TrimixToo
Contributor
Pete, can you elaborate? I am not visualizing what you mean.
A need to rehash our discussion on primary donate
- Thread starter tbone1004
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Pete, can you elaborate? I am not visualizing what you mean.
OP
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cootwo ftw....
@TrimixToo take a normal regulator necklace and put a second hole in it. Some of the sump divers do that, I'm not a fan personally
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Famous last words...!!
Yet it is an issue - multiple times a year
Feeling lucky?
I do not need to be lucky, I fill my own cylinders and also test our air quality myself. No luck needed. But rather than feel lucky, maybe by a carbon monoxide tester and you won't have a need for luck.
I do not believe there is any reason to chance things like this when there exists a ready-made solution to solve the issue prior to it becoming a dangerous issue.
There really is no such thing as a reputable source that eliminates the need to test your tanks. The ones I have found that were very high in CO were next to the ones that tested 0ppm and some came from a reputable source that is reported to have a continuous monitor at the fill station. That fill station probably fills in excess of 2,000 tanks every single day. If you aren't testing for CO you can't know if you are diving CO. I use a RIX compressor at home. The intake is in my house. If I am cooking and even if my commercial style hood is on while doing so I will read 2ppm of CO and if I am not cooking I will read 1ppm. Those are totally acceptable levels and the 1ppm is presumably just from our own CO production from breathing the indoor air and exhaling CO. If we were smokers the level that we exhale would be about 5-6 times higher. I wouldn't know any of that if I didn't test.
Again, I have found tanks with very high levels of CO >30ppm on several occasions in our short career of diving. We will never know how many times the "I'm not feeling well" symptoms that people sometimes attribute to other things are actually from the quality of our untested air. We guess at the reasons and guess that it was something we ate, last nights drinking, allergies, or other things.
I just realized that I'm perpetuating a thread hijack. @tbone1004 would you like this discussion to be split off from your original thread? Just report the first post that you would like to see moved, if so, and the mods will take care of the rest.
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@RayfromTX your call on splitting it. Having these diverge is inevitable, just glad to be having meaningful discussions
back to OP...
Two things to consider:
A) how quickly and reliably can I provide gas to a diver who is really OOG and needs it immediately?
B) how easy and convenient is it to exit, go through restrictions, swim in current, hold on an ascent line, do a free ascent, ...
Two very different aspects, the various applied methods have their pros and cons.
I think the long/short hose method often taught for sidemount is not good for reason A. I can't just primary donate like in backmount; I have to figure out first which reg I'm breathing, then make a decision as in 50% of cases I must donate the one clipped away. But in this situation A you want shortest reaction time by a procedure that's simple, fast and reliable, like permanent primary donate like in backmount DIR.
UTD Z-system or ISE/Toddy method both allow permanent primary donate. I don't like the manifold, hence it's ISE for me. Minor drawback (irrelevant IMO): when switching to the left reg, you unwrap and stow the right tank hose and clip the right tank reg on the left shoulder. As this takes me about 3secs and I do it no more than twice per dive, this is a very minor inconvenience.
On topic B, there's also the discussion of hose length, swapping tanks, ... it's quite independent from A. Once the OOG diver got a functioning reg in his face and calmed down, the buddy pair can sort it out for exiting/ascending. They can switch regs again to get a more convenient routing, swap stages or sidemount tanks, whatever they feel is best for the exit in their particular situation.
Two things to consider:
A) how quickly and reliably can I provide gas to a diver who is really OOG and needs it immediately?
B) how easy and convenient is it to exit, go through restrictions, swim in current, hold on an ascent line, do a free ascent, ...
Two very different aspects, the various applied methods have their pros and cons.
I think the long/short hose method often taught for sidemount is not good for reason A. I can't just primary donate like in backmount; I have to figure out first which reg I'm breathing, then make a decision as in 50% of cases I must donate the one clipped away. But in this situation A you want shortest reaction time by a procedure that's simple, fast and reliable, like permanent primary donate like in backmount DIR.
UTD Z-system or ISE/Toddy method both allow permanent primary donate. I don't like the manifold, hence it's ISE for me. Minor drawback (irrelevant IMO): when switching to the left reg, you unwrap and stow the right tank hose and clip the right tank reg on the left shoulder. As this takes me about 3secs and I do it no more than twice per dive, this is a very minor inconvenience.
On topic B, there's also the discussion of hose length, swapping tanks, ... it's quite independent from A. Once the OOG diver got a functioning reg in his face and calmed down, the buddy pair can sort it out for exiting/ascending. They can switch regs again to get a more convenient routing, swap stages or sidemount tanks, whatever they feel is best for the exit in their particular situation.
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