Likelihood of gear malfunctions?

[Gary D.]

The odds are better that well maintained gear will last longer than a well maintained motor vehicle. Abuse your gear and you're inviting disaster. Abuse your motor vehicle and it may not get you from point A to point B or to the dive site.

Gary D.

 

[BarryNL]

Little bits of grit, and even salt crystals, are great at causing LP inflators to stick open. If you're setting up you gear on dirt or on sand beaches be especially careful that none is getting into the ends of the LP hoses before you connect them. Personally, having experienced this once with a drysuit inflator I now try to get everything setup and connected before even taking it out of the car.

 

[Diver0001]

1.) How common is a power-inflator hose free flow?

Depends on the quality of the coupling, your diving conditions (lots of time in the pool will wreck anything) and your post dive care.

bubbling around the end of the hose, either on this coupling or on the attachment to the SPG are fairly common but non-critical problems that require maintenance to the worn O-rings. It's also easily picked up on the buddy check and unlikely to get worse during the course of one dive.

2.) What about a power-inflator auto inflating?

This depends on the quality of the inflator mechanism and your post-dive care. I've seen a hand full of these. A few years ago Halcyon put out a SS inflator and a large number of them failed like this. I've had one, I've seen it on one rental BCD and a buddy had one during a dive. I've also had the inflator on my drysuit fail like this too but to be honest, it was really old and I was surprised that it didn't fail earlier. Sticking wide open is very uncommon. What's more common is a slow leak/inflate. In any event, I would say it's common enough that there's good reason to teach the skill of decoupling the LP inflator hose.

3.) What about a regulator second stage leak because of leaking valve?

If you dive enough you're guaranteed to see this. The vast majority of them are just slow leaks but it's irritating as hell. Having a regulator fail with a massive free-flow is uncommon.

R..

 

[Gene_Hobbs]

I posted these articles by Dr. Acott a while back, you might find them interesting:

Acott, C. (1999) Equipment malfunction in 1,000 diving incidents. SPUMS Journal Volume 29 Number 3. RRR ID: 6009

Acott, C. (1996) An evaluation of buoyancy jacket safety in 1,000 diving incidents. SPUMS Journal Volume 26 Number 2. RRR ID: 6288

Acott, C. (1995) A pre-dive check; An evaluation of a safety procedure in recreational diving: Part 1. SPUMS Journal Volume 25 Number 2. RRR ID: 6411 (NOTE: I have not seen a "Part 2" of this article, we are still actively adding to this collection.)


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[RonFrank]

My inflator had a very small leak. This started out as non-noticeable, and became obvious. Service fixed it up.

My first stage blew a seal. This also started out small. It finally blew out on a dive weekend at the surface. I borrowed a first stage from a friend. I attribute this to soaking my first stage without the cap on. The reg was purchased new, and had less than a year on it.

Malfunctions do happen, but not generally all at once, you have some warning signs.

Both of these issues occurred in my first year of diving, and the inflator was likely due to a used BC purchase without service on my part. Since that time I have had zero issues. I get my gear serviced when needed. Generally every two years or so. I don't bother with my inflators. I figure they will let me know when they need service, or maybe I'll have it done after about 5 years.

For the cost of service on an inflator, I can likely just purchase a new one.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

The odds are better that well maintained gear will last longer than a well maintained motor vehicle. Abuse your gear and you're inviting disaster. Abuse your motor vehicle and it may not get you from point A to point B or to the dive site.

Gary D.

I'd go as far as to say that well-maintained gear will outlast a typically-maintained diver

Best wishes.

 

[captndale]

Gear malfunctions will occur. I think, in the time I have been diving, I have had nearly every piece of gear I dive with fail in one way or another. That is not all that important, though. The inportant thing is how you react to a problem. It is important that you maintain an awareness of just what is happening and that you deal with problems early and appropriately.

 

[Puffer Fish]

I've read about some possible problems with gear malfunctioning and am just curious how common it is.

1.) How common is a power-inflator hose free flow?

2.) What about a power-inflator auto inflating?

3.) What about a regulator second stage leak because of leaking valve?


Thanks in advance.

I see about 10 -15 inflator issues, sticking, leaking.. not working on other divers per year.

Don't usually know the reason for why a second stage would leak, but it is about the same scale.

I've have had:

1. An inflator blow up (air bubble formed in the casting). I would hope that is really rare.

2. A fair number of regulator leaks...usually from damage to the lp seat... I once had it damaged twice in a row by the annual survice tech from not depressing the purge...The third time I had to stand and watch and tell him to push the purge in Not sure how many other regs he had worked on.

 

[Thalassamania]

Personal gear maintenance, like washing it, is critical; but I remain dubious concerning routine servicing of properly performing gear. I've seen far more problems with "just serviced" gear than I have with gear that was kept in service. Perhaps periodic servicing should be reduced to checking the IP and the condition of exposed rubber parts, only opening the regulator when the need to do so it is clearly indicated by an observed problem.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

Personal gear maintenance, like washing it, is critical; but I remain dubious concerning routine servicing of properly performing gear. I've seen far more problems with "just serviced" gear than I have with gear that was kept in service. Perhaps periodic servicing should be reduced to checking the IP and the condition of exposed rubber parts, only opening the regulator when the need to do so it is clearly indicated by an observed problem.

There have been some good posts on this topic recently (and some heated discussions ).

It seems like the folks who are the most "schooled" in regulator repair and who regularly service their own equipment are often the ones who "Don't fix it if it ain't broke", and the folks who have not learned the "dark secrets" of regulator repair and function will loudly advocate for annual overhaul.

I'm coming to the belief that regulator diagnosis and treatment should follow a conservative course: In the absence of overt symptoms, non-invasive testing and routine maintenance care is the treatment of choice

In layman's terms: What Thal said

Best wishes.