Custom Drysuit - Did they measure me wrong?

[RainPilot]

That arm length looks about right, if you reach up and over your head to touch the first stage then you should find the slack pretty much gone. Once you have some squeeze in the unit, like in the second pic, you'll find the slack and range of motion reduced considerably.

 

[stuartv]

Seems okay to me. Two things:

- Put on whatever undergarments you will wear in the coldest water you will dive in, THEN try the suit on.

- With all that on, kneel on one knee (or both) and verify you can reach back behind your head as if to reach your valves. Make sure you can do that without the torso part of the suit riding up. If you can't do that without the torso riding up, then you won't be able to do it at depth. The water pressure will be squeezing the suit and prevent it from riding up when you're in the water with all your gear on. If they made the arm holes too big, the arm pit of the suit will be too low on your body and prevent you from reaching up/back without needing the whole suit body to pull up.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

If the "drysuit instructor" didn't understand what was going on, don't take a drysuit class with that instructor. Find one that actually knows how drysuits work.

 

[TheScream]

Thought it would be worth updating this thread. After 7 months I finally have a properly fitting drysuit. After initial suggestions by the Fourth Element rep that the suit could be sent interstate for alterations, my LDS really went into bat for me and organise a completely new suit with the measurements taken by both the photo method and the traditional way as well. The suit fits much better, arms are the right length now, the chest isn't baggy like the first one. Worth pointing out that despite the manual measurements, Fourth Element still fitted the wrong neck and wrist seals. Both suits came with large and I needed small. That was corrected by my LDS before I went diving thank goodness.

Today I did my open water cert dives for the suit and it was 29°C ambient and 19°C water temp. Winter is well and truly over but I have the suit now and I'm happy. To top it off, had a visit during the dive by a couple of dolphins.