Question BCD failure

[CIG]

Hi I just got my open water certification and looking forward to my first dive overseas.
I always wonder (more a phobia), what happen if my BCD has a total failure and lose 100% buoyancy? How do you keep yourself afloat at surface? Do divers carry an emergency floatation device (e.g. inflatable life jacket) for such scenario?

 

[CuzzA]

Hi I just got my open water certification and looking forward to my first dive overseas.
I always wonder (more a phobia), what happen if my BCD has a total failure and lose 100% buoyancy? How do you keep yourself afloat at surface? Do divers carry an emergency floatation device (e.g. inflatable life jacket) for such scenario?

You should be diving a balanced rig. In other words, you should be weighted correctly.

You should be physically able to swim you and your rig up from depth without the aid of your BC. If wearing neoprene exposure and countering it's buoyancy with lead ballast, the ballast should be ditchable.

You should be neutral at your safety stop with no gas in your BCD.

You should be able to float on the surface with your head out of water with no air in your BCD and not kicking.

Setting those basic facts aside, you should carry a surface marker buoy when open water diving in big bodies of water that have waves and current.

The SMB serves two roles. It aids in the dive vessel finding you if separated and it gives you something to hang on while waiting.

 

[CIG]

Thanks! One more question.. If I am at the beginning of the dive with a full tank, is it possible to keep afloat with the extra weight with deflated bcd? Or a full tank is also positively bouyant?

 

[scubadada]

Thanks! One more question.. If I am at the beginning of the dive with a full tank, is it possible to keep afloat with the extra weight with deflated bcd? Or a full tank is also positively bouyant?

You start off a dive overweghted by the weight of the gas you are going to consume on the dive. For an AL80, that is a little over 5 lbs or a little under 2.5 kgs

 

[lexvil]

Can you float while swimming, no gear just swimming?

 

[rick00001967]

good for you considering a worst case scenario. many new divers do not. good advice above.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

It depends on the thickness of your suit.
With a 7mm you will most likely be able to float on the surface with an empty bc and a full tank.
If you have a 3 mil or nothing then you will probably be a little heavy with a full tank.
You need to weight yourself so that at the end of the dive when you hit reserve pressure you can hover at 15’ with no air in your bc and control your depth with breath control alone. This is perfect weighting. Most instruction will not tell you that because most of them don’t know. There is a culture of overweighting that has infected modern scuba training because this is how they learned even up to the instructor level. They just load you up with weight so you can get down feet first and they make you into an elevator diver. Don’t be an elevator diver. We call these push button divers.
Divers need to weighted properly so they can swim around like a fish. It is also a very good idea to have some weight that is ditchable. Be weary of people who tell you that you should put all of your weight somewhere on your rig in a non ditchable fashion. This can he very dangerous if you don’t yet understand the concept of minimal weighting.

There is even a subculture that has taken up no BC diving. It started with vintage community and has leaked into modern diving by a small minority of minimalists that have ditched all the fluff of modern scuba for a more streamlined gear configuration. It’s a counter culture of sorts, they have learned to weight themselves to perfection because there is no BC to cover for overweighting. The Southern California lobster divers are one such group of no BC minimalists.

 

[inquis]

If I am at the beginning of the dive with a full tank, is it possible to keep afloat with the extra weight with deflated bcd?

Yes. In the typical AL80 tank, that additional gas weight is about 5 lb/2.3 kg. Most people can support that with a larger than normal breath.

 

[CIG]

Can you float while swimming, no gear just swimming?

I can swim and float well... but not sure if laden with gears...

 

[rongoodman]

That's why it's a good reason to have some ditchable weight.