Diving a dry suit wet.

[Steelyeyes]

I'm thinking of getting back into cold water diving here in the Puget Sound after a break of 20 some years. I used to do OK in a 7 mil farmer john bottom and a 7 mil beavertail top with hood but after years of warm water only diving I think something else would be in order.

I've been looking at dry suit options and I'm going to do a course in a month or so to check them out. I was talking it over with my son, who has a couple of years of commercial diving experience in Alaska. He has over 170 dives in dry suits, some in hot water fed suits, and some in wet suits. Which brings me to the way he dives now. In his experience dry suits are really semi dry to damp suits. If he's working much it's a pain to change position to vent the suit and using his hands causes the wrist seals to leak. His solution, which he loves, is to wear a wet suit for an undergarment and not even connect air to the dry suit. He has fewer issues with bouyancy changes and stays comfortable the whole dive. He doesn't have to worry about a flooded dry suit since it starts out that way and there is no reason to go through the hassle with the P valve. He also dives with less lead than when he used a dry suit as designed.

There is a certain amount logic to his thinking. Admittedly he's an out of the box, creative type of guy but I was wondering what other people thought about his method. I could use a good 5 mil wet suit for less chilly environs and having it possibly double as an under layer for a dry suit up here might work out. Thoughts?

 

[KevinNM]

Some people's wrists work like that. There are some seals that work better then others, but the only solution some people find is dry gloves.

That's sound like pretty much the worst of all possible worlds. You buy an expensive dry suit and then deliberately flood it? You now have no reserve buoyancy and get to swim around with a suit full of water? I wish you good luck climbing the ladder on the dive boat with a drysuit full of water and your equipment.

I'd suggest thinking about wet suit heater instead, it will cost you a lot less and won't be as likely to get you hurt.

 

[darrenlowjq]

Consider me intrigued, I'd like to know more about how that would work. Are you thinking that the water inside the flooded drysuit will not be moving in and out much and therefore act much like a wetsuit does trapping the water warmed from your body?

 

[Steelyeyes]

Consider me intrigued, I'd like to know more about how that would work. Are you thinking that the water inside the flooded drysuit will not be moving in and out much and therefore act much like a wetsuit does trapping the water warmed from your body?

My son Lars claims that the little bit of water (he estimates it at 2 gallons or 16 lb.) in the suit is about all of the interchange you get so yeah that about describes it. I asked him about getting out of the water and he didn't feel the 16 lb. of water was as bad as the lead he used to have to wear to be safe with an air bubble in the suit. I'm thinking I'll try it both ways, dry first, probably beach dives and see what it's all about.

 

[darrenlowjq]

Since the drysuit is going to be flooded, I'm wondering how that is any better than wearing a second wetsuit over the first. If anything, that should reduce the water exchange even further and avoid intentionally flooding an expensive drysuit.

 

[eelnoraa]

In my experience, my drysuit has been dry, meaning it does isolate me from water out side. The inside of the suit can still get damped because of perspiration. Using proper undergarment, it is suppose to wick your perspiration from you, through the undergarment, and condense on the inside of the drysuit shell because the outside water is cold. So you are dry, despite you are sweating. The inside of the undergarment touching your skin is dry. It is how the system supposed to work and to keep you warm. With wetsuit as undergarment, sweat will be trapped inside the wetsuit. So at all time, you are feeling the wetness. It is not going to be warm at all.

The next issue is not connection the drysuit hose. I think you should try it in a pool to see how it feel. I think you can't get passed about 20ft.

 

[Steelyeyes]

In my experience, my drysuit has been dry, meaning it does isolate me from water out side. The inside of the suit can still get damped because of perspiration. Using proper undergarment, it is suppose to wick your perspiration from you, through the undergarment, and condense on the inside of the drysuit shell because the outside water is cold. So you are dry, despite you are sweating. The inside of the undergarment touching your skin is dry. It is how the system supposed to work and to keep you warm. With wetsuit as undergarment, sweat will be trapped inside the wetsuit. So at all time, you are feeling the wetness. It is not going to be warm at all.

The next issue is not connection the drysuit hose. I think you should try it in a pool to see how it feel. I think you can't get passed about 20ft.

I may have misspoke about the connection. He just doesn't dump air into the suit and uses his BCD for bouyancy adjustments. Yesterday he dove at Fox Island with the setup we're discussing and was comfortable and spent most of his time at 50 feet or so with a max depth of 70 feet. It's not his first rodeo. He dove this way for work in Alaska and does it now for recreation. He gave up commercial work for reasons of his own.

I'll experiment with both ways and see which works the best and report back with what I find out.

 

[spectrum]

I don't think it's a very good use of the equipment.

At 50 feet with no air added to a shell suit he would be very shrink wrapped and restricted if not labored in breathing. This must be where the 2 gallons of water comes in, being incompressible it would stabilize the space in the suit to some extent. I don't know if he is admitting the water of it's just the byproduct of the poor seal performance you mentioned but it's a slippery slope at best. I have seen a dry suit flood and the exit wasn't pretty.

Meanwhile for thermal performance you have a wetsuit that is still compressing with depth and losing thermal performance. No prize there. A proper garment in a dry suit will have thermal properties maintained with the lofting of injected air.

A dry suit should keep you dry. The mentioned condensation is unavoidable and easily managed by proper garments.

How does this solve the urine issue? The wetsuit won't even try to flush effectively and to the extent that it does it's trapped in a semi flooded drysuit to marinade all over.

This workaround may "work for him" but there are clearly a lot more downsides to this than conventional use of the gear. Just say no.

 

[Edward3c]

I knew someone who had a go of this combination as their dry-suit leaked so much. It worked for a few dives then, on one, there was so much water in the suit she had to cut holes in the ankles to get out of the water. End of experiment.

If this method was that good why isn't everyone doing it, Even the commercial guys are likely to have rolled their eyes at this suit set-up.

Been diving dry, and stayed dry, for over 20 years.

 

[maniago]

A purposely "wet" dry suit is just a semi-dry. Already been invented. But since there are no scuba police, anyone is free to do anything they like as long as its only themselves at risk.