Dry Suit Death?

[H2Andy]

ok... so.... i was reading about how hard-hat divers in the old days could
get "squeezed" into their brass helmet by pressure if their suit somehow couldn't
keep up with the external pressure.

basically, they ended up as a ball of flesh in the helmet.

so... being new to dry suit diving, i got to wondering:

can suit squeeze kill you?

what if you accidentally drop down faster and faster, and somehow can't
hit the inflate button for the dry suit... will you be "squeezed to death?"

if so... how deep do you think you have to go before this happens?

 

[JasonH20]

ok... so.... i was reading about how hard-hat divers in the old days could
get "squeezed" into their brass helmet by pressure if their suit somehow couldn't
keep up with the external pressure.

basically, they ended up as a ball of flesh in the helmet.

so... being new to dry suit diving, i got to wondering:

can suit squeeze kill you?

what if you accidentally drop down faster and faster, and somehow can't
hit the inflate button for the dry suit... will you be "squeezed to death?"

if so... how deep do you think you have to go before this happens?

I think the key is the dry suit squeezes you equally everywhere. I've dove down to 40-50 feet without adding any air and survived to type about it. Though it did leave some funky crease marks on my body!

 

[Hank49]

I don't dive dry but it seems to me that if there's no air in the suit it's no different than no suit or a wet suit. Why would you get a sqeeze?

 

[jonnythan]

With a typical scuba drysuit, I don't think it could happen. The worst I can envision is that some of your flesh "extrudes" into the spaces and you'll come up a bit bloody

 

[Boogie711]

Andy - I would think there's a world of difference between a brass helmet and a fabric bag. I would think that the suit would rip before such a thing happened.... if on nothing more than your protruding bones.

(Ick.)

 

[Gary D.]

ok... so.... i was reading about how hard-hat divers in the old days could
get "squeezed" into their brass helmet by pressure if their suit somehow couldn't
keep up with the external pressure.

basically, they ended up as a ball of flesh in the helmet.

so... being new to dry suit diving, i got to wondering:

can suit squeeze kill you?

what if you accidentally drop down faster and faster, and somehow can't
hit the inflate button for the dry suit... will you be "squeezed to death?"

if so... how deep do you think you have to go before this happens?

This is basically refering to the MK-5 style of diving.

In theroy, iF one was deep enough and had a SUDDEN loss of air pressure and a non-return valve failure, with the air hose open at the surface, it is possible. BUT it is so unlikely that you would have a better chance at wining every lottery in the nation at once while Bill Gates gives you all his $$ at the same time. Don't sweat it.

A diver would have to be so deep that he would most likely be dead long before that would happen. "POOOOOF"

Gary D.

 

[JasonH20]

Andy - I would think there's a world of difference between a brass helmet and a fabric bag. I would think that the suit would rip before such a thing happened.... if on nothing more than your protruding bones.

(Ick.)

That's a pleasent thought! :11:

I think in the diving helmet example, the problem is caused when the air pump and check valve fail suppling air to the diver. The pressure of the water tries to push the diver back up the air supply hose, which results in a mushy mess. None of this applies to a OC diver, dry suit or not. I don't know this for sure, but I'd imagine you could go as deep as you want without adding any air to your dry suit without any real problems.

 

[lamont]

This is basically refering to the MK-5 style of diving.

In theroy, iF one was deep enough and had a SUDDEN loss of air pressure and a non-return valve failure, with the air hose open at the surface, it is possible. BUT it is so unlikely that you would have a better chance at wining every lottery in the nation at once while Bill Gates gives you all his $$ at the same time. Don't sweat it.

A diver would have to be so deep that he would most likely be dead long before that would happen. "POOOOOF"

Gary D.

I think he's referring to the incident on the empress of Ireland almost 100 years ago now that is mentioned in _Dark Descent_? I'm guessing they didn't have a non-return valve in those days so if you slipped off the wreck you'd build up a differential pressure between ambient water and the hose and get sucked up the hose...

 

[H2Andy]

This is basically refering to the MK-5 style of diving.

In theroy, iF one was deep enough and had a SUDDEN loss of air pressure and a non-
return valve failure, with the air hose open at the surface, it is possible. BUT it is so unlikely that you would have a better chance at wining every lottery in the nation at
once while Bill Gates gives you all his $$ at the same time. Don't sweat it.

A diver would have to be so deep that he would most likely be dead long before that would happen.
"POOOOOF"

Gary D.

well, this happened to a diver in the Empress of Ireland, only at about 140 feet,
in 1914.

it was not common, but not unheard of

 

[H2Andy]

I don't dive dry but it seems to me that if there's no air in the suit
it's no different than no suit or a wet suit. Why would you get a sqeeze?

well, my guess is that water is a non-compressible fluid, but air isn't

so the water squeezes the air a dry suit and compresses it, whereas
the water under the wet suit can't be compressed

so you have to inflate the dry suit to relieve the "squeeze" with more air.
when that gets compressed, you have to do it again, and so on...