What would you do if your computer died?

[redacted]

So an aborted dive trip is more practical than paying for a battery change before the trip? I know in my circumstances, having never been on a trip due to finances, that if I go, I'm not going to allow poor proactive (not saying that about the OP) maintenance ruin my diving. Oh, I would also not buy a comp that was prohibitive to maintain.

There is another choice - change the battery when it needs to be changed. Changing a battery unnecessarily incurs the risk of a defective "new" battery as well as the risk of user/maintenance error resulting in failure. Proactive unnecessary maintenance is not a good thing. Redundancy is the surest protection against failures.

 

[tracydr]

Hypothetically...

You're at a dive resort for a week and you get 5 days of unlimited dives- for you, that's about 5 per day. It's the middle of the 2nd dive and your computer runs out of battery. You surface, slowly and safely with your buddy, with no incident. You're now back at the resort about to have lunch with 2 afternoon dives and a night dive planned...

What do you do? Call the rest of the dive day off? Dive shallow, short dives? Go off your buddy's computer- after all, he was right there with you for the first 2 dives? You have access to a rental computer or you can replace your computer's battery, but either way, the computer you'd wear for the rest of the day doesn't have your residual nitrogen figured in.

My husband and I were discussing this today. Try to be honest with yourself. Imagine you only get maybe one serious dive trip a year. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

I wear two computers on trips like this. My old cranky air computer and a new nitrox computer.
i would switch to my air computer, even thugh I'd be diving nitrox. Would shorten my bottom times but at least I'd still be diving.

 

[cloudflint]

I just use my computer as a bottom timer so normally I would just carry on as normal using my watch/depth gauge. I say "normally" because last time my computer died on me I looked over to see my watch fill with water and grind to a halt as well!

 

[tracydr]

If I were pushing NDLs, I would go to my back-up computer from my save-a-dive kit, and finish the day with more conservative dives based on tables and other information (like my buddy's computer). If the planned dives were conservative to begin with, I would be less concerned with finishing the day with more conservative dives. Much depends on my familiarity with the planned dive profiles and sites.

In fact, if the location were Bonaire (which it sounds like) I would have no concern with DCS risk diving for a week in Bonaire without a computer. Heck, I would wager that I could do a week of very enjoyable diving in Bonaire (4 dives per day) with nothing but an SPG (no computer, no depth gauge, and no dive timer) without ever incurring more than a 75% loading on an Oceanic computer diving air. On nitrox, I would not expect to exceed 50%. But I would probably never go below 40' on typical 60 to 75 minute dives sticking to sites I am quite familiar with.

Then there are other dive destinations like the Flower Gardens that I would not consider diving without a computer. I sometimes carry 2 computers at that location. Most dives there are pushing NDLs and you are rarely far from the limits when you start up. For me, when just diving one computer, a failure would mean a big dose of extra caution to finish a day of diving while loading up a replacement computer.

How do you figure this? My husband and I are always coming close to NDLs on our dives the second and third day in Bonaire, even on nitrox. I wear an AL 63 and he wears an AL 80 so its not like we're on incredibly long sives. We don't dive exceptionally deep but we might dive 4-5 dives per day. Is the nitrogen pressure different in Bonaire than the Flower Gardens?

 

[buton]

Easy answer...use your backup why 8 pages of discussion?

 

[redacted]

How do you figure this? My husband and I are always coming close to NDLs on our dives the second and third day in Bonaire, even on nitrox. I wear an AL 63 and he wears an AL 80 so its not like we're on incredibly long sives. We don't dive exceptionally deep but we might dive 4-5 dives per day. Is the nitrogen pressure different in Bonaire than the Flower Gardens?

My wife and I both dive Oceanic computers (older models with the higher resolution tissue loading bar graph). This TLBG has 12 green ticks and 3 yellow ticks before it hits red. I used DiveNav to determine that each tick is about a 6% loading of the leading compartment. I looked at our last two years in Bonaire. In 2011, I did 24 dive (wife did 21) including a couple in the 100 ft range (but not for long) all on 32%. My N2 load exceeded 50% on only one dive (8 ticks on the TLBG). Most of our dives had a max depth of 40 to 50 ft and bottom times between one hour and 1:20 with about half that time spent above 30 ft. In 2012 We did only 20 dives (getting older) on air with a max depth of 60 feet and most of the dives spent between 25 and 35 feet. On one dive we hit a maximum of 10 out of 15 ticks on the TLBG - so less than 70%.

The big difference between Bonaire and the Flower Gardens is the proportion of dive time spent deep. In Bonaire, even if we drop to 100 feet at Karpata, it is only for a couple minutes and the vast majority of the dive is spent at 40 feet or less. At the Flower Gardens, most dives are spent in the 75 to 100 foot range for 35 +/- minutes so the partial pressure of N2 is much higher for a much longer time resulting in over 80% loading (top of the green on the TLBG) on most of my dives. When you guys do the FGB, I suggest 95 or 100 cu ft tanks. An AL80 of 32% will leave you gas limited on almost all dives while the larger tank will leave you fairly balanced or even NDL limited.

 

[Mitchell Teeters]

There is another choice - change the battery when it needs to be changed. Changing a battery unnecessarily incurs the risk of a defective "new" battery as well as the risk of user/maintenance error resulting in failure. Proactive unnecessary maintenance is not a good thing. Redundancy is the surest protection against failures.

It's not un-necessary if it will be needed DURING the trip. And checking the voltage of a battery is not that hard, they can do it when you buy it. Telling someone to wait for failure before maintenance is just silly. IMHO

With that said, it should be noted that the failure of a comp w/o warning is nothing you can prevent.

 

[redacted]

It's not un-necessary if it will be needed DURING the trip. And checking the voltage of a battery is not that hard, they can do it when you buy it. Telling someone to wait for failure before maintenance is just silly. IMHO

With that said, it should be noted that the failure of a comp w/o warning is nothing you can prevent.

My computers give me a low battery warning. The manual says there will be enough power to complete the day of diving and so far it has been correct. When the warning comes on, I add my backup computer to my rig and change the battery at the end of the day.

 

[Tigerman]

However, if you have a computer where you cannot do that yourself, the option is to be proactive..

 

[warmwaterturner]

Since I run two computers - I would go diving.........