7 Ft hose routing

[jonnythan]

Regardless of what people feel about a 7', 5' or whatever length primary hose, diving with a swivel on your second stage is a lot like diving with a scooter --->once you dive with one, you will NEVER want to dive again without it.

Until that swivel O-ring blows at 100 feet, or 1000 feet back in a cave

 

[Albion]

Until that swivel O-ring blows at 100 feet, or 1000 feet back in a cave

When you actually get to dive that deep maybe you can tell us about it.
4590 posts less than a 100 dives and master cyber diver instructor rating

 

[SDAnderson]

When you actually get to dive that deep maybe you can tell us about it.
4590 posts less than a 100 dives and master cyber diver instructor rating

A couple of thoughts, for what they're worth:

• Right is right, no matter speaks it. Remember the adage, "From the mouths of babes..?" You might find this to be of benefit for future arguments.
• I consider Joel to be a credible source but, simply put, I have also found that swivels are another instance where the solution is worse than the problem. Swivels require a largely subjective risk/reward evaluation, I pretty much always vote for the safety-over-comfort side of the argument. Furthermore, Tom is definitively wrong: tucked to one side on my Wall of Shame lie a couple of swivels that I tried (and discarded when one of them began to leak tiny bubbles.) Let me amplify what jonnythan said: swivels blow, both figuratively and literally. Since CV's are at issue: I've been diving for 35 years and have logged (or not) a wholebuncha dives, including umpteen wreck penetrations and deep trimix dives. I've also accumulated enough c-cards to give myself a serious case of sciatica.

There are two things that will make you a better diver: repetition and thought. I know a lot of bad divers with big logbooks. I don't know many people who can think that are bad divers.

 

[Stirling]

Since when do we learn only from our own experience? I thought the whole point of having a brain is that we can learn from the experience of others, and exercise judgment about the increased marginal risk (however small) of adding additional potential failure points to our equipment. I thought that was half the reason for creating this kind of forum.

How many of the people advocating the use of long hoses have actually experienced *true* OOA emergencies with both long hoses and short hoses? Much less enough of them to make probabilistic judgments about which hose routing option is actually most likely to work smoothly / least likely to get fouled up when it matters, assuming divers of same experience and the difference in hoses and routing being the only variable? And what the hell is going on with a diver who has had that happen so many times that he can tell me *from his own experience* what is statistically most likely to work best in a true emergency? And why should I listen to him if he's having that kind of experience all the time?

A swivel is a potential failure point. Increased complexity almost always means increased risk of failure. The risk of failure may be small - and I have no idea how many swivels have ever failed suddenly, or whether they are likely to spring small and non-catastrophic leaks first so they can be replaced - but if the risk of failure is increased and the consequences of a failure are unacceptable, it's a perfectly reasonable judgment to make that the risk should not be taken, when the only upside is a slight improvement in comfort (which might be accomplished by other means).