failure rate of Scuba equipment and BCD

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Jacket type BCD:

EDIT:

Why only for them?

I honestly was not expecting that much failures with so few dives, I see am wrong about that, as well, the persons with a lot of dives tend to have their own gear more likely.
 
the persons with a lot of dives tend to have their own gear more likely.
That depends a lot on where and how you dive. Around here, it's a lot more common to dive your own gear than rental gear if you dive locally, while vacation warm-water divers often rely on rentals.

My first post-cert dive was in my own gear (bought used).
 
Had the whole inflator hose come off my 1st BC, after about 1200 dives & about 15 years of age...Luckily it happened on the dock right after 2 morning dives---ie not in the water while diving...also had Schrader valve fail(sand in it) one time, happened during a dive & had to manually continue dumping air thruout the dive(a PIA no less)---& from that day on, I carry an extra wherever I go........
 
In all my years of diving I have never had a failure of any consequence that caused me to abort a dive. The most inconvenient one was a loose dump valve on a BC causing it to not hold air. I completed the dive and fixed it on the boat.
 
Remy are you the guy that is trying to market the self inflating bcd? Haven't we been down this thread before?
Nope - the "DiveGuard" is someone else.

I think ChillyInCanada was thinking about that guy that had an idea of an selfcontrolling, semirigid container buoyancy gadget.

Even if I don't have 500 dives in my logbook, I will answer the OP question, Never had any serious equipment failure during a dive, some flashlights that have died, weight pockets that have been dropped and the usual, but nothing that have ended a dive.
 
Last edited:
Almost 1,000 dives. Original jacket BCD. Never had a problem. We have Scubapro, and get the air2s serviced every year.
 
Only failures in thousands of dives have been 1 inflator stuck open and a minor seam leak in a wing, both very early in my career.
 
I've seen a dump valve get ripped off and destroyed, and I've personally put a small hole in my wing on a dive. I've also seen inflators leaking (the mechanism itself and the oring on the hose).
 
I've had my reg lock up on a dive. But that was due to water in the tank, which eventually blocked the filter.

One major computer failure (mine) one battery failure (customer), not the same dive.

BCD? Although I changed my Zeagle wing after it started to develop numerous pin-prick leaks it was still dive-able (The wing had over a thousand dives on it, was rarely washed and dried in the sun, so Zeagle are fairly blameless)

Fin straps (when I had rubber ones) normally getting in, never under water.

Mask: customer stepped on mine, but again nothing underwater.
 
I had an inflator stick open once at the start of a dive. Back at the rinse tank a few minutes flushing and a couple good raps cleared whatever was causing it to stick - dove it the rest of the week with no issues. About 10 years on that BC since.

I had a schrader valve stick open at the surface just after a dive on my previous BC - it was at least 15 and probably closer to 20 years old at the time - vintage 1981 model. Like the above poster I kept the vent button pressed till I got to the boat and shut off the air. I suppose I could've just unplugged it also but the boat was pretty close. That one carried 10-20lbs. of lead shot loose so I didn't want it to "pop" and have to dump that all over the reef in Maui.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom