Cave Deco Dive Planning

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Manatee Diver

Stop throwing lettuce at me!
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So I am going over my elearning for my cave cert, and it briefly talked about gas planning and deco dives.

I think understand the gas planning side of it, you need to plan your dive, get the total gas required from deco and subtract that from your available gas before calculating turn pressures during your dive briefing.

But how does one plan the deco in cave divng? Do I just put each segment in Multideco with the expected transit times as the bottom times? Or is there a better tool?
 
So I am going over my elearning for my cave cert, and it briefly talked about gas planning and deco dives.

I think understand the gas planning side of it, you need to plan your dive, get the total gas required from deco and subtract that from your available gas before calculating turn pressures during your dive briefing.

But how does one plan the deco in cave divng? Do I just put each segment in Multideco with the expected transit times as the bottom times? Or is there a better tool?

In most cases, average depth works very well.

There are weird situations though where avg depth doesn't work as well. For instance, if you're transiting a long distance at a shallow depth, then going to a deeper depth, it might make sense to plan the dive in individual segments. Especially if you're using multiple gases.
 
seconding @PfcAJ
Average depth works well for most caves. There are some exceptions where there are "deep sections" in which case you would plan them as a multi-level dive. Part of that will come from the fact that you may not be breathing the same "bottom gas" in each of those sections but for "normal" cave dives, avg depth is going to get you more than close enough
 
But how does one plan the deco in cave divng? Do I just put each segment in Multideco with the expected transit times as the bottom times? Or is there a better tool?

This is pretty much how I was taught to do. The diveplanner in Subsurface is a nice tool for planning multilevel dives. The results are very well in keeping with Multideco. For learning I prefer Subsurface as it calculates and visualizes your dive plan in real time, making it very fast to fiddle around with parameters and immediately see how they effect the plan.
 
In most cases, average depth works very well.

There are weird situations though where avg depth doesn't work as well. For instance, if you're transiting a long distance at a shallow depth, then going to a deeper depth, it might make sense to plan the dive in individual segments. Especially if you're using multiple gases.

seconding @PfcAJ
Average depth works well for most caves. There are some exceptions where there are "deep sections" in which case you would plan them as a multi-level dive. Part of that will come from the fact that you may not be breathing the same "bottom gas" in each of those sections but for "normal" cave dives, avg depth is going to get you more than close enough

So example would be diving the deep sections of Peacock (and only used an example that is well outside of my skill and experience level)? Where you are going to want to dive Trimix for the deep sections and probably 32% for the normal tunnels.

This is pretty much how I was taught to do. The diveplanner in Subsurface is a nice tool for planning multilevel dives. The results are very well in keeping with Multideco. For learning I prefer Subsurface as it calculates and visualizes your dive plan in real time, making it very fast to fiddle around with parameters and immediately see how they effect the plan.

I might have to give Subsurface another try, I tried it once and hated it.
 
So example would be diving the deep sections of Peacock (and only used an example that is well outside of my skill and experience level)? Where you are going to want to dive Trimix for the deep sections and probably 32% for the normal tunnels.



I might have to give Subsurface another try, I tried it once and hated it.
Peacock 3 is a reasonable example. Lower Orange Grove not so much because you don't have to travel any distance to reach the deep part. Its pretty much straight down.
 
“E-learning” for cave diving. Not a very good idea.

That would actually be a great idea. All the academic materials for cave training seem to be quite badly written, poorly edited, somwehat incomprehensive and so on. And I have read most of them, from several agencies
A new comprehensive e-learning platform would be really much needed.
 
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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