Dave:
I rarely check scuba board.com, maybe once a month or so but I just found this thread and I went back and checked our email thread which is extensive. You bought your suit in September, 2010 and you sent the suit back in spring 2013.
Here is what I wrote you on May, 13, 2013 at 5:30 AM: Dave: We did a complete immersion test with this suit and there were no leaks. I handled the repairs and tests personally.
At first you were not tucking your neck seal but you realized this was wrong and started tucking and we then discussed that maybe the neck seal was too large and it was possibly leaking.
I wrote you on May 13th, 2013 at 9:50 AM: It (your neck seal) should not be uncomfortable but you should feel as “if this neck seal was any tighter, it would be uncomfortable.” Let me know. I want to make sure though that you are tucking the neck seal to the inside.
You replied that: It doesn't feel that snug. it's pretty comfortable actually so maybe that's the problem, the seal isn't tight enough. I can easily stick 2 fingers between my neck and the seal. In fact that's how I've been doing it.
I wrote to you on May 13th, 2013 at 10:28 AM: Well, that is definitely were your water is coming in then. You should not be able to do that – you should have to squat and pull the neck seal away from the neck to expel air. So here is what you need to do: get a VELCRO strap and put it around your neck and cinch it so that it is tight and snug around your neck. Make sure you have enough weight so that there is adequate air inside the suit and dive the suit. See if it still leaks, I don’t think it will. Then we make the neck smaller so that the strap is not required.
On August 12th, you wrote: I finally made it out yesterday and I brought a strap for my neck. So I put the suit on, folded the seal over and once I thought it was flat and on correctly I had my buddy check it. He agreed it looked good so I put the strap around my neck and pulled it really snug. It was it was so tight it *almost* interfered with my breathing. It happened to be low tide at that time so we had a long surface swim to get to an area with any depth below 15'. Half way out I could feel the water seeping in. When I got back to my truck I took the dry suit off and I was wet head to toe. This is pretty frustrating. I've inspected the suit with a fine tooth comb and I can't find any area that looks like it could leak but now that I've tried the neck strap I feel like I can say with confidence it isn't the seal. But I don't know what else we can do.
On August 12, 2013 I wrote: How much weight were you diving with? My thinking was that with tucked seals it is air inside the suit that creates the airtight seal. If you do not have enough air inside the suit you cannot create that seal, thus the question regarding how much weight. Little weight = little air.
On September 3rd, you wrote: I went diving on Sunday and I wore 40 pounds. Within 10 seconds I could feel water leaking into my suit. I am 100% confident that the water is leaking either from the zipper or from the seams around the zipper. There's no doubt in my mind anymore.
I wrote on September 3rd, 2013 at 10:21 AM: We leak tested the suit by completely immersing the suit underwater and inflating it with air but obviously we have missed something. This is one of those mysteries of drysuits I just cannot understand. I am going to have you send the suit back to us. Give me your address so I can email you a FEDEX label:
You sent the suit back to us again, we went over the suit, blew it up underwater and found no leaks. We cleaned some debris out of the valves and returned the suit to you. In hindsight we should have replaced the entire zipper panel, this would have replaced the area where you felt the leaking. So what I want you to do is send the suit back to us, we will do this now. What I want you to do is mark the spot as carefully as you can to where you think the leak is coming in.
It might be years later but lets see if we can't get this done.
Bruce
