Strange regulator failure

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Messages
3
Reaction score
6
Location
North Carolina
# of dives
25 - 49
I had my regulators serviced about two weeks prior to my dive at a local quarry. The service tech, so far as I know, is trained on my brand of regulator, and has serviced dozens and dozens if not hundreds every year. The dive shop is also reputable and popular. I had a friend's mom pick up the reg set as she was coming to where I live to visit my friend and that way I did not have to make a special trip. A few days after service and my buddy handed me my regs. I did notice a slight oily/greasy feel on the first stage but thought nothing of it because I knew a light coating of grease was used on some of the internals. Two weeks later and I go diving at the quarry. The plan was to go to the bottom, around 90ft, and work our way back up. My primary regulator, a Cressi Master Chromo, was breathing VERY wet. I debated on switching to my Guardian full face but to save time I opted to breath off my octo regulator, a Cressi Ellipse. It breathed fine. My buddy and I made it to the bottom with no issues. I kept hearing him cough. I later learned it was some nasal drainage. It was dark but we both had flashlights. I looked up to find him and check on him because of the cough. When I looked upward, the octo began breathing wet. I scanned around for my buddy for a few seconds but I did not see him. I assumed he headed up due to the coughing. A bit of panic set in because I was planning on grabbing his octo and then both of us head up. I did not see him or his light so I headed up. The wet breathing became worse. I was only able to take very shallow breaths. I knew I couldn't sprint to the surface, but I couldnt ascend as slowly as I should under normal circumstances. I had to force my mind to "stay in the fight." I have always heard of the stories about panicking divers peeling off their masks and other equipment. Those thoughts ran through my mind. I could feel myself picking up speed so I dumped some air from my BC and kept swimming upward. I uncontrollably peed on myself. Every breath was risky. I made it to the surface and caught my breath. It probably took about 30 seconds to ascend. Not good. I started banging my flashlight on my air cylinder hoping my buddy would think it was me. My buddy came up after a few minutes. He said he looked for me for about one minute at the bottom and then came up. He also made a safety stop. When he surfaced I told him about what happened. We got out and I had about an hour and a half surface interval after the 12 minute dive. I felt none of the symptoms I would associate with deco sickness. We made another dive, this time I breathed off my Guardian. We stayed under 20ft and looked at fish. I contacted the dive shop that did the service and they were concerned, as they should be. I boxed up the reg set and shipped it to them. A few days later the guy called me and said both second stages had a film of some type of oil or grease which cause the rubber bits to not seal/open as they should, which caused the flooding. He said a very miniscule amount of lube is used for some o-rings but nothing even close to the amount that coated the insides of my regulators. They cleaned the regs and were going to ship them back at no charge but the guy was firm that there was no negligence or faulty parts used in the servicing. My friend asked his mother if the reg set every came into contact with anything greasy while in her possession and she said the regs sat in her backseat for a couple of days but she put nothing at all near the regs. I know her to be a very neat and clean lady, and more importantly honest. She did not notice a greasy feel when she picked up the regs. So…it is a mystery. Did the grease get on there at the dive shop? With my friend’s mom? My friend? The only thing that even seems plausible is that there was some lube in whatever air cylinder the dive shop used to test the regs. I have heard of cylinders getting lube in them when they are filled or VIPd or hydroed. I did not taste anything unusual. The greasy feel that I noticed was on the first stage. That is where my friend said he felt it when he got the regs from him mom. I had no trouble with my Guardian but I have not checked the second stage of it to see if it is also greasy. Any ideas?


I have two take aways from this incident. One, make sure my primary air source is working as it should before I dive and ONLY use the octo as a back up. The octo also needs to be in working order before a dive begins. The second take away is that I need to be VERY close to my dive buddy in dark water. That way if I cant see them well, I can still grab them. We all have to learn some lessons the hard way. I’m glad I can live to tell this tale.
 
Unfortunately regulator issues can often show themselves right after maintenance. Test dives are often warranted after maintenance.

And not to pile on, but when you went under on your octo you decided that you and your buddy were comfortable with possibly buddy breathing on an octo that was part of a reg set that was acting finicky and was unproven since the maintenance. And did you tell your buddy that before splashing?

That said, I very much appreciate you sharing so that we can talk about it.
 
@NickDanger
I'll second what @rhwestfall said and ask why you started a dive with a known bad regulator. Not a good start, especially as a negative pressure check is something you should have been taught as part of your predive regulator checks to ensure that everything is sealing properly.
If the regs were left in the car for a couple of days, the grease was likely the lube used in assembly had gotten over the regulators after baking in 100f+ heat for two days and the heat could also cause the diaphragms to get stuck to the housing. Without having the regs in front of me, I can't be 100% positive, but I'm 99.99% positive that your issue was caused by negligent care of the regulators by leaving them in the back of the car for a couple of days.
 
I suspect the heat caused the problem as well, but I have left scuba gear to cook in the truck of a car in Florida many, many times with no problems, so I disagree that leaving in the back seat was some kind of abuse.

I think a more useful tip (rather than a scolding) is to explain that a wet breathing reg should not have cause that much stress. A reg could breath wet from a torn diaphram, a little sand (or puke) in the exhaust valve, a crack in the case, a hole in the mouth piece and who knows what else. If a reg is breathing wet, even very wet, you can still use it by pressing the purge and then sipping the air. When you suck on a reg to start the airflow, you will necessarily suck water (when the second stage is compromised). even a little water shooting to the back of your throat is really, really uncomfortable and undesirable. However, if you use the technique that you learned to breath from a freeflowing regulator, then you can ascend from a second stage that is leaking terribly. So pressing the purge button and sipping the air is an important skill that you can practice and should master.

It will increase your comfort and safety. It will occupy one hand pretty much full time on the ascent, but if you had this skill in your bag of tricks, the whole situation would have been a minor event.
 
Newly serviced regs with silicone lube applied and then left to bake in a car during the summer. A car interior can hit 145F in the summer easily. That could easily cause the lube to melt and spread and maybe even damage parts.

As for the "never happened to me" comments, a reg that has been rinsed and dove a number of times might not have much excess lube accumulated inside, so this issue may not manifest every time.

Finally, Cristolube has a higher temperature range than silicone grease. You might want to ask what the service tech used.
 
1) Regs fail after service all the time. I find I've had more failures after service than due to other reasons. Not going to lie. I'm at the point where I only service regs when necessary. Though I have 3 spares in the car at least every dive trip
2) Don't leave your regs in the car. Bad idea in florida
3) If you have to start a dive breathing a reg other than your primary, don't do the dive.
 
I have two take aways from this incident. One, make sure my primary air source is working as it should before I dive and ONLY use the octo as a back up. The octo also needs to be in working order before a dive begins. The second take away is that I need to be VERY close to my dive buddy in dark water.

These are some good takeaways. Add proper gear storage/care to the mix and communicating clearly with your buddy.

I had a regulator failure after inspection. It happened on my first open water check out dive. I had written about my experience last year. I have since learned to try out equipment in the pool first after service and I have invested in an IP gauge.

I wonder how many people have similar experiences and don't write about them? I think it may happen more than we know and I personally feel that some of these mistakes (including mine) are because of a lack of training provided. I have learned so much from scubaboard and have been able to apply what I learned in the pool and open water. I hope you stick around.

Out of curiosity, what is at 90 feet?
 
You probably want to do a shallow dive in a safe area to test newly serviced regulators (or go in a pool if you have access to a pool)

I didn’t know about newly serviced regulator and heat ...
 
Thanks for sharing your (scary) story. Reef Seekers still does reg service and I also do fatality analysis so a couple of thoughts from my dual perspective:

1. When someone comes to pick up a reg we've serviced, before it goes out the door, we hook it up and have them breath on it to ensure that everything is to their liking.
2. That you had an apparently non-certified diver pick up your gear to save you a "special trip" could have ended up having you make a "special trip" to your local morgue.
3. Unless the reg is being environmentally sealed, the amount of lube used is minimal and shouldn't have caused the greasy feeling you describe.
4. When your buddy handed you the regs, THAT'S when you should have checked them out. Not right before you started the dive. You had two weeks to find and fix the problem.
5. There's no real way to determine where the external greasy feel came from. In investigative terms, you have a very broken chain-of-evidence. The reg sat in a car for a while and even though friend's mom is honest and tidy, maybe she forgot that she put a box of leaking eggs nearby or something like that. And then she gave them to your friend and they again sat for some unspecified amount of time in an unspecified location.
6. It's easy to point the finger at the shop but there are too many opportunities along the way for something else to have happened to the reg to make the-shop-did-it argument a slam dunk.

On to the fatality analysis part:
7. You chose to dive with a reg that you didn't feel was working properly.
8. You chose to "save time" by not switching to the Guardian (unclear if it's got its own 1st stage or whether you would have used the greasy one) which could have cost you your life.
9. You chose to dive without a back-up reg. By using the octo as your primary and relegating your Master Chromo to serving as a useless, dangling thing, that's the net effect.
10. Your buddy was possibly in distress (coughing).
11. Although you should have been descending within physical & visual contact distance, apparently you were not.
12. Instead, you somehow lost each other.
13. And in looking up to see where he might be, THAT'S when your octo-is-all-I've-got started breathing wet and you chose (wisely) to abort the dive.
14. But realize that it's also possible, since you had no idea where the coughing buddy was, that you were about to abandon him in a time of his need on the bottom.
15. I don't take any issue with a faster-than-desired ascent nor with a missed safety stop. Get thee to the surface. Better to be bent than drowned.
16. However, your buddy also should have blown off his safety stop. (Remember safety stops - let alone on a 12-minute dive - are optional not mandatory.)
17. The reason is that he doesn't know if you're in trouble and at the surface, got lost and simply went to the surface to wait, or what. By doing a safety stop, and remembering that an unconscious diver has about 5-6 minutes before brain death sets in, had you been on the bottom, he would have eaten up half (3 minutes) of your potential remaining time to live for an unneeded safety stop.
18. You got out and did some level of self-assessment. That's good. A call to DAN to get some expert-level assessment would have been even better.
19. So you both sat around for an hour and a half . . . and then did a second dive.
20. Usually, THAT'S the one that would have gotten you. You dodged bullets and beat the odds on the first dive, so what could possibly go wrong on the second dive?
21. Even diving with the Guardian, I'm guessing you had no octo or Spare Air.
22. And what could possibly go wrong at 20 feet. Nobody has even died at 20 feet, have they?

IMHO, you're very lucky. There are a whole bunch of lessons to be learned here and I hope you take them all to heart. This is a phenomenally safe sport when everything is working. But when stuff isn't working, it's time to reassess what you're doing. I have a statement I've made to my students for 40 years: You never get hurt on a dive you don't make. I hope you'll carry that thought with you from now on.

- Ken
 

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