Dry suit diving malfunction has me scared

[luckydays]

You should still be diving horizontal but it seems to be harder to do than in the wet suit. At least for me with my level of experience. I do my best to stay horizontal, but with my knees bent to prevent the air flow to my feet. So far it has worked.

It sounds like a better fitting suit would change the entire experience. To lose your fins and your shoes on the dive because of air truly shows how ill fitting the suit is for you. Try it again to see how you manage it this time or look at renting another suit that would fit better. Try another shop that may have some other sizes. Try a Whites. That suit, while was not the suit for me, has an outer layer that helps keep all the extra material in one place and one size can fit a wide variety of body types. I was able to fit comfortably in a stock size and it dove quite nicely.

Drysuit diving like all others, takes lots of practice. I have a total of 16 dives in a drysuit (two in a suit that actually fits me to a T) and I still feel like I did in my dives at my open water certification.

 

[Web Monkey]

If your wing is not capable of lifting a suit full of water you will be negative. I have been there but I had that covered with a classic wing. If you have a seal fail and your suit floods totally you will sink like a brick.

If you have a catastrophic seal failure, such as as torn neck seak, your suit will get wet inside, but you will not "sink like a brick" and can compensate by adding air to your BC and maybe ditching a little weight.

The most lift you can possibly lose is the weight of the water displaced by the suit and underwear.

What the OP really needs is some pool time with the drysuit and an instructor or experienced DS user, learning how to handle these problems.

Terry

 

[Web Monkey]

Both suits were rentals.

. . .

The first incident the instructors said was definitely a malfunction and that they will re-build the inflator valve. One of them was watching as it happened and he said that as fast as it was there was nothing I could have done.

This is a good reason to own your own suit. I'm not sure what they did to the inflator, but drysuit inflators should have a relatively low-flow rate and the exhaust valves should have a high flow-rate so a runaway inflator would be nothing more than an annoyance until you can pop off the hose.

If you couldn't pop off the hose quick disconnect, that indicates that the hose and/or fittting also needs service.

Even with gloves, it shouldn't require much more than a tug on the collar to pop it off.

Terry

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

Oh well I guess you know better.. I only had it happen with witnesses. We were in a cave and a restriction to boot. I sank before I felt the water.. And if your in doubles its hard to ditch what isnt there. In a single tank you might be right. I rarely dive singles in a drysuit and I have not had that experience and really dont want too. If I was the OP I would deal with someone else. Sounds like they have some issues with servicing their suits.

If you have a catastrophic seal failure, such as as torn neck seak, your suit will get wet inside, but you will not "sink like a brick" and can compensate by adding air to your BC and maybe ditching a little weight.

The most lift you can possibly lose is the weight of the water displaced by the suit and underwear.

What the OP really needs is some pool time with the drysuit and an instructor or experienced DS user, learning how to handle these problems.

Terry

 

[Bubbletrubble]

@heidihart88:

• Get a drysuit that fits. This is key. It will make it very easy to manage the bubble inside your suit.
• Go with a drysuit that has a soft booties (crushed neoprene or other) that you wear rockboots over. This minimizes air pooling in the feet. With this kind of setup, it's nearly impossible for air to be forced into your feet and your boots/fins to pop off. It's not any fun to be in the water without fins. (Fun for your buddies to watch you, I guess.)
• Under most circumstances, your exhaust valve should be like the TV infomercial for a mini-rotisserie oven -- set it and forget it! Many people leave theirs completely open. I'll close mine down completely as I descend if I want to dive with more air inside the suit. Sometimes I'll tighten it down while I'm in the surf zone on a shore dive.
• During ascent, vent early and vent often. Always stay ahead of the expanding air inside your suit.
• I don't want to get into the debate of which buoyancy control device to use. You should experiment with both methods (drysuit only OR BCD + enough air in drysuit to offset squeeze) and see what feels right to YOU. As has been pointed out already by WebMonkey, drysuit exhaust valves are designed to vent faster than the inflator valves can inflate...provided that the exhaust valve is the highest point on your body AND nothing is obstructing air from getting out. As for managing suit squeeze, it should never be so tight that it's uncomfortable or restricts your movement in any way. Finding the minimal amount of air inside the suit to offset squeeze at a given depth is something that you'll have to play around with. Feel free to add and subtract air to the suit as necessary. For me, I found that the learning curve for operating a drysuit was similar to learning how to drive a manual transmission car. YMMV.
• Test the drysuit inflator and exhaust valves during your pre-dive checks. After I zip up my drysuit (but before I slip into my BCD), I'll generally crunch down into a ball and ensure that air can pass easily through the exhaust valve. Then, when I stand up, I'll break the neck seal slightly with my fingers to allow air to enter the suit again. That just makes things more comfortable for me as I go about setting up the rest of my gear. After I don my rig, I'll connect the inflator hose to my drysuit inflator valve and then give it a couple of short taps to verify that it starts and stops.

All drysuits are not created equal. One of the biggest decisions to be made is the type of suit material. For you, I'd recommend a bilaminate or trilaminate shell suit. It's adaptable to many different water temps by adjusting the undergarment. It dries quickly. It's light and very portable. It's relatively easy to patch holes in the material. Comparing a crushed neoprene suit to bilam or trilam, you'll find that you probably need to wear much more lead with the crushed neoprene suit. That's the trade-off for better inherent thermal protection and a longer-lasting, more robust suit.

You should take a look at the Whites Fusion suit. It's a great value for the price and its design (outer lycra skin) helps to evenly distribute the bubble inside the suit. Test dive it. You'll love it. (N.B.: I have no relationship with Whites. They simply make a great product.)

Keep in mind that rental drysuits are like any other piece of rental shop gear -- used and abused. Don't worry. You'll take care of your inflator and exhaust valves MUCH better than any rental suit. FWIW, if you do purchase your own suit, in most cases you should be able to get several hundred dives before you have ANY issues with the inflator or exhaust valves. I believe that Si-Tech covers their valves with a manufacturer's warranty of 2 years from original purchase date. If any valves give you any trouble, Si-Tech will replace the part with no questions asked. Apeks is the other major manufacturer of inflator and exhaust valves. I believe that the company has a similar warranty.

Sorry that you had so many issues with the drysuit dives. Perhaps you should consider doing the AOW dives in a wetsuit. If you haven't done the type of diving that an AOW entails, it might be too much to burden yourself with another buoyancy control device...especially on a fairly deep dive during which you should be getting acquainted with nitrogen narcosis. Besides, it sounds like your not at all sure whether a rental drysuit won't malfunction again. Take things one step at a time. With experience, I think you'll find that drysuit diving is both comfortable and safe.

Good luck with everything.

 

[Web Monkey]

Oh well I guess you know better..

Don't blame me, it's a dead guy named "Archimedes"

You can't lose more buoyancy than is created by the air in your suit.

Terry

 

[Kingpatzer]

Don't blame me, it's a dead guy named "Archimedes"

You can't lose more buoyancy than is created by the air in your suit.

Terry

If you have a dry suit filled with a few dozen gallons of water, that water is not just displaced air, you have to carry it with you. It's now part of the weight you carry. When you try to swim up, you will have to lift that much water.

And the amount of air displaced by thrermal undergarments is fairly significant. There's a reason a dry suit takes so much more weight than a wet suit to begin with.

I dive with around 32#'s on with my dry suit and under garment. I dive with only my backplate and tank in a 3m.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but if you have a light-weight wing and you have a dry-suit failure, hope you can walk home.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

If you have a dry suit filled with a few dozen gallons of water, that water is not just displaced air, you have to carry it with you. It's now part of the weight you carry. When you try to swim up, you will have to lift that much water.

@Kingpatzer:
I'm just going to point out that in most cases with a leaky drysuit:

• the water is free to move in and out ("open" system)
• the seawater inside the suit will have the same buoyancy characteristics as the seawater outside of the suit -- water inside the suit doesn't suddenly transform into lead!
• it's the loss of the air inside the suit (which confers positive buoyancy with an intact suit) that makes a diver with a leaky drysuit more negatively buoyant
• once you exit the water, the water inside the suit won't be able to escape (barring that the hole is in the foot region) so the suit could feel VERY heavy depending on how much water entered initially. At that point, I'd agree with you that the water inside the suit is part of the weight that you carry...on land.
• WebMonkey already pointed out that, depending on how bad the leak is, the diver might have to ditch some weight to be less negatively buoyant. It's the loss of the air inside the suit which causes the negative buoyancy. FWIW, the undergarment itself may have some positive buoyancy in seawater when sopping wet, too.

@heidihart88: If you dive enough in a drysuit, there will come a day when that drysuit will leak -- leaky exhaust valve, ripped neck/wrist seal, improperly seated seal, torn material, etc. Be mindful of the situation and it won't be that big of a deal. It's definitely not something you need to fear.

 

[crlavoie]

If you have a dry suit filled with a few dozen gallons of water, that water is not just displaced air, you have to carry it with you. It's now part of the weight you carry. When you try to swim up, you will have to lift that much water.

And the amount of air displaced by thrermal undergarments is fairly significant. There's a reason a dry suit takes so much more weight than a wet suit to begin with.

I dive with around 32#'s on with my dry suit and under garment. I dive with only my backplate and tank in a 3m.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but if you have a light-weight wing and you have a dry-suit failure, hope you can walk home.

Really? So, water displaces MORE of it's self when it's inside my suit?

Sorry for the sarcasm... The water does not become part of the weight you carry. That is until you try walking around on land. While you're in the water, you are ONLY losing the bouyancy of the volume of air in your suit. It's straight up physics.

 

[Buoyant1]

Heidi, you are 140 and wearing 30 lbs of lead? You sound overweighted to me?!?!?! I weigh a lot more than you and only use 20, plus my 6 lb back plate, and a steel cylinder that takes about 10 lbs off my belt. (36lbs for you math wizards without a calculator) You may want to do a weight check to be sure that's not too much.

The biggest problem I had the first time I tried diving dry was not getting my arm up to vent quickly enough as I ascended (plus I didn't have the valve opened correctly) I did ONE foot first ascent from about 10-15 feet. It still keeps me in a slightly foot heavy profile, but that will come with time, I'm sure.

Equipment failures are just that, and if you are using a rental that has faulty inflators, then I'd make sure that whomever you are renting from has them fixed before you hurt yourself. (or just go crazy and put out the cash for your own that fits and works properly)


Keep at it, I'm now on my 8th dive with it and I'm getting better. My current problem is descending to deeper depths and not becoming a dirt dart. The guys I dive with, who have been diving with dry suits for a while now, tell me to learn both ways of buoyancy, learn to use only the dry suit, then once you have that mastered, learn to take the squeeze out and use your wing for buoyancy. But not to try both yet. One guy strictly uses his suit and doesn't have any issues.

...to the hijack-ish part of the thread, I'm sort of curious at how water displacing water causes you to sink? Maybe because your not compensating for your weight (with air in your suit) you aren't becoming neutrally buoyant, but I'm not sure that "water weight" will cause you sink in water??? Maybe once you get back on the boat, you have all that water to lug around, but wouldn't it just negate any buoyancy? I would think that a few puffs of air in your hopefully adequate wing would get you neutral and back into control?