Breathing underwater(7ft) diy?

[Bob3]

lessons? I don't need no stinken....

I have a small 2 inch dredge (got started with this hobby at the end of last summer) Planing on going to a 3 or maybe a short 4 soon. Also I might be going to Alaska in June to prospect up there for a month. Hope I don't freeze my ***** off.

While you're in AK you might want to check out the mushroom collecting. There are wild 'shrooms there that sell for big bucks, dried morels: http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/8483 You'd be looking at a couple hundred bucks a pound.
I know folks that set up a drying shed out of plastic & run off with a few hundred pounds of the critters.

 

[FatRob]

I'm doing a couple of back of the envelope calculations here... ambient at 10 ft is going to be about 3.3 dB or 3.3/10 Bar so *14.7 = about 5psiG

so all you really need is a double one way valve system with the mouthpiece in between... try using some regulator exhaust valves, so that you rebreathe only a very small volume of air CO2, and a compressor aka pump that can provide 5 psi of pressure to the end of a snorkle. You will probably need to up the psi's a little to reduce breathing effort, and compensate for the losses in the hose, but try using an electric pump of some sort 12v for safety... and see what you get for backpressure in air... I'm thinking that a vane pump ought to give you some positive pressure..... then just adjust the motor speed to give you approximately what you need to breath easily at 7 feet.... the excess will just freeflow harmlessly past the intake...

put a hose on the pump with the outlet at 10 feet and look for bubbles! Use neighbors pool when they are out or similar

you could get complex with an old cylinder for a 10psi reservoir and a regulator stage.. but why mess about...

if Jaques Cousteau can build his own system and live so can you! Just don't be a muppet about it! Test test and test! know what you are doing!

 

[FatRob]

Hey I just thought... you could use a motor to turn a crankshaft with a number of bicycle style pumps attached (which you can clean) which can be used to provide you with LP air enough to breathe... Most modern pumps use an FDA approved PTFE (Teflon) piston seal

It's a bit too easy isn't it?

 

[mgersch@cox.net]

This is what you want:

http://cgi.ebay.com/hooka-Scuba-tan...yZ16056QQssPageNameZWD10VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[esh]

looks like there are a lot of them at this site... just ran a search for "hooka system"
http://www.scuba.com/shop/product.asp_category_152_categoryname_Hookah+Systems

and since you are looking in the $800 range anyways, there are quite a few.