Cleaning gear

[MaxBottomtime]

I rinse my gear with a boat shower for a minute after the last dive of the day.

 

[davehicks]

I spay almost all of my gear with either a garden hose in my driveway, or shower hose in my Scuba/Utility room. I fill a basin to soak my DSLR and a few other small bits.

Regs, rebreathers, fins, stage bottles are very happy with a spray rinse. I fill and dump the BC bladder once in a while as well. Regs get pressurized first.

 

[Catito]

I have heard all of this before; and yet, there is typically moisture damage to the first stage, when it arrives for an annual -- from "six inches of bathwater" or six feet. I dive saltwater, almost exclusively; soak the regs only while pressurized; service them myself; and they're always corrosion-free, regardless of the number or days of diving.

Some of my friend's equipment -- and their bathtub methods or dunk tank? Not so much; but I generally work on their gear at cost; and a pint or two . . .

Soak while pressurized? Attached to your tank?

 

[skippy311]

View attachment 601678

Whatever you wind up using, always soak your regulator while pressurized. The dunking method or soaking in a kitchen sink, etcetera, only encourages moisture to enter the first stage. Those dust caps are just that -- and seldom, if ever, watertight; and a paltry few, nowadays, even possess o-rings. The lion's share of costly damage that I have seen, while working on regulators, over the years, has come from that type of mishandling; and it requires very little moisture to cause corrosion and even internal pitting.

I just arrived back from diving within the hour; and everything, including my dive watch, went into a Greenmade® 27 Gallon Box; and will remain, through to this evening . . .

Really? Will have to give this a look into. Thanks

 

[TMHeimer]

What Bigbella says about washing regs while pressurized (still attached to tank) being best is true for sure. But having a bit of OCD and really tightening the dust cap tight, I've had no problems with the 15 year old (used) reg. Only job other that regular maintenence was $100 due to sand.

 

[jadairiii]

....For the BPW I force some tap water through the inflator's mouth intake (and let some out through the gas quick connect intake). Then drain the bladder.

I do the same with my BP inflator but here is the key to that, when all done and you have drained the water out of the bladder, squeeze out all the air from the bladder, then reconnect the lp inflator hose and fill up the bladder with air from the tank. This will force all the excess water out of your inflator, dry it, and keep it from getting all gunked up. That is the key to keeping the inflator in good working order.

About once a year or so I then rebuild my inflator or at least take it apart and lube it.

 

[Sonic04GT]

I use a garden hose.

 

[Larryjd1]

For those that soak your regs charged, what do you do if you have a transmitter?

As best as I can figure, your choices are:

1) Let the transmitter send a signal while it is soaking charged
(most convenient but not so good for the battery, especially those that say they soak for 24 hrs)

2) Remove the transmitter from the first stage and replace with a plug
(less convenient and not so good for the o-ring over time)

3) add a quick disconnect to your transmitter on a short hose
(quick and no battery use, but additional points of failure)

Right now I am soaking charged for a few hours as a compromise option.

 

[blue steal]

I do the same with my BP inflator but here is the key to that, when all done and you have drained the water out of the bladder, squeeze out all the air from the bladder, then reconnect the lp inflator hose and fill up the bladder with air from the tank. This will force all the excess water out of your inflator, dry it, and keep it from getting all gunked up. That is the key to keeping the inflator in good working order.

About once a year or so I then rebuild my inflator or at least take it apart and lube it.

What parts on the inflator need lube? I take my apart after a soak and clean with vinegar and rinse again and let dry.

 

[g1138]

You don't need to soak for 24 hrs. Here's what a soak is accomplishing:

• Rinsing internal of 1st stage where the piston spring or diaphragm housing is exposed to silt and the environment [those little port hole(s) at the end of your reg]
  
• Rinsing the internal housing of the 2nd stages
• Everything else literally is removed of salt with a simple dunk. You can do the lick test to see.

It does not take minimum 24 hours to dilute a small amount of salt water in the regulator's hard to reach areas, it takes minutes and water movement.

Assuming you're rinsing diligently you just need to clear (at worst) dried salt flakes, where the salt water dried on your return car trip home. If we're talking salt crystals from weeks of not rinsing at all then that's a different story.

2nd stage regs can be fully cleared of salt by

1. dunk
2. shake underwater
3. shake out of water (to drain all water from the housing)
   
4. Repeat once more

1st stages are where soaking really helps, but we're talking 10 minutes at most for the fresh clean water to diffuse with the salt solutes inside the reg. And even with piston regs, it's not much.

You can sped this up with some sloshing, dunk-shake-remove/drain repeat again. What soaking really does not accomplish is removing silt from the reg internal, so you should really be dunking, shaking underwater, & shaking dry out of water, if you're environment is silty.

If you have an environmentally sealed first stage then all you really have to dunk-shake is the 2nd stages. The rest takes a simple dunk.