Review Diving the Avelo System

[lowwall]

I dive colder freshwater in a 7 mil, with an HP steel 100 (46 pounds full plus BPW weight) and 4 pounds of lead. Im guessing i could shed the lead and additional weight savings with the composite Avelo tank but don’t know what that savings would be. Maneuvering on land and climbing boat ladders is tough for me so shedding out of water weight is my primary motivation. Any idea what the Avelo standard tank and jet pack combo dry weight is?

The 30 pound weight saving is marketing BS. It appears to be based a typically overweighted diver with a fluffy jacket BCD and an AL80. You won't see anywhere near that your setup. @scubadada reports a 15 pound savings with a BCD and an AL80 so let's take that as a starting point.

You dive a BP/W and an HP100. Let's start with the tank. An HP100 is 4 pounds lighter on the surface than an AL80 plus the lead it needs to match the buoyancy characteristics of the HP100. A typical BCD is a couple of pounds positive, so that's another 2 pounds of lead that could be shed versus using a BP/W. So net you are looking at 9 or 10 pounds above water weight savings by switching to Avelo.

But you also get a lot more gas. If you are content with 80 cubic feet, then you could switch to an HP80 instead of the HP100. An HP80 is both lighter and more negative than an HP100, so your above water weight drops by 6 pounds versus the HP100. That makes the net above water weight savings for Avelo only 3 or 4 pounds.

 

[SouthernSharktoothDiver]

@scubadada Maybe my understanding is flawed, but how would the weight savings be greater with a thicker wetsuit? Would you not need to add extra weight in both cases to achieve neutral buoyancy with a 7mm than with a 3mm?

 

[lowwall]

@scubadada Maybe my understanding is flawed, but how would the weight savings be greater with a thicker wetsuit? Would you not need to add extra weight in both cases to achieve neutral buoyancy with a 7mm than with a 3mm?

You can add a couple of extra pounds of water at the surface to get under and then release it once your suit has compressed at depth.

 

[scubadada]

@scubadada Maybe my understanding is flawed, but how would the weight savings be greater with a thicker wetsuit? Would you not need to add extra weight in both cases to achieve neutral buoyancy with a 7mm than with a 3mm?

Sorry, I was only going by the weight calculator available for Avelo certified divers on the Avelo website. I know what weight I use with traditional gear with a 5 or 7 mm full suit. It appears I would have a weight saving of 18 or 20 pounds in a 5 or 7 mm wetsuit. Still, significantly less that 30 pounds. And yes, this is based on using an AL80. I have not dived Avelo in a 5 or 7 mm full suit to confirm this.

 

[ABay Diver]

Sorry, I was only going by the weight calculator available for Avelo certified divers on the Avelo website. I know what weight I use with traditional gear with a 5 or 7 mm full suit. It appears I would have a weight saving of 18 or 20 pounds in a 5 or 7 mm wetsuit. Still, significantly less that 30 pounds. And yes, this is based on using an AL80. I have not dived Avelo in a 5 or 7 mm full suit to confirm this.

Thanks all I appreciate your time and feed back. Im assuming i could shed the 4 pounds of lead I currently use. My BPW weighs 12 pounds so i think i need to know what the Avelo jetpack weighs to calculate weight savings there plus the dry weight differential between my HP Steel 100 and the standard Avelo composite tank to accurately figure total dry weight savings. Ive asked Avelo this specifically but though they've responded, they haven't done so specifically for whatever reason. Bottom line, it sounds like it would be something less than the 30 pounds the website suggests for weight differential between standard kit and Avelo. Probably more like the 18 to 20 pounds Scubadada suggests at best, which is not insignificant. I also note that with Avelo i shouldn’t have the extra pound or so of water i would have in my wing from operating the inflator plus the water saturated wing fabric weight from a traditional setup to haul up the ladder after a dive. Thanks for all the input.

 

[EdMcNeill09]

Hi @tridacna

Thanks for posting the Dive Friends Avelo price list. Questions not answered on the website would be most reliably answered by Dive Friends
info@divefriendsbonaire.com

I took the Avelo certification course (RAD) and 2 guided dives in December 2023. I paid $700, same price as charged today. At that time, certification and 2 guided dives were required to rent Avelo gear for independent diving. I do not know if that is the current policy. Since those initial 4 dives, I have rented Avelo gear and have done 22 independent dives as described in my initial review and 3 follow ups.

The Try Avelo offering is an interesting opportunity for a limited experience diving Avelo. The dive is completely controlled by the instructor. I assume this dive does not count toward any other Avelo training, just like a Discover Scuba dive does not. Ask Dive Friends to be sure.

The Try Avelo Program is supposed to involve the classroom portion of the RAD and the first dive of the RAD. Following the Try Avelo the student typically has the option of paying the balance of the RAD cost and doing the second dive of the RAD and then has 14 days to complete the elearning to get the certification. If not done in 14 days then the student has to start over.

 

[EdMcNeill09]

How do you do negative entry dives with the Avelo system?

super easy if you are properly weighted. Exhale on your giant stride, turn head down and swim down. breathe as you need to and run the pump. I do this all the time when I tie boats up to a mooring ball. If you are properly weighted it's like entering the water with swimmers buoyancy. You are literally only a pound buoyant. easy to swim down.

 

[EdMcNeill09]

On another note, Im 70 and my legs are not what they used to be. Im considering Avelo which it says can lighten your kit by 30 pounds or so. Would you agree or is that just hype? Thanks.

I weigh 230 ish and when diving a Scubapro Hydros need 14 lbs lead. The hydros weighs 13lbs. the tank weighs 40 lbs full. so before regs that's 67lbs. On Avelo I take a 1lb weight with a worn out 5mm. My Avelo system weighs around 43lbs? I haven't actually weighed it. But carrying a jetpack attached to a tank weighs very similarly to a al 80. And I carry a lot of those regularly. So I figure for me it's a savings of around 25lbs. It would be more savings in cold water.

Also I hear the new Shearwater Jetpack is lighter than the current one.

 

[SouthernSharktoothDiver]

@EdMcNeill09 I'm not familiar with the Hydros, but golly, a 13 lb bcd that needs an additional 14 lbs of lead? That's ridiculous. What have they got in there, block styrofoam? To be clear, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just shocked at a BCD that floaty. My Cressi Aquawing (a BP/W with removable padding) weighs ~7 lbs, and with a full AL 80 is negatively buoyant even with the padding. I usually dive it with 4 lbs in still water to account for air loss, maybe 6-8 if I'm wearing a 3mm suit. So, yeah, a 13 lb hydros that requires an extra 14 lbs of lead must be floaty as balls.

Sidebar for comparison: my BCD weighs 7 lbs, I'd probably dive 4 lbs of lead in a shorty, 6 in a 3mm, so 13 lbs there. If my goal was to go ultralight, I'd dive a steel 72, which when I weighed mine came in at 32 lbs full (And at ~2400 PSI, have roughly the same gas as Avelo when you leave room for water, as I understand it). With an AL 80, it's more like 35-40 lbs, so weighs in at somewhere between 45 and 55 lbs I'd say. All that, and I can travel with it just by putting it in the carry on and renting tanks.

Now, that being said, I feel like the real selling point of avelo is the easy buoyancy, which I have no frame of reference for, as I've never tried it. Seems like a cool idea, though tbh my breathing is where most of my buoyancy related struggles come in, but at some point I would not mind giving Avelo a try.

 

[AnotherDiverHere]

Interview with the inventor of the Avelo Dive System from Off Gassing: A Scuba Podcast

A Conversation with Aviad Cahana - Off Gassing: A Scuba Podcast

Bringing change into a world anchored to its beliefs and philosophies is never an easy task. At one point, diving anything other than air was considered dangerous, J-valves without SPGs were common, dive tables were the standard in diving. Needles...

www.buzzsprout.com