How Your Wetsuit Is Destroying Your Home – Do This Instead

This is probably the most important topic for any surfing property owner to read. Wetsuits are literally destroying homes, and in a different way than you may think. Although the common story of moldy heaps of wetsuits sogging up your garage floor causes inconvenience and health concerns – this post is focused on a different problem. SoCal Surf Rackz is centered around optimizing surf storage and this is a crucial page from our playbook.

Just stroll past the waterfront homes along San Diego’s Mission Beach. Take your pick, north or south of the red and white roller coaster of Belmont Park– it makes no difference. Or ride your Murf e-bike up Encinitas’ Neptune Ave beach corridor along Highway 101. You’ll see the same trend. Nothing out of the ordinary right? Just beautiful beach houses shining in the sun. But whip out your shades and take a closer look at the balcony or ocean view decks. You’ll see freshly used wetsuits dripping salty ocean water down the façade of a majority of these houses. Below those wetsuits you’ll see a trail of warping wood, peeling or streaking paint and corrosive metal carnage left behind from surfers repeating the same routine day after day.  It’s not cute.

At this point you may be thinking to yourself, “Sh*t, I do this all the time”. No judgment here, our household used to do the same thing. Hopefully we can offer an alternative solution to save you swelling headaches down the line. Side note, there’s no reason to feel bad because it’s not just homeowners, business owners and even pro surfers make the same mistake all the time. For example, after grabbing a cold brew at Coffee Coffee in Leucadia last week, our team couldn’t help but marvel at the iconic Surfhouse hotel across the street. From its towering surfboard keyhole logo on the roof to the beautiful light blue doors, it’s hard to miss. It fits right in with the surf-oriented neighborhood. But then our eyes flashed to the wetsuit slumped over their sleek wood railing on the second floor, dripping onto the white exterior of the building (and the neighbors head blow) leaving yellowish brown discolored streaks. 

Or take the pro skim boarder and surfer, Blair Conklin, living along the beach in Southern California, who told our team at the beginning of the year, “Right now I just hang my wetsuits over my back railing, and I have found it’s compromising the wood structure”. It’s a blatant problem across the board, no pun intended. Here’s the short science lesson: saltwater is brutal. When it drips off your wetsuit and onto your balcony railing or exterior facade, it seeps into wood and speeds up rot, eats away at metal causing rust, and leaves behind white, chalky salt streaks that stain your paint or stucco. Over time, all that adds up to a crusty, corroded, expensive mess — and one more reason your landlord (or your spouse) isn’t stoked. Granted, leaving your suit out overnight one time won’t sink your nose, but repeat the process after every session and you’ll have to face a harsh reality.

Now on to the solution,  which is extremely simple. In response to the common comment of, “But the side of the house is just so convenient, and I don’t have anywhere else to dry my suits”, we got you. Order yourself a durable freestanding wetsuit rack, like our custom Seaside models, which are specially coated with a powerful outdoor sealant. These rackz bear the brunt of daily erosion from saltwater dripping off your suits so your house doesn’t have to. There is no need to affix our rackz to any wall/structure, and with our lightweight design and attachments like locking wheels, you can easily move your suits inside or out depending on how wet they are. Wetsuits are designed to fit in our rackz through our heavy duty dive hangers at the waist, which both protects the neck of the suit from stretching and dries the suit faster (more on this in a different post).

According to Great Buildz, in July 2025, the average cost range of an exterior 3-bedroom house re-painting in San Diego is between $8,000 to $13,000.  The cost of our Seaside 3-5 Suit, which holds 3-5 wetsuits depending on size, costs $150 and will last you decades. Not much more to be said, its simple rackoncomics. Let a rack like ours take the beating and protect your beautiful home or rental.

P.S. Circling back to our earlier examples, we ended up reaching out to our fellow local surf business, Surfhouse, and even offered to gift them a custom rack for guest use, to help them prevent further damage. As for Blair, we hooked him up with our bestselling blackout 6-8 Suit Seaside wetsuit rack which saved his ocean view deck from rot. He later got himself a 6 Board – Tabletops surfboard rack too. So, to wrap this one up, next time you see a homeowner in your area chuck a suit over the side of their house, be a good neighbor, and now surf storage connoisseur, by sending them this article, or even better, gifting them a wetsuit rack that will last them and their family decades. Thanks for reading through the end. We will be back with more insights from working with hundreds of surfing families and businesses across the nation soon. Happy storage, happy surfing.

Keep shredding!