Changing wetsuits and weight adjustment?

[slackercruster]

With my 3 mm wetsuit and hood, 6 pounds got me down in fresh water.

I bought a heavier suit and would like to know how moving up to a 5 mm with a hood would change the lead equation?

Do you think going from 3 mm to 5 mm will increase my weights needed to 8 pounds from the old 6 pounds...or more?

Am just looking for an estimate, as do not want to hike back to the parking lot to load up with more weight when on first dive with new suit. (Also do not want to be excessively overweighed.)

Thanks

 

[ronbeau]

With my 3 mm wetsuit and hood, 6 pounds got me down in fresh water.

I bought a heavier suit and would like to know how moving up to a 5 mm with a hood would change the lead equation?

Do you think going from 3 mm to 5 mm will increase my weights needed to 8 pounds from the old 6 pounds...or more?

Am just looking for an estimate, as do not want to hike back to the parking lot to load up with more weight when on first dive with new suit. (Also do not want to be excessively overweighed.)

Thanks

Your best bet would be to try it in pool first (if you have one available).

Then if you move from fresh to salt water and change nothing else the difference will be about 2.5%.

The density of sea water is 64 lbs/ft³ while fresh water is about 62.4 lbs/ft³.

 

[Charlie99]

My guess would be about 4 pounds extra for the extra 2 mm thickness.

New suits will have extra buoyancy for the first few dives, so I'd weight 6 pounds heavier, and have a way of dumping or adding 2 more pounds. Being a 2 or 3 pounds overweighted is just a minor nuisance. Being 2 pounds underweighted makes life really difficult at the end of the dive.

After you sort out what you really end up needing, be sure to come back and post so the we'll know what it really took.

 

[slackercruster]

Thanks for the help guys!