If it's a Kokatat...send it in for repair. If you don't pay for them to do the gaskets it doesn't cost that much. I've sent in suits that I was sure were totaled but got lots more days out of them.

Kokatat charges about $15 dollars to do a pressure test and all of the patching/seam repair. It is an awesome deal, assuming you have a Kokatat drysuit. Our general strategy is to send our suits in every other year to replace gaskets and have the pressure test/seam repair done.

Kokatat will not do anything with respect to rejuvenating the DWR on your suit. They recommended the spray on Revive-X and an iron. This method worked terribly for us - maybe if you were more patient and precise it would work.

Recently, we met someone on the river that said they used the wash-in DWR and dried their drysuit in the dryer at low heat. Amazingly, this method worked quite well for us. We first washed the suit with Tech Wash and then used the NikWax DWR treatment in a second wash cycle (both of these things need to be done in a front loader). We made the mistake of treating each drysuit as "one garment" so I don't think we used quite enough of the DWR treatment but it still worked really well.

Two things to watch out for. First, you need to be really careful with the heat on the dryer. I set it to our dryer's lowest setting. Apparently, the heat helps set the DWR so you need some heat. Too much heat and you could ruin the gaskets. So, if you are sending your suit into Kokatat, do this whole thing first. Second thing to watch for is that Gore isn't wild about the wash in DWR as it can limit the breath-ability of the Gore-Tex. I don't know how big of a problem this is in practice vs. theory - caveat emptor. I can tell you that it is much nicer to be in a suit that doesn't have that "wetted out" feeling.

Another happy Nikwax customer here.

Also - as long as we're on the topic - how many days on the river have you been getting out of your drysuits?

I'd make a rough guess that I've had my out maybe ~100 -120 times since '07, and while it's not completely shot, it's at least 2/3rds of the way there.

I'm on my second Kokatat suit.  My first one lasted 7 seasons of 80 plus days.  I sent it back about once a year.  The last time I sent it in I didn't hear back from them for a while.  I called them and they said "you need a new suit!".  They said I had over 300 patches already and that I had another 100-150 more spots that needed pressed.  She said it wouldn't be worth it since I would have to pay more than the regular 15 bucks.  I asked how much and she said a whopping 30 bucks!  I said "Patch that thing!!".  I got one more winter season out of it before I replaced it...