Cold water & wet suit

[Eric Sedletzky]

What would be hilarious is if he ended up devising some amazing contraption but not tracking the cost... 6 months later you have this bad ass automated hot water pump station with LCD read out and thermostat that cost so much everyone could have bought dry suits off craigslist.

Lol! It's easy to let stuff like that get out of control. Guys that love to build stuff will loose sight of cost and time. I'm totally guilty of it. The one dude already has plans to build some sort of double pontoon dive raft thing that can be used as a platform for urchin bags to be pulled up on.
Drysuits aren't really an option for most of us doing harvesting. Thick warm wetsuits are what everyone uses. We have one guy who dives dry in a crushed neoprene drysuit but he's constantly chasing leaks from urchin spines. Amazingly, his papa smurf dry gloves are holding up fine.

 

[SouthernSharktoothDiver]

@grantmac Truth of it is, my semidry fits so tight that once it's got the hot water in it, it doesn't much need any more than that. I jumped into sub-60 water without even noticing any change in temp under my suit a few weeks back.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

@Eric Sedletzky Might I suggest a thermos? For my last dive (~45 F air temp, 56 F water temp) I was in a 7mm semidry and 3mm hood, and I use a Stanley thermos (the green kind) full of hot tap water. The thermos is good enough that if I put boiling water in there, I'd blister and burn, but hot water from the tap is fine.

Edit: And just to weigh in, my cousin and I did the above for ~80-90 minutes of water time wearing our 7mm suits and hoods. I was moderately chilly the first day, when the water was slow, very warm the second when it was flowing fast and I had to fight just to stay still.

I'm putting together a set of double 72 right now so I'll be in the water for two hours or more, but it's not deep. I might have to upgrade to a custom 9 or 10 mil suit.
I have a thermos, great idea!

 

[MAKO Spearguns]

We got one guy in our group who loves to build stuff and come up with some crazy ideas. I could see him devising something with a small bilge pump inside with a hose, and running it with some sort of 12 V battery pack.

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[happy-diver]

I cook myself wearing the suit in the car heater on driving to the dive site