failure rate of Scuba equipment and BCD

[charlier]

Failure on a milflex HP hose for my SPG. The hose cracked along the lenght of the hose, not along the O-ring. The hose had been used for about 200 dives. Lesson learned - replaced hose with standard 24" rubber HP hose. Tank pressure at failure was about 205 bar, recently filled tank, but had cooled off.

 

[drbill]

Depends on whether you mean total failure or just a fixable issue. I've had the latter a few times with my BCD, but nothing serious.

A few years ago I was on a 200 ft dive off Ship Rock here on Catalina and my inner bladder burst a seam. It was "interesting" swimming up to the surface from that depth with several stops along the way. It would still hold some air temporarily. I think that BCD had at least 1,000 dives on it.

 

[ronski101]

Lets see. Wife lost 1000 psi on a faulty o ring, Wife had a light fail on her. I had a BC inflate valve stick open (sand?) but was able to free it. Had 2 computers fail on us. different BC Schrader valve kept leaking air. Wife's camera software went bad underwater. Inon Strobe leaked. All normal stuff that will happen to you as your log book fills up......

 

[miketsp]

Just to add to failures I previously mentioned: This weekend my SPG hose started leaking at the crimp at the reg end. At 200bar it was leaking, at 150bar it wasn't. Detected while setting up gear for the dive. The reg set only has about 2 years of use but the SPG was transferred from my previous reg so has a total of 7 years of use.

 

[radtype]

Right at 200 dives and had I-3 with slow leak in bladder (really fine Lake Tahoe sand) and I lost a couple of aqualung weight pouches from integrated BC (I got in a hurry and didn't make sure I heard the distinctive snap when it seats). A rental reg came apart when I first started diving.

 

[Goodtime Adventures]

In thousands of dives my only problem that has caused me to abort a dive is a high pressure hose blowout - which happened to me twice with my first regulator (which lasted around 1500dives in total). I've had some minor problems created by a leak in my LPI inflator when a new o ring was required, and an issue with my air guage reading incorrectly when my SPG needed replacing, but as this was noticed on the surface in set up it never affected me underwater. But other than those nothing else worth mentioning. My first BC (jacket style) would probably have gone on forever had I not got into DMing and later instructing. It was a basic Scubapro T1, and as such was not designed to have a bunch of spare weights stored in the pockets on a regular basis. In the end the pockets just fell through making any storage at all impossible, at which stage I upgraded to an integrated system.

There is definitely a trend (as you have noticed by now) with those that have less problems to report owning their own gear. Which usually means it is better cared for in terms of washing and rinsing after use, storage, and in some cases servicing/maintenance.

 

[socc]

Even though I got very few dives, before a pool training dive and during the pre-dive checks the BCD inflator got stuck and I had to hit the inflator button hard to unstuck it and make it stop inflating the BCD. I asked the training centre to give me another BCD. I suppose poor maintenance was the reason. Its a good idea to buy your own gear (if you can) and take yourself proper care of them.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I've been diving since 1985 (30 years) and stopped counting dives around the 3,000 mark over a decade ago. I've been doing technical wreck and cave diving for the last 15 years, and I've had only a very small hand full of failures.

1. I had a dump valve fail on a wing (the recall came out for that valve that same week), but I was still able to trap air high in the wing, so it was no big deal other and preventing me from achieving level trim for the rest of the dive.

2. I've had three freeze flows on ice dives, once with a Scubapro Mk 3, once with a MK 15 and once with a Mk 25 - and I was more or less expecting the Mk 25 failure.

3. I picked up a rock in an exhaust valve recently on a cave dive causing it to breathe wet. It was inconvenient but would not have been life threatening even without the back up regulator. However, before electing to turn the dive, I unscrewed the cover, removed the friction ring and diaphragm, removed the rock, re-assembled the reg, and completed the dive as planned.

4. I had an old Balanced Adjustable regulator fail closed due to the legs on the lever losing tension and allowing the poppet to jump past the feet - but again that was not entirely unexpected as the regulator was already suspect due to poor condition, and even though it was a single tank recreational dive, the octo enabled a normal end to the dive.

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Given the fairly simple and reliable designs, the varying levels of redundancy, and good practices, such as not over weighting, few failures will ever constitute a true emergency.

There are a few things you can do to minimize problems, such as avoiding BCs that have dump valves high in the BC. A simple elbow is far more reliable than a dump valve mounted base of the inflator hose, which if it fails, will prevent the BC from holding gas and providing lift.

Good pre-dive and post dive inspections will help you detect problems and maintenance issues before a failure occurs, and taking an equipment maintenance course can help you better understand your gear, and how failures can occur.

 

[daz88]

never have had any kind of failure while diving. (other than camera batteries dying )

 

[Mcarlson]

No failures or problems beyond a leaky flashlight. A dive buddy had a slow leak on his power inflator which gradually filled his BC. I noticed and dumped it for him and everything was fine.