Are all braided regulator hoses created equal?

[Patoux01]

I have braided on all... those from DGX. No issues except that I kinked one a bit badly, so I'm "expecting it to fail someday"... Kind of "Bad curiosity", but well... It's not dangerous on my dives.

 

[CuzzA]

Odds are they are made in only a handful of factories (like most scuba gear), ignore brand names, buy the cheapest and some beer with the money you saved. If you're still concerned after your purchase, drink the beer.

 

[kelemvor]

I prefer braided hoses. I've used miflex and some other brand I can't remember (unfortunately, from LDS so I have no email receipt). I've not had any failures yet. I did encounter a situation where the long hose for cave diving can be crimped much more easily than rubber. I switched that long hose to rubber, kept the rest miflex.

If you're using a config where you wrap a hose around your neck you might not want braided. The exterior is much rougher than rubber and if it moves while touching your neck it's going to eventually get irritating.

 

[eelnoraa]

For braided hose, the bigger problem than they are failing is that they fail without giving any sign of warming. The outer nylon braided layout is much tougher than the inner "fishing tube". The inner tube fail with the outer layer completely intack. With rubber, you actually do know, visually, it is about to fail, so you at least get a chance to swap it out. I have had failure in both LP and HP, one each, I will not buy one again

 

[gopbroek]

I am about 400+ dives on my DGX hose and no problems. I recently swapped the HP for my SPG back to rubber because the braided HP lines are very stiff, I will probably swapped out the other one to my AI for the same reason. Just for safety's sake I plan to replace the LP out later this year and will probably dissect it for sh$ts and giggles to see how it held up. It will definitely be replaced with a braided DGX LP hose due to the flexibility and jaw comfort it provides.

 

[runsongas]

Odds are they are made in only a handful of factories (like most scuba gear), ignore brand names, buy the cheapest and some beer with the money you saved. If you're still concerned after your purchase, drink the beer.

i wouldn't be sure about that. cut to length hosing is not that hard to do with a hydraulic crimping machine. the fittings are probably made in a single factory, but a larger dive shop could conceivably be making their own hoses from reels of tubing. i would love to see what the plastic cores on the braided hoses from the different sources are actually made of and whether there are any being offered with pfa or ptfe cores.

 

[CuzzA]

i wouldn't be sure about that. cut to length hosing is not that hard to do with a hydraulic crimping machine. the fittings are probably made in a single factory, but a larger dive shop could conceivably be making their own hoses from reels of tubing. i would love to see what the plastic cores on the braided hoses from the different sources are actually made of and whether there are any being offered with pfa or ptfe cores.

I am not aware of any dive shops supplying cut to size hoses. I suppose there could be the rare case, but it doesn't sound feasible to me when you can just buy them by bulk from Taiwan for cheap. There is one company here in the U.S. I am aware of that does make and supply hoses, even custom hoses, but they do not sell to the public.

I can't state for sure who makes hoses, but I do know most dive gear is sourced from just a few factories and then branded for sale to the distributor placing the order.

I use rubber hoses for all the reasons mentioned earlier in the thread, but a lot of people use the braided hoses without issue. If I were to use braided hoses I would put a service time limit on them. How long? I don't know. That's why I chose not to use them.

 

[Charles2]

I also prefer braided hoses. I have one long hose reg set that has Miflex hoses and another set with DGX hoses. Frankly, I prefer the DGX - my experience is that they are more flexible and easier to route than the Miflex.

 

[Michael Guerrero]

I've exclusively used the same braided hoses for a number of years and had no issues with reliability. However, the braided hoses are hard on the skin, so if you use a long hose and wrap it around your neck you may want to consider rubber for that one.

If you're in cold water with a hood all the time it doesn't matter, but in warm water it can give you an abrasion.