Recreational Pony Bottles, completely unnecessary? Why or why not?

[Blackcrusader]

Yes, the thread served a purpose.

Good for you in your testing. Just be aware that in a real OOA situation, you'll be breathing harder, faster, building up CO2, and in general NOT able to duplicate a dry-land test. Be advised that breathing from a BCD has reportedly caused some nasty lung infections....which, I guess, are better than drowning.

BCD bladders can be cleaned just as CCR divers clean their equipment. One known case of an infection which even medical scientists listed as a very rare event. I see divers suck the air out of their BCD to compress them for travel. It's quite common. Pretty much lung infections can be cured as can some drowned people. Hospitals have people breathing out of bladders and manage not to get them infected.

 

[grf88]

So I am off to the Caribbean for a vacation and want to do a little diving. What are my alternatives in case of an emergency with equipment.
Take my doubles with me which I don't have anyway and if I actually did I couldn't afford the weight overage.
Do a CESA.
Hope my instabuddy stays close and his rental octopus has been maintained and not dragged in the sand.
Breathe out of my rental BC which if I am properly weighted probably does not contain even one cf. air and also probably hasn't been cleaned since it was put into rental a few years back.
Pack a small pony bottle in my luggage.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. What should I do.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

So I am off to the Caribbean for a vacation and want to do a little diving. What are my alternatives in case of an emergency with equipment.
Take my doubles with me which I don't have anyway and if I actually did I couldn't afford the weight overage.
Do a CESA.
Hope my instabuddy stays close and his rental octopus has been maintained and not dragged in the sand.
Breathe out of my rental BC which if I am properly weighted probably does not contain even one cf. air and also probably hasn't been cleaned since it was put into rental a few years back.
Pack a small pony bottle in my luggage.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. What should I do.

One person here called me lazy for not taking my manifold and bands with me on vacation. He and I have different ideas of what vacation entails

 

[Blackcrusader]

So I am off to the Caribbean for a vacation and want to do a little diving. What are my alternatives in case of an emergency with equipment.
Take my doubles with me which I don't have anyway and if I actually did I couldn't afford the weight overage.
Do a CESA.
Hope my instabuddy stays close and his rental octopus has been maintained and not dragged in the sand.
Breathe out of my rental BC which if I am properly weighted probably does not contain even one cf. air and also probably hasn't been cleaned since it was put into rental a few years back.
Pack a small pony bottle in my luggage.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. What should I do.

Buy a spare air bottle?

 

[Wibble]

BCD bladders can be cleaned just as CCR divers clean their equipment. One known case of an infection which even medical scientists listed as a very rare event. I see divers suck the air out of their BCD to compress them for travel. It's quite common. Pretty much lung infections can be cured as can some drowned people. Hospitals have people breathing out of bladders and manage not to get them infected.

That may well be the case, but a Buoyancy Control Device isn't a counterlung which is regularly cleaned and disinfected with special procedures.

BCDs are filthy devices which get lots of mucky water ingress when you're dumping.

Damned if I'd breathe from one.

As for the "I'd take a breath from the BCD" argument. Sorry, no you wouldn't (OK, maybe in a cave, but that's just being silly). You'd be in blind panic ascending like a rocket with your lungs screaming at you to breathe; suddenly thinking "ooh, I've a BCD to breathe from which I've never even orally inflated" isn't really going to come to the forefront of your mind.

Maybe the thought "why didn't I bring a pony bottle" would be flying through your mind. That would have prevented the clusterf**k conditions from starting in the first place, along with some practice in using it.

 

[Blackcrusader]

That may well be the case, but a Buoyancy Control Device isn't a counterlung which is regularly cleaned and disinfected with special procedures.

I clean mine with special solutions. It's part of maintaining your own equipment. A BCD is certainly not a counter lung until you need it and can use it as one. After all self rescue is the best thing to do. Some people may prefer to drown instead, that is their right. I was taught the procedure by my BSAC sports diving instructor in 1986. Never had to use it for that purpose.

PS not everyone goes into a blind panic. My instructor would also turn off your air on dive courses to see what your reaction would be. If you are going to panic then maybe rescue courses are not for you was his mindset. Apart from Solo Divers I have yet to see a recreational diver bring a pony bottle on a dive. As a last resort I would be doing as the Queen song goes.... keep yourself alive, keep yourself alive.

At least I know you would think about using a BCD in this way as you know about it. Most people don't know about it so their options are rather more limited. Death is a part of life but I am not ready for it just yet.

 

[Wibble]

I clean mine with special solutions. It's part of maintaining your own equipment.

I never clean my wings and never have. I'll drain the seawater out of them and that's about it.

I clean and sterilise the lungs on the rebreather regularly with Chemgene / Anistol.

 

[Blackcrusader]

I never clean my wings and never have. I'll drain the seawater out of them and that's about it.

I clean and sterilise the lungs on the rebreather regularly with Chemgene / Anistol.

Well each to their own ways of doing things. I thinking cleaning your BCD properly is a good thing. As you wrote you get lots of water and crud that comes with it into the BCD from diving. Even flushing my BCD out with clean water is normal after a days diving.

 

[Angelo Farina]

I have pretty limited experience but this seems like a poor practice for a dive operation. Knowingly continuing to use defective equipment to rent to divers?

We were not "renting" anything to divers. The tour operator, Club Vacanze, did provide free diving for all their customers. So they did not "pay" for "renting" equipment, all was provided "for free" (actually already included in the holidays package).
Of course this was very attractive for diving customers, and almost half of the customers were divers, who did expect to get at least one dive per day, often two, included in the "all inclusive" package - this did also include many other sports, such as kayak, windsurf, fishing, etc. - actually the only extra a customer had to pay for was for super-alcoholics (wine and beer were included, too)... And tipping was strongly forbidden!
Actual using cash in the resort was entirely forbbiden, for purchasing super-alcoholics the customers had to use some coloured plastic daisy-chains.
So it was not possible NOT to provide diving to them.
And we had to do with what was available, as getting spare parts from Italy was a long procedure. We did take more than one month before receiving a good batch of O-rings, During the weekly flight, we received two times other batches of bad O-rings, as the people in Italy purchasing them did take care only of their proper size, and not of their proper durometry.
So, as those O-rings were the only ones available, what could have been done differently? Luckily enough the safety procedures adopted by Club Vacanze provided the added safety, thanks to the double-valves and double complete regs, and the availability of spare tanks hanging below the boat (to be used for deco, but also in case of O-ring extrusion).

 

[Angelo Farina]

As there were no good O-rings to purchase, the only other choice was to shut down.

Simply impossible for a resort where diving was the main attraction for more than half of the customers...
And when diving was already included in the "full inclusive" package.
On the other hand, with more than 100 tanks been used every day, a failure of just a couple or three of them (and usually on the boat) is statistically a low value. And, as proper redundancy was always employed, none of the almost 10 in-water O-ring failures happened in one month resulted in more than a minor inconvenience.
Also when proper O-rings arrived, I still did see a couple of O-ring extrusions in the following two months. A failure ratio much smaller, but not zero. Yoke O-rings sometimes do extrude, even if of good quality...
And, apart O-ring extrusions, I did see also other first-stage failures: clogged filter, air leakage from the piston O-ring, and at least three ruptures of the hose close to the first stage. In all these cases, the availability of a second valve and a second first stage allowed to solve the situation in seconds and with minimal risk. But if the second valve and second first stage had not been available, then only a pony tank could be the solution.