BCD Lift Capacity

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Calvin Shia

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I am now planning to buy my first BCD and looking at the Zeagle Scout.

While everything seems perfectly suited for my needs (light for travel, enough D ring and pockets, fit within budget), I am slightly concerned with the lift capacity. Comparing to most BCDs in the market(~30-40lbs) the Scout is on the lower end in terms of lift (24lb)

I am 6 foot tall weighing around 160lbs, I mostly dive in warm or temperate water with a exposure suit of 5mm max. I don't bring much extra equipment except for a camera.

Would the 24lbs lift be enough? I don't think I will do any cold water dive in the near future.
 
I am now planning to buy my first BCD and looking at the Zeagle Scout.

While everything seems perfectly suited for my needs (light for travel, enough D ring and pockets, fit within budget), I am slightly concerned with the lift capacity. Comparing to most BCDs in the market(~30-40lbs) the Scout is on the lower end in terms of lift (24lb)

I am 6 foot tall weighing around 160lbs, I mostly dive in warm or temperate water with a exposure suit of 5mm max. I don't bring much extra equipment except for a camera.

Would the 24lbs lift be enough? I don't think I will do any cold water dive in the near future.
How much lead do you wear? I work in metric (24lb is about 10kg) it warm water I wear a 3mm shortly and carry 3kg of lead.

Those I dive with in the U.K. with integrated weights. Losing one pouch with 4/5kg if enough to send the individual to the surface.
 
I'm about your size and use an 18lb wing with 5mm. You'll be just fine.
 
How much lead do you wear? I work in metric (24lb is about 10kg) it warm water I wear a 3mm shortly and carry 3kg of lead.

Those I dive with in the U.K. with integrated weights. Losing one pouch with 4/5kg if enough to send the individual to the surface.
I wear around 5kg of lead with 3mm full body suit
 
I'm about your size and use an 18lb wing with 5mm. You'll be just fine.
That's good to hear. The main concern I have is that in case I go beyond 5mm or adding other heavier equipment the 24lb lift would be borderline. Having read your case then I guess it should be fine!
 
If you go to heavier neoprene, you may well exceed your BCD's lift capacity, if you carry all your weight in the integrated pockets. This is because the lead offsetting your heavier suit's buoyancy, plus a full tank (especially steel) may indeed exceed your BCD's lift capacity when you're not wearing it (e. g., if you have to ditch it at the surface). But if you transfer some of your integrated weight to a weight belt so that you are using your suit to help support that lead at the surface, I'll bet that even then your BCD should do just fine.

However, you now need to consider the loss of buoyancy at depth as that heavier neoprene gets compressed. At 100 feet in heavier neoprene, you may well not have sufficient buoyancy to offset a full tank plus lead, when your suit's lift has been compressed away.
 
It has plenty of lift for your uses. It sounds like traveling and diving warm water is your cup of tea right now. The Scout is a nice BCD for travel and it’s a good value. You should be using around 8# with your 3mm suit in salt water.
Don’t fall for the marketing which steers you to think that the high lift capacity BCDs are better. They are not.

Like rsingler above, I use an 18lb lift wing for diving in both 3mm and 5mm suits.
If you start diving dry in cold water, maybe you should rethink your rig anyway.
 
24lb lift is fine. I am 80 pounds heavier than you and use an 18lb wing with all thicknesses of wetsuit. With a 5mm suit I wear 26 pounds lead with a single steel 72 and 20 pounds of lead with steel twin 38's, steel twin 45's and a steel LP 95. Unless I'm deeper than 45, I don't ever put any air in it during the dive anyway. :) Deeper than that I add a few squirts of air to offset loss of bouyancy from suit compression. I've never had to use all 18 pounds lift at depth. I do inflate it fully on the surface. My 2psi.
 
You can trust @rsingler on this one. He has put way too much thought into wing lift capacity (look for his lift calculator spread sheets). And just to echo the chorus, I'm 5'10", 175 lbs, a natural sinker and I have a 23 lb wing on my aluminum plate that I got from VDH a little over a year ago. I've done everything from warm, "fresh" water teaching in the pool with no wet suit (or additional weights), to 7 mm with hood and gloves in the cold, salty water of Catalina with a heavy steel tank and been fine. Remember that even a heavy steel tank isn't that heavy once you get it underwater - a Faber 100 is only about 15 lbs negative underwater.
 
I'm 6'1", 198 lbs and my BCD has a 40 lb lift capacity. When cold water diving with a 7mm suit and 16-18lbs of lead, I hardly use any air in my BCD at depths up to 100'. In other words 40 lbs is way more lift capacity than I will ever need with my configuration.
 

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