Is there a reliable way of preventing goggles from fogging up while swimming? I’ve tried the fancy coated goggles; they did nothing after one or two swims. I tried wetting the inside; that works for about five minutes. I tried the anti-fog sprays and the results weren’t much better.
Am I doing something wrong? Are foggy goggles something people just learn to live with it, or is there actually way to make them stay clear?
Have you tried saliva? I spit in mine, rub it around and give them a quick rinse. It works at least as well as the anti-fog sprays, and a good deal cheaper.
I don’t know about swimming goggles, but as far as other goggles, I’ve tried everything from shaving cream to alcohol. The kind that fog up least are the dual lens type.
Spit works best here
Another vote for spit. Really.
I was a competitive swimmer in high school, and have been swimming laps for exercise for more than 20 years since.
What works best is spit.
Here’s the trick, though. In my experience, you have to spit into the goggles before they get wet. (If the goggles are already wet, the spit is not as effective.) Rub the saliva all over the inside of the lenses; then you can rinse them off in a sink or even the pool. The saliva will leave a residue that keeps the goggles from fogging.
Make sure you use spit. Snot doesn’t work. This means you don’t want to snort or sniff to clear your nose before you spit.
Spit can help, but fogging is a really damned hard problem to solve. The problem is that you’re mixing high humidity with a situation in which one side of the lens is much colder than the other. It’s very hard to prevent condensation on the lens under those conditions.
But I agree that spit is probably the best thing to use, but it won’t completely eliminate fogging.
What I do when SCUBA diving is just leave a little bit of water in my mask. When it starts to fog, I just roll my face around a bit and let the water clear the fog. But that’s not easy to do in swim goggles.
Don’t know about swimming goggles, but for scuba diving I get good results with baby shampoo _ a drop on each lens, smear it around thoroughly, give 'em a light rinse with water.
Another SCUBA diver here, and I vore for good 'ol spit. Make sure they’re dry, spit on the insides, then wash the saliva off. Works like a dream. Of spit.
Spit, spit, spit. Ain’t it a great word?
If you don’t want to spit, use a clear oil/fat/ dishwashing - something that lets the drops of water roll downwards.
Try to swim in water where the temp. is similar to your body temp, and not breath upwards.
I don’t know if you are swimming or diving, but I guess that the tiny little swimming goggles fog up much quicker than the bigger diving masks, because there, the air can distribute better. Plus, the glass is thicker than the thin plastic in the goggles, which helps with the insulation.
But why do you need to anti-fog your arse anyway?
First off you want to make sure that when you get the anti-fog type of goggles that you don’t start touching the insides getting it dirty. The next best thing is spit, I do it before getting in the pool, really no one notices, at least not on my team. You can also try a very little bit of baby shampoo, but that doesn’t last long either.
So like everyone else, spit in them, rub it around a bit, then dunk it in the pool.
I never could get spit to work, so I assumed it was a joke. A guy was watching a woman struggle with getting a dollar into a Coke machine one time and he said it would accept the dollar if she spit on it, so she did. He thought it was hilarious. I just assumed people were told to spit in goggles just to see if they would.
When I took (and failed) a SCUBA diving class in college, the first thing the instructor taught us was to spit on the mask to keep it from fogging up.
Another vote for spit. The more productive the better, ime, and you spit, rub, rinse ONCE without rubbing, put on.
Baby shampoo works as well, as previously mentioned.
Spit.
You have the wrong spit?
The principle behind spit - but works best in real diving masks - is that you want a tiny fat film where the fog condenses and then rolls down to the bottom. So if you forgot your baby oil or dishwashing liquid, then spit is always available.
That on the other hand, is real nonsense. Just like rubbing a coin will not help the machine to accept it.
Sceptiscim is all nice and well, but some tips are based on sound principles and therefore work, while others are based on superstition or misunderstood principles, but live on because of biased observation.
Swimmer here: Basically everything said is correct, saliva works the best. The best application method I’ve found is to lick the lenses while dry. This usually gives the optimum amount of saliva to prevent any fogging.
When I worked in a meat-processing plant we’d put a little bit of liquid soap on the lens on the inside of our safety glasses and distribute it evenly and so it was clear. It was a humid and cold environment so this may help. If not, sorry.
Alright. Looks like I’m gonna go a’lickin’ my goggles.
Thanks for the advice, all.