Dry suit air in your leg

[InTheDrink]

Might be best to have a session with an instructor.
What I was told was
1. Ignore your wing, defleate it and keep it deflated.
2. Expell all air from your suit before descending
3. Weoght yourself so you can just descend with empty wing and suit
4. Get your trim straight at this point, Flat to Just feet heavy
5. As you descend add very small amounts of air to your suit, ignore the inflator on the wing.
6. Release air from the suit before you start to ascend so you never get positive
7. If you get positive quickly let air out of the suit
8. Only as a last resort try and swim down, that puts all the air into your feet.

Once I learned to predict the bubble then I no problems, I also had a lot less weight.

I like all your points up to point 5. I like to use my wing for buoyancy and suit only to relieve squeeze/warmth/backup buoyancy. That's how I was taught and it still makes sense to me. Maybe I'll give your approach a shot though and see how it works out. It did make me wonder whether if I added more gas to my suit rather than let myself get squeezed whether I might actually have been more balanced overall (i.e. not just a bubble in my feet, but gas all around).

Anyhow. Thanks again.

J

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

I like all your points up to point 5. I like to use my wing for buoyancy and suit only to relieve squeeze/warmth/backup buoyancy. That's how I was taught and it still makes sense to me. Maybe I'll give your approach a shot though and see how it works out. It did make me wonder whether if I added more gas to my suit rather than let myself get squeezed whether I might actually have been more balanced overall (i.e. not just a bubble in my feet, but gas all around).

Anyhow. Thanks again.

J

If you think about it, under ideal recreation dive conditions the air you need in your suit to prevent squeeze should be close to that needed to be neutral and almost nothing in your BC except a few pounds shy due to the wight of gas in the tank. D/S divers can screw up the weight as much as W/S divers - been there, done that.

 

[joe8mofo]

Trim in a drysuit is definitely different than trim in a wetsuit for many people. When the air expands it can make your legs feel floaty and can make you fight to stay in the proper trim until you can vent it. I am still trying to get trim down in a drysuit, but practice definitely is helping.

In practice I use my wing for buoyancy compensation and drysuit for warmth/to prevent squeeze; I do this because the wing will dump air much faster than a drysuit exhaust valve.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

In practice I use my wing for buoyancy compensation and drysuit for warmth/to prevent squeeze; I do this because the wing will dump air much faster than a drysuit exhaust valve.

What are you doing the the D/S won't dump air fast enough?

 

[victor]

My thoughts on this are there is no right way so whatever works for you is good.
Why have 2 inflators to worry about. You will have to put air into your suit so just use that.
When you are ascending a risk is you will
become buoyant
try and dump air from the wing,
find it is empty, all the air is in your suit,
by then you are very buoyant and need to swim down.
Then you have feet full of air.

I like all your points up to point 5. I like to use my wing for buoyancy and suit only to relieve squeeze/warmth/backup buoyancy. That's how I was taught and it still makes sense to me. Maybe I'll give your approach a shot though and see how it works out. It did make me wonder whether if I added more gas to my suit rather than let myself get squeezed whether I might actually have been more balanced overall (i.e. not just a bubble in my feet, but gas all around).

Anyhow. Thanks again.

J

 

[joe8mofo]

What are you doing the the D/S won't dump air fast enough?

Compared to my wing my drysuit valve dumps air much slower....not sure that it is anything I am doing; maybe an issue with the valve.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Compared to my wing my drysuit valve dumps air much slower....not sure that it is anything I am doing; maybe an issue with the valve.

This is typical, probably nothing wrong with the valve at all.

If you think about it, the dump on your wing is intended to be used for short burst, so it is bigger than the auto-dump on the suit which needs to run a bit slow so it does not over-compensate.

What I was pointing out is if you are ascending so fast the suit dump can't keep up with the expanding gas, you are not ascending at a safe rate for other reasons.

 

[victor]

My suit dump was on my left arm, it took a while before I cracked the technique to get the bubble into the left arm then dump.
The big improvment happened when I learned to predict my vertical motion and buoyancy. That allowed me to dump or add a little air to my suit compensating for my change in depth. That made everything much smoother.
Keep practising it does get a lot easier.

Compared to my wing my drysuit valve dumps air much slower....not sure that it is anything I am doing; maybe an issue with the valve.

 

[joe8mofo]

My suit dump was on my left arm, it took a while before I cracked the technique to get the bubble into the left arm then dump.
The big improvment happened when I learned to predict my vertical motion and buoyancy. That allowed me to dump or add a little air to my suit compensating for my change in depth. That made everything much smoother.
Keep practising it does get a lot easier.

Mine is also on my left arm, and I clearly need more dives on the suit before I can consider myself comfortable with it.

 

[TSandM]

I just reread this thread, and noted that the OP was using doubles and carrying a deco bottle when the worst of the trim problems occurred. Were these familiar doubles? Some sets of tanks REALLY tend to put you on your head (which of course, makes the gas go to your legs, making the issue worse). It can take some creative work with harness adjustments and weight placement to make it possible to balance. (I have a set of LP72s that I basically just CAN'T trim out, even after working with an instructor whose personal pride is helping people get their twinsets balanced.)

Also, diving technical gear and using the dry suit for primary inflation really requires dry suit experience and a VERY good sense of how to control the bubble. You are so negative going down with full tanks and auxiliary bottles that the dry suit bubble can get quite large -- AND it can be difficult to park the gas where it will do you the best good for balancing.