Tip from our 5th grade camp counselor – pee in it to warm up quickly. I wonder how many kids tried it lol
Everyone saying the layer of water keeps you warm is wrong. ~~Water is a terrible insulator.~~ Edited to acknowledge that water *can* insulate.
Wetsuits are generally made of neoprene, which acts directly as an insulator. A secondary factor is that the wetsuit stops your body from directly touching the cold water. Think of a wetsuit as a jacket for your entire body, one that’s flexible and durable and can get wet.
Consider two simple questions:
– If you needed water for a wetsuit to work, would it keep you warm *out* of the water?
– If the neoprene didn’t matter, would you need a thicker suit for colder water?
Wetsuits absolutely heat you up before you get to the water, and you do indeed wear thicker suits in colder water.
When you would use one, you put it on, get in the water then fill the wet suit with water. This creates a warm water pocket to insulate you. Your body temp keeps adding to it.
It is surprising just how cold the water can be just going from the surface to 50-60 feet down.
The same way a jacket keeps you warm. Humans are exothermic. We produce heat inside our bodies and it slowly radiates into the atmosphere. A jacket or any thicker piece of clothing traps some air between us and the colder outside air. Our body heat warms that air, and once the air is closer to our body heat, the slower we lose body heat.
The same goes for a wetsuit. Wetsuits trap a thin layer of water between the suit and our skin. Once that body heat warms the water, we lose less heat to the water. The thicker the wetsuit, the longer it will hold the heat in.
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