Dan Dillon is the owner and founder of Aquaphobix, which applies a thermally fused plastic-polymer coating to boat hulls as a replacement for traditional bottom paint. Joe Solano is the president of Ecofinish, the manufacturer of the base coating technology. After Dan's first appearance went viral, the two came back to answer the questions boaters and dealers kept asking: how a flame-applied coating does not damage gel coat, why the technology has more than a decade of testing behind it, and how it compares to the competition.
Dan and Joe describe Aquaphobix as a thermally applied polyethylene-based plastic-polymer coating with a silver additive for antimicrobial properties. They explain the powder becomes liquid at a much lower temperature than traditional powder coatings, which is what lets it be applied to a boat hull without damaging the fiberglass or gel coat.
Yes. Dan and Joe explain that even though a flame is used, the substrate temperature rarely exceeds around two hundred degrees because the flame is constantly moving. They say they have applied the coating across hundreds of thousands of square feet of fiberglass without thermal damage or delamination, and have even demonstrated it on paper.
Joe explains that Ecofinish has been applying the coating to fiberglass swimming pools since 2009, giving the technology more than fourteen years of field testing before it was used on boats. He notes pool walls are in some ways more demanding than hulls, which gives him confidence in how it performs on the water.
Dan and Joe describe a foul-release approach rather than a biocide approach. The silver additive creates an antimicrobial surface and the low surface tension makes it hard for organisms to attach, so growth that does form can be released by running the boat or wiping it off.
Dan walks through competitor warranty fine print, pointing out limits such as speed restrictions and recoating requirements, and argues some efficiency demonstrations compare a fresh coating against a fouled bottom rather than new gel coat. He contrasts that with testing directly against new hulls.
Dan says he is actively looking for dealer installers worldwide and points people to aquaphobix.com to leave their information. He describes training that covers surface preparation, application, and the thermal-spray technique.
Dan's first appearance blew up, and the questions kept pouring in, so I wanted to give him and Joe room to actually answer them. This is one of those episodes where the science makes the product more interesting, not less. I wanted to understand the thermal dynamics, the testing history, and the honest limitations, and Dan and Joe were willing to get into all of it.
The most striking thing about Aquaphobix is watching what looks like a blowtorch shoot powder onto a boat. The obvious question is how that does not destroy the fiberglass. Dan and Joe explained the thermal data, the constantly moving flame, and the surprisingly low substrate temperatures. Hear the full breakdown in the episode.
Before this coating ever touched a boat, Joe says it spent years on fiberglass swimming pools. That history is the foundation of everything they claim. He explained why pool walls are in some ways a tougher test than a hull, and what that means for boaters. Listen to that part.
Dan does not hold back on competitors. He read through warranty fine print, pointed out restrictions most marketing skips over, and explained why some efficiency demos are not apples to apples. Whether you agree with every point or not, it is a useful look at how to evaluate these products. Press play to hear his case.
What impressed me most was their willingness to be transparent about being new to boats while backing it up with more than a decade of data from pools. Dan's competitive analysis was not just sales talk, he was reading from the actual documents.
If you are tired of the cost and mess of traditional bottom paint, or you are in the marine trade looking at new opportunities, listen to the whole thing.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Dan Dillon is the owner and founder of Aquaphobix, which applies a thermally fused plastic-polymer coating to boat hulls as an environmentally friendlier replacement for traditional bottom paint. Joe Solano is the president of Ecofinish, the manufacturer of the polyethylene-based coating technology, which has been applied to fiberglass swimming pools since 2009. Together they bring more than fourteen years of field-testing experience to the marine coatings world and returned to the show to answer technical questions about how the system works.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 1004 with Dan Dillon and Joe Solano.
Tom Rowland: With me today, I have Dan Dillon and Joe Solano. Dan Dillon is the owner of Aquaphobix. Joe Solano is the president of Ecofinish. Over the last few weeks, Dan, the response to Aquaphobix has been like nothing I've ever really seen. It's really incredible. You've had a couple of videos go over a million views each. You've had hundreds of dealer requests and thousands of customer inquiries, and you're picking up social media followers all over the place. You obviously have a product that people are extremely interested in, and you've been asked to come back onto the podcast and do a show about a lot of these questions. So if you're a regular podcast listener, this isn't going to be the exact podcast you're used to, but I think it's of great interest to people, what Aquaphobix is and all of the technical benefits there. So let's jump right in. If I were to ask you, or Joe, what Aquaphobix is, how would you answer that?
Dan Dillon: Aquaphobix is -- you know, by the way, we were totally prepared for that huge response. That's why I'm sitting in my truck doing this podcast, out working. So Aquaphobix is a thermally applied plastic, or polymer, for an easier word. To replace bottom paint, we saw a need. We'd been looking at the environmental side of things, and the performance issues that go along with bottom paint, and we took a shot at it and thought this product might be a good application for that. It's a real simple process -- you prep the boat and shoot it almost like you would bottom paint, but it's plastic, and we get a longevity out of it. Lots of colors are available, and we're super excited about it. We'll get into more details as we talk.
Tom Rowland: Fantastic. As it applies to the pool industry and the marine industry, it has something called BioCoat. In our industry, antifouling is very important, and I'm sure in the pool industry it's important to inhibit growth too. Explain what the BioCoat technology is.
Dan Dillon: It's antimicrobial, it's antibacterial. When we talk about antifouling, there are so many different definitions of fouling and antifouling, and types of products out there, but ours is more of a release-fouling coating. It doesn't have antifouling in the traditional sense, but it's a release coating. We have a really low surface tension on the product itself, so things can stick to it, but they can't really adhere to it. You take your boat out for a little drive, and things tend to fall off of it.
Tom Rowland: And that would be referred to in the industry as foul release, is what you said, right?
Dan Dillon: That's correct, foul release. The BioCoat helps with that because it's got an antimicrobial component in with the plastic polymer. There are other products in it besides the polymer -- there's some silver in it as well, which helps with the organism sticking to it or biting into it. Joe, do you have any other comments? BioCoat's the manufacturer...
Joe Solano: ...of the silver additive that we put in. They're a UK-based company. When the silver is added to our material, it gets tested prior to us releasing it, to confirm that it actually works its way to the surface, which it does. The antimicrobial works to reduce the microbes on the surface so that it's less interesting to the organisms that want to live there. But it won't prevent them entirely -- they'll still want to migrate onto the surface, and that's where the low surface tension of the material comes in, to help it release so it has a more difficult time biting hold of the surface.
Tom Rowland: One of the things we'll talk about later is that this can be applied to a lot of different surfaces, including steel and metal. Does it have anti-corrosion capabilities?
Joe Solano: There are different application methods for fiberglass, aluminum, and steel, and some other substrates we can work with as well. Each has its own installation process, but the materials themselves are essentially the same at the end. In the case of steel, the material itself is not anti-corrosive. However, we do work with epoxies or primers that go on first that have anti-corrosion properties.
Tom Rowland: The interesting thing that made so many people interested in your product is the application -- it's basically a blowtorch, and there's a powder being shot through the flame, and that's the heat transfer that's happening. Tell me about this powder. Is it patented? Is it available to anyone, and is it the process of putting it on a surface that's patented?
Joe Solano: The patent we're applying for is a process patent -- it covers the manufacturing of the powder through the installation of the powder. The uniqueness of the powder is that it's designed to become liquid at much lower temperatures than traditional powder-coating powders. Many of those need 500 degrees Fahrenheit to achieve a flow -- ours is half that. That's why we can apply to substrates that traditional powder-coating powders cannot, because we're achieving a much lower temperature, so we're not destroying the substrate as we apply it.
Tom Rowland: Is this powder made of plastic, or is there plastic in it?
Joe Solano: Oh, no -- it is plastic. It's polyethylene, with the exception of the pigments, some additives, and the BioCoat itself. It's essentially mostly plastic.
Tom Rowland: Now that we know what's in the product, let's talk about what it does on the boat. One of the most-asked questions we got together was, is it thermally safe for fiberglass and gel coat without risking softening, distorting, or delamination?
Dan Dillon: I'll speak to that. We've probably sprayed several hundred thousand square feet of this product on fiberglass over the last six or seven years, and Joe's been spraying it on fiberglass for fourteen years or so. We have not seen any of the blistering you sometimes see in polyester coats behind the gel coat, from an eighth-inch fiberglass all the way up to much thicker boat fiberglass. Matter of fact, we fix a lot of blisters for manufacturers -- a lot of pool manufacturers use our services to repair brand-new pools because their coats don't hold up. We're brought in all over the country for that. Joey, isn't that some of what our dealers really live off of?
Joe Solano: Yeah, that's correct. We've installed on many fiberglass swimming pools. The transition to boats is relatively easy because boats are thicker than a swimming pool. That's not to say issues with the hull or the pool being installed on don't present as a problem, but usually that's repair-related -- a repair that wasn't a quality repair to begin with. I think when people picture our plastic installing through flame, they imagine a lot of sustained heat on the surface, but in actuality that heat is moving during installation. Yes, we bring the temperature up at the surface for a moment, but then it starts to cool immediately. We can easily apply these powders to something as simple as paper -- you can roll our epoxies onto kraft paper and install the plastics directly onto it and create a nice finish. So if you can do it to paper, you can do it to a boat, provided there are no issues with the substrate.
Tom Rowland: A lot of people are confused about whether this is turning liquid or is thermally fused to the substrate. Is the powder shooting out of the gun hitting and melting and liquefying, or is it hot in the air and it hits and cools?
Joe Solano: The mechanism of attaching the plastics to the boat or substrate happens with a primer that goes on first -- usually an epoxy -- and that's the adhesion to the surface. The actual surface you see is applied in several coats, which you could consider thermally fused, but the bond to the boat itself happens through the primer that goes on first.
Tom Rowland: What's special about your epoxy?
Joe Solano: Our epoxies have not only been manufactured but time-tested to work with our powders. If you introduce different epoxies, we couldn't guarantee the end result, or how those epoxies would handle our powders. All epoxies cure through the heat of a thermal reaction when you blend the resin and hardener -- some cure faster, some slower. Some, if you added external heat, would set off quicker than intended; some it wouldn't affect at all. So in a process like ours, you'd want to make sure it's the correct epoxy.
Tom Rowland: One concern people have had is about the epoxy and resin in the fiberglass -- are you saying your application process doesn't get the surface hot enough to affect that?
Joe Solano: The process has been time-tested for these materials to work together. The epoxies we use today are the same ones we used starting in 2009 coating swimming pools -- that's the one part that hasn't changed, because we know they work well together and time has proven it. There are a hundred different types of epoxies, resins, and hardeners out there -- some cheaper, some more expensive -- and you could find less expensive products, but you'll get a different result. With epoxies, you get what you pay for.
Tom Rowland: How much flex is in this epoxy and powder coating, since boat hulls do flex going through the water, with bigger boats probably flexing more than smaller ones?
Joe Solano: I have a sample behind me that I can bend. The material has plenty of movement -- it doesn't crack like a hard coating would, and it can flex back and forth many times without wearing out.
Dan Dillon: We don't have scientific, measurable flexibility testing done yet, but if your boat's bending in half, that's more of an issue than the material cracking. It's extremely flexible -- we've shot a couple of towers, and where traditional powder coat cracks, ours doesn't. We can lean on our experience with swimming pools, especially fiberglass pools, which flex a lot too.
Tom Rowland: I'd imagine, within the water, as you're filling it would be flexing.
Dan Dillon: Exactly -- there's a lot more flex in a three-eighths-inch swimming pool wall filling and draining than in any boat hull we're touching. Our experience says it doesn't crack -- we've never had any cracking problems.
Tom Rowland: Please explain how surface tension relates to the Aquaphobix bottom-coating application.
Joe Solano: Surface tension is what prevents microbes from being able to attach. With high surface tension they attach easily; with very low surface tension it's very difficult for them to bite onto the finish and permanently attach.
Tom Rowland: That certainly applies to bottom growth in the ocean -- you can grow a reef under your boat even with bottom paint, so that's a big concern. There are competitive products people have asked about -- Armas HullPro Clearcoat, and HullMax. How is the Aquaphobix application uniquely different from those?
Dan Dillon: Let's start with durability. Competitors' warranty sections have an extensive list of exclusions -- for instance, if you go over 40 knots it voids the warranty. A lot of them have moved to a silicone base, which seems like a fairly decent product except for its limitations. Number one, it's maybe 85 percent UV stable -- if you take the boat out of the water, the silicone can't survive in the sun more than thirty days before you have to recoat it, and every year or two, regardless, they've got to pull the boat out. Their own technical data sheets state that the silicone disappears over time -- it's a microplastic leaching into the water.
My issue with those products is the way they talk about efficiency -- when they claim efficiency gains in speed, they're comparing to boats that previously had bottom paint on them, so of course there's a gain versus a boat that's had growth on it for six months. The same goes for their fuel-savings claims. On our side, we compare directly against a new hull that's never been touched, so it's a real-world comparison, and we don't lose speed. We could show similar gains against a bottom-painted boat too, but that's not an honest comparison.
Our surface also maintains itself after one, two, three, four years, while painted boats don't -- the paint starts to peel and bubble with growth within months. If we get some growth, we wipe it off by hand or pressure-wash it, and the surface doesn't change. When competitors pressure-wash their boats, the coating falls off right into the ground beside the water, and all that leached material spills out. Ours stays on the boat. I'm not saying their product doesn't work -- there are just deficiencies they self-admit to in their own documentation. I've had extensive conversations with one of the HullMax people, and that's where a lot of this comes from, straight from the source.
Tom Rowland: Some competitive products call themselves a hundred percent biocide-free. Do you even know what that means, and would Aquaphobix fall into that category?
Joe Solano: I feel confident saying it is not a biocide. A biocide is a substance that kills or controls a harmful living organism. Being antimicrobial, we're preventing microbes from attaching, not killing them -- we're not poisoning them, we're making an environment they don't want to be in, so the organisms are less likely to want to grow there. So yes, I believe we'd be considered to have no biocides.
Tom Rowland: How specifically has the Aquaphobix application been tested on boats -- what water temperatures, and for how long?
Dan Dillon: We have a boat that's been in the water for about a year, and it's performed as expected. We don't have an untreated boat sitting right beside it for a true side-by-side, but we've had test buoys in the water compared to others, and we've performed well compared to a boat sitting out there for six months. There's also science showing the darker the bottom, the less growth -- we promote a darker bottom, because it heats the water past where organisms like to grow, so they abandon the area.
Tom Rowland: So it's similar to how darker bottom paints already work?
Dan Dillon: Correct, there are studies that prove that. We haven't tested it in cold water yet, though we've had swimming pools up in Canada with no trouble. We're not gonna apologize for being a new company -- we have a lot of experience in a lot of areas with this product, and it's performed to a great degree.
Tom Rowland: The buoy you've had in the water the longest -- what area, what water temperature, what part of Florida?
Dan Dillon: That was in the Keys, in a dead-end canal in the Key Largo, Tavernier area. Last time we pulled it, it was seven or eight months old. We haven't pulled it since -- it's still out there floating, so that's another nine months or so. That's the extent of our actual testing here in our nutrient-rich water -- we found the worst canal we could find, and it's done really well.
Tom Rowland: Is this actually slowing growth, or is it a different strategy than bottom paint for preventing growth?
Dan Dillon: I think it's a different strategy -- the surface doesn't like to be around it. It doesn't kill organisms, but it doesn't stick well to them either, and it doesn't ablate and drop into the water like other coatings do. You just wipe off what's on there and go for a drive. That buoy sat for six months with zero movement. Compared to what's out there now, it's a million times better -- it's a new, scientific approach based on low surface tension.
Tom Rowland: You have a five-year guarantee, so it'll stay in the water a long time. Do you anticipate it prevents barnacles, or that they just come off easier?
Dan Dillon: They come off a lot easier, and if the boat's moving regularly they won't be on there at all. Based on our experience in the warm water here in the Keys, if you take the boat out once or twice a week or month, you should be fine -- no growth, no barnacles. HullMax's own warranty requires running the boat twice a week at 30 miles an hour for thirty minutes to prevent bottom growth, so they're really operating the same way -- expecting growth, just expecting it to come off.
Tom Rowland: If this is applied to a fiberglass hull, is it going to separate ever?
Dan Dillon: I've not seen it separate when applied properly. Have you, Joe?
Joe Solano: No. It depends on whether the substrate is in good condition. If it's sound, it's perfectly fine; if you're applying to something already falling apart, it's going to fall apart -- there's nothing you can do about that. As long as you're applying to a sound substrate, there should be no issues.
Tom Rowland: Are there any tests on the thermal side -- how hot it can get while applying, and at what point it damages the fiberglass?
Dan Dillon: We've shot thermal lasers at it to check the heat as we go, but eventually you could burn a hole in it if you left the flame sitting in one place long enough.
Joe Solano: With proper installation, the gun's never staying in one spot -- you'd just be dumping powder and wasting money, ending up with a glob of plastic. Moving the gun back and forth means you hit high temperatures briefly, then it cools immediately -- it's not sustained in any one spot.
Tom Rowland: I see it a lot like spray painting -- hold it in one place and it starts gripping, stand too far back and you don't get coverage. What about on metal gear -- propeller shafts, struts, out-drives, trim tabs? I saw you did a trim tab the other day.
Dan Dillon: We've shot some boats and metal components -- that goes back to the electrolysis question, which we can deal with later. We've shot a lot of pool railings and ladders with perfect adhesion. We've had it on a boat for six or seven years and it looks brand new because of the UV protection. On props, there's been talk about balance, but the powder and coat are so light -- we've shot some props, we're in the middle of testing, and early results are really good. We haven't done drive shafts yet, but we think we'll see similar results, especially on trawlers and slower boats. We're new at this, and that's okay -- we'd love to work with people who want to keep testing and help perfect it.
Tom Rowland: You're offering a five-year warranty -- how can Aquaphobix prove and guarantee the application will last on a fiberglass bottom for five years if the product is so new?
Dan Dillon: My first response is, have our competitors ever proved their own warranties, or actually upheld one?
Joe Solano: On fiberglass swimming pools, we've had our finish on for much longer than five years -- ten years in some cases. Conditions are different with boats, but Dan felt comfortable offering the five-year warranty based on the product's history, and I feel confident in it too. When HullMax first offered their finish and warranty, they were taking a chance on what they believed the service life would be -- Dan's doing the same thing.
Tom Rowland: How often will you need to run the boat, wipe it, or have a diver come clean it? It'll differ between the Keys and, say, upstate New York. My understanding in the Keys is you run the boat every two weeks, have a diver come every two months, and if you run it weekly you may never need the diver. Are there issues with a boat being out of the water for long periods -- stored dry, on a rack, or on a trailer?
Dan Dillon: I don't believe so. Joe, any exposure problems?
Joe Solano: No, I don't think you'd have issues storing it for long periods -- it's very UV resistant. If it sat in the sun for a couple of years, you might want to clean it up and reheat it, but for typical storage and use there shouldn't be an issue.
Tom Rowland: Is there a detailed written standard for boat prep prior to Aquaphobix -- cleanliness, removal of coatings, and so on?
Dan Dillon: We have a detailed list of requirements for prep on steel, aluminum, or fiberglass. It's a lot like prepping for bottom paint -- sanding down to create a surface on the gel coat. Any existing bottom paint has to be removed entirely. There's a barrier coat some people have asked about that we're still gathering information on, but as we stand today, a warranty requires the boat to be sanded down to our specifications.
Tom Rowland: Fiberglass hull with original gel coat -- how should that be prepped?
Dan Dillon: Sanded down to 40 to 60 grit, power-washed, then acetone-wiped, cleaned and dry, free of particles. Then we tape off what we don't want to coat, and shoot it.
Tom Rowland: And a fiberglass hull with existing bottom paint?
Dan Dillon: Same thing -- soda-blasting, sanding, or grinding to remove the old bottom paint down to the gel coat, until we reach the original substrate.
Tom Rowland: And a steel hull with existing bottom paint?
Joe Solano: The existing bottom paint has to come off down to bare steel. I'd blast in sections and coat immediately with a zinc-fortified epoxy we use on steel, so it doesn't flash-rust before we get the coating on.
Tom Rowland: And an aluminum hull with existing bottom paint?
Joe Solano: The existing bottom paint has to come off, profiled to a specific texture spec, and then applied using the epoxy and flocked into it.
Tom Rowland: Once the surface is prepped, what's the process for putting it on?
Joe Solano: The powders cool immediately once you remove the heat, so they don't flow or adhere the way a liquid coating would -- that's why we use an epoxy primer first, which does the adhering to the substrate. We let the epoxy get tacky, then apply the first coat of powder into that tacky epoxy for a mechanical bond. Once the epoxy hardens, we apply the second and third coats -- the second for full coverage, the third to make everything smooth.
Tom Rowland: Is there ever a reason for a fourth coat?
Joe Solano: Maybe if you didn't achieve the desired texture, you might hit it again -- it won't hurt anything.
Tom Rowland: I've seen a really clean line between the bottom paint or Aquaphobix and the gel coat on the side of the boat, done with tape -- what kind of tape is that?
Joe Solano: It's fire-resistant or flame-resistant tape that can handle the heat, but more important is the glue. Early on we tried aluminum tape, but the glue got very sticky and was difficult to clean off, and it wasn't flame resistant either -- so the glue is the key part of our tape.
Tom Rowland: Once the application's complete, how long does it need to cure before going back in the water?
Dan Dillon: We immediately fill a pool and immediately put a boat back in the water. Once the first coat is bonded and cured -- it hardens quickly -- you can go back in the water an hour to an hour and a half after the boat's done.
Tom Rowland: Is that the same for boats of any size?
Joe Solano: The install temperature is the bigger factor, not size or material. Down south, on a warm day, you should be fine. Up north, since the epoxies need heat to cure, colder weather means slower curing -- I'd wait a day or so up there to let the cure finish, but on a hot day, getting in the water by the end of the day shouldn't be an issue.
Tom Rowland: Once it's on and the boat's back in the water, what's the recommended maintenance schedule, say for the Florida Keys?
Dan Dillon: For a boat that's anchored and not run much, I'd still have a diver come, but you could probably double the interval without a problem -- so once every two months on a stagnant boat instead of monthly. For a boat that's run regularly, it's very dependent on how often -- run it weekly and check after two months to see what you see. It's dependent on the canal, water flow, and tides, but it's definitely going to perform better than bottom paint, even if I can't say exactly how much better.
Tom Rowland: Hundreds of people have asked how to get involved -- how do I become a dealer, how do I become a certified installer?
Dan Dillon: We're actively looking for dealer installers who want to learn and take on an area -- we've had requests from all over the world, and we're doing demonstrations in Europe over the next month or so. If you're interested, go to aquaphobix.com and leave your contact information, and we'll explain what the opportunity looks like on the installer side. The response has been overwhelming -- there are more boats than we can handle right now, and we're going to need the help.
Tom Rowland: And Joe, if you're interested in the pool side, Ecofinish is at ecofinish.com -- is that the proper website?
Joe Solano: That is -- ecofinishcoatings.com.
Tom Rowland: That's all the questions we have for now -- I'm sure there'll be more as people learn more about this product. It's exciting to have something better than what's currently out there, and it sounds like you've got a really good opportunity for expansion throughout the marine industry. Good job.
Dan Dillon: We appreciate your time -- we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation, with all these results, if it wasn't for you, your podcast, and Instagram. It's been phenomenal working with you all, so I really appreciate it.
Tom Rowland: Absolutely, it's been fun. Joe, really nice to meet you -- I'm sure we'll see each other soon.
Joe Solano: Great meeting with Tom. Thank you very much.
Tom Rowland: Okay, thank you guys.
Dan Dillon: See you. Bye.
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