I've had one hp seat failure on a freshly bought ds4 on my second or third dive on it. I brougth it back to the dive shop and they refunded me. My dst's are still going strong with a service every year and a half or so. Although I run them at relatively low IP (125)
Apeks HP Seat failure: rumor or fact?
- Thread starter rddvet
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
GF99/99
Contributor
Just to further on this the way a blocked first stage is achieved for a CMF (or needle valve) on a rebreather is a simple solid cap is placed on the end of the first stage to isolate the diaphragm from the ambient hydrostatic pressure that is constantly changing as your depth changes. For example on a Apeks first stage the flexible environmental seal is replaced with a sold plug as show in the picture. This will completely isolates the diaphragm side of the regulator from external forces so only the HP spring will set the IP and the IP will stay the same no mater what depth you are at. And and described in the above article this is important for a CMF. Only down side is since the IP is only affected by the HP spring if you dive below your IP pressure your first stage will stop working.
admikar
Contributor
thx guys
Just wanted to chime in on this… I’ll never buy Apeks again after how they handled this. I think I had 6 or 7 full HP runaways on them (both CCR and OC use). I posted a thread on a FB group about them and got a crazy number of public responses about people saying the same. Privately it was even worse, with multiple well known dive professionals reaching out to say they and their students had lots of them go as well. One guy maintained a fire department’s and he said he had a double digit number of failures too. Apeks never made a public statement about it and the people who did send regs to the UK all said they just got them back with no comment on broader issues.
If they come out and admit the problem existed and tell us they did something to fix it then sure, maybe I’d consider them again. But as far as I’m concerned they’re an unresponsive party who never fixed anything.
Side note, please don’t respond to me that you’ve never seen the problem… that’s nice and all but the dozens of people who responded to me about it show there was/is a real problem.
If they come out and admit the problem existed and tell us they did something to fix it then sure, maybe I’d consider them again. But as far as I’m concerned they’re an unresponsive party who never fixed anything.
Side note, please don’t respond to me that you’ve never seen the problem… that’s nice and all but the dozens of people who responded to me about it show there was/is a real problem.
johndiver999
Contributor
I saw a buddy who had a first stage seat failure on his (Apex) reg. which was only a year old. I thought it was very unusual, but apparently I was completely ignorant of the situation.
People argue back and forth about this regulator and that, piston versus diaphragm and all kinds of relatively trivial features, when a failure like this is a very serious event- far, far more important than 99.9% of the features or attributes that are frequently discussed.
I never had an APEX, but I would not consider buying a new or used one for a very long time. Previous, I had thought that they sold reliable and robust regulators.
Edit: It is my recollection that the shop that sold him the regulator charged him for an entire rebuild - with no mention that this sort of failure of the first stage seat was apparently "not uncommon". He had probably less than 75 dives on the reg when it failed.
People argue back and forth about this regulator and that, piston versus diaphragm and all kinds of relatively trivial features, when a failure like this is a very serious event- far, far more important than 99.9% of the features or attributes that are frequently discussed.
I never had an APEX, but I would not consider buying a new or used one for a very long time. Previous, I had thought that they sold reliable and robust regulators.
Edit: It is my recollection that the shop that sold him the regulator charged him for an entire rebuild - with no mention that this sort of failure of the first stage seat was apparently "not uncommon". He had probably less than 75 dives on the reg when it failed.
Still hoping for a first person description of what the HP seat looks like, or at least a description of what the failure exactly was.
GF99/99
Contributor
Yes I would be very very very interested to see this and know more about the mode of failure?
Also what exactly happens when it fails? Is it instant blow out super high IP free flowing second stage or do you just get IP creep and high IP readings? What kind of pressure are we talking about?
Makes me nervous about the 11 Apeks first stages I own. knock on wood over the years I have never had a failure nor have any of my friends or dive buddies (and I have A LOT of them that use Apeks). I have only read about it on this forum. So I would be very interested in some more information about other peoples experiences.
If you haven't had a failure, and you get them serviced now, you should be good unless the shop is still using old parts.
It was a runaway IP, not something you would catch prior to failure. One day it works, the next it doesn't.
Similar threads
