New to cold water - overweight?

[HeroAlphaWolf]

Hi all,

I’m looking for perspective/opinions on this.

I just did my first cold water dives yesterday with an instructor. 40ish degree water in a 7mm wetsuit, overalls with jacket. Aluminum 80. I am 5’4” and 140 lbs, very dense, I use 4 lbs in the tropics.

My instructor put 32 pounds of lead on me and insisted I wasn’t overweight, even though I kept crashing to the bottom. He said to use the air in the bcd to stay off the bottom.

This seems wrong to me, but I’m wondering if maybe I’m wrong. I’m also a really experienced diver and he treated me like a brand new student. But I am a brand new cold diver. I just really hate being overweight. I wonder if I can trust someone who intentionally overweighted me? Or maybe I really needed it?

Ok thanks for listening.

 

[davehicks]

You are overweighted . You should sink slowly after dumping your BC, not plunge. You will want to check that you can stay neutral at 10 feet when your tank is nearly done at the end of the dive.

Drop 2 pounds at a time until you get balanced.

A steel tank is probably going to help if that is an option.

 

[Clayton122]

That seems like a wee bit too much weight to me.

Im 6'4" @ 190 pounds. in a 7mm wetsuit, with a 3/5mm hooded vest on, 5mm gloves / boots, and some Scuba Pro Novas ( which are positively buoyant. ) I wear 18 pounds. I could probably get away with 16 pounds if I wanted to

 

[martincohn]

"This seems wrong to me"

Your 1st clue....

 

[tursiops]

Get a new instructor. You are paying, it should be your choice, not the shop's.

 

[scubadada]

You still want to do a weight check at your safety stop with an empty (500 psi) tank. Make sure you are neutrally buoyant with an empty BC and can do a controlled ascent to the surface.

I'm 190 lbs and with a full 7 mm and 5/3 hooded vest, I use 20 lbs with an AL80. I could probably lose a pound or two if I wanted. For comparison, I use 8 lbs with a full 3 mm with or without the hooded vest and an AL80.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

@HeroAlphaWolf,

Is there any way you can determine how much weight you need yourself? Would this help? How I weight students in open water courses | Facebook

 

[northernone]

Sounds like a bit too much.

But remember, the right amount of lead at 15ft feels WAY HEAVY at depth when your super thick wetsuit compresses and loses much of it's buoyancy.

It isn't like a thin tropical wetsuit where lead is mainly for our body fat and the suit is a small % of the total buoyancy evolved.

So yes. Add air to your BCD.

Cameron

 

[Neilwood]

Diving cold water with a thick wetsuit will always be more problematic than warm water diving. A 7mm suit will provide quite a large amount of buoyancy (depending on size and brand it could be 15-20lbs) which when added to hood, gloves, boots etc all mounts up..

As you descend the suit will provide progressively less buoyancy (so you need to add more to the BCD). You need sufficient weight to overcome the buoyancy of the suit & gear on the surface and sufficient capacity in the BCD to provide the required amount of buoyancy at depth. Last time I dove wet in the UK I was diving with 10Kg (22lbs) plus a steel BP&W which probably equates to another 2-3Kg of ballast (5-7 lbs) and a steel 12l tank.

Remember though that the suit will decompress on the way back up which will mean that you need to be bleeding air out of the BCD on the way back up. Too little weight or too slow on releasing the air in the BCD and that can cause an uncontrollable rate of ascent. You have to be very careful of this until you get used to it.

You were probably a bit over weighted but the only real way to find out is a proper weight check at the end of the dive with 500psi. That will give you the minimum weight you need but you may find you need more to get off the surface (or find ways to accelerate your initial descent such as duck diving).

 

[Vicko]

Depends on what water you were diving in.

I always put around 10 kg (33 pounds right?) on my students, even with a steel 15l tank and then slowly work them down from that as the course progresses, with a AL80 i would put another 2 kg on them at least. But that is in the Adriatic which is very salty.
People get surprised how buoyant they are once their tank is empty and the neoprene re-expands.