Dry suit diving malfunction has me scared

[300bar]

I can tell you all from experience,a completely flooded drysuit will NOT make you sink.
By the end of 2007 my frontzipper had a completely different opinion of it's function as I had.
During the dive it desided to open on it self(completely):depressed:
although being cold,I did not sink in to the abyss (heck I'm still here}

note: I do use my drysuit for buoyance,so now my BC had to take over.Made my safetystop and swam back to shore.Here comes the hard part,other (non drysuit)divers,having fun at me,walking up to the parking place looking like a marshmellow.

 

[fppf]

Power inflators can freeze up on dry suits, its a fact.
I have seen it happen, its not fun, but not hard to deal with.

However, that said, there is NO WAY that a suck power inflator is going to fill up a suit to the point you can't bend your arms and your like Mr Staypuff. And given the sizes of the vents on dry suits, I can sit there all day long with my inflator full blast and just watch the air go out the vent.

Now, if you have the vent closed, something you should NEVER do during a dive, AND the power inflator sticks, AND you rocket to the surface, THEN I can see you turning into Mr Staypuff.

Sounds like there is way to much air in the suit, your not using the vent correctly, and you do not have enough pool time. I would maybe think about a different instructor. When in the pool you should hold down the inflator and learn how to deal with it, its not hard.

 

[Pearldiver07]

Not wanting to focus on your first dive, I'd like to add something that was touched on, but unless I overlooked it, not directly addressed about your second dive.

With a rental suit that was obviously not fitted well to you, you've got to understand that air can (and will) be trapped in various places throughout the suit. When you're diving I would hazard a guess that your feet were above your body at some point and the air shifted back. It can easily happen if the motion of your body causes a new path to form from torso back with the suit, bcd, etc. moving.

So even though your buoyancy was, at the moment, balanced and trimmed out, that rush of air into oversized legs caused a rapid expansion. Yes, you know that various exercises to correct this, but unless you were actually over inflated during training, you weren't prepared for the actual sensation of the legs over inflating. At this point you were lucky that the boots of the suit didn't pop off of your feet.

Before doing any deeper dives I STRONGLY suggest a lot of practice diving in an environment that you are already comfortable. This way, you'll be able to focus more on the immediate sensations occurring while you're diving and using the dry suit.

Don't think that you're the only one to have a few surprises with dry suits while learning them. I've seen experienced instructors get caught by surprise to the point where they broke into shakes and terminated the dive. It is a LOT more to manage than simply an exhaust and inlet system. That bubble can meander around in that suit, causing some very surprising results.

But in the end, you'll wonder why you didn't do this sooner. It makes a bone chilling dive into a very comfortable experience. I love my suit.

 

[emoreira]

It has already been said here.
You should not use your dry suit as a buoyancy compensator. You only has to add air to the dry suit to compensate the outside pressure to avoid it to press you. For buoyancy compensation you must use your BCD.
Even more, I normally dive with no extra air in my DS.
If you add air to your DS at 35 feet, if you go to the surface without releasing the air inside it it will expand the internal free volume to the double (Boyle&Mariotte law), so you will feel it like a baloon.

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

NO KIdding LOL.. Maybe you will understand this.. There was no air in my suit. Water was up to the neck.. My dive buddies have been diving dry 30 years and said it was the worst they have ever seen.

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

 

[300bar]

It has already been said here.
You should not use your dry suit as a buoyancy compensator. You only has to add air to the dry suit to compensate the outside pressure to avoid it to press you. For buoyancy compensation you must use your BCD.
Even more, I normally dive with no extra air in my DS.
If you add air to your DS at 35 feet, if you go to the surface without releasing the air inside it it will expand the internal free volume to the double (Boyle&Mariotte law), so you will feel it like a baloon.

Glad you and I can have a different opinion on this board.
Whem I get the squeeze out ouf my DS.I'm in perfect trim.
But I don't carry ten tons of weight with me.

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

If you have on double 130s you will sink.. I have witnesses.. I was soo mad I even walked up stairs.. My suit was full up to the neck. When you inflated it water bubbled out of the neck seal. Worst experience I have had. Only takes a few minutes in 68 degree water to get chilled.

I can tell you all from experience,a completely flooded drysuit will NOT make you sink.
By the end of 2007 my frontzipper had a completely different opinion of it's function as I had.
During the dive it desided to open on it self(completely):depressed:
although being cold,I did not sink in to the abyss (heck I'm still here}

note: I do use my drysuit for buoyance,so now my BC had to take over.Made my safetystop and swam back to shore.Here comes the hard part,other (non drysuit)divers,having fun at me,walking up to the parking place looking like a marshmellow.

 

[300bar]

If you have on double 130s you will sink.. I have witnesses.. I was soo mad I even walked up stairs.. My suit was full up to the neck. When you inflated it water bubbled out of the neck seal. Worst experience I have had. Only takes a few minutes in 68 degree water to get chilled.

Very likely but then again I don't dive double 130' ,I just love my poor spine to much.
I do how ever dive 10 and 12Liter 300bars.

 

[Gombessa]

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 two aren't actually weighted much differently. If Heidi is in a regular jacket BC, she does not have the benefit of the natural negative buoyancy of your backplate, and may in fact need a couple of extra pounds to displace the positive buoyancy of the BC. Also, if she's using an AL80, that's another 4-6lb to add. She's in Seattle so you know she has thick undergarments too. I'm also 140 and the buoyancy of my drysuit/undergarments is ~27lb, which is not at all uncommon for cold water.

...to the hijack-ish part of the thread, I'm sort of curious at how water displacing water causes you to sink?

You don't sink in water, at least not by much. A fully flooded ds/underwear is probably a couple of pounds negative (throw an open DS and undergarment into the pool and it'll slowly float to the bottom), and further a DS failure is not always a total and catastrophic flood that eliminates all buoyancy of the suit.

You will lose buoyancy because that 20-27lb of loft goes away, but you're still wearing all that lead (backplate, STAs, weight belt, etc.) you put on to displace that loft. If you have a balanced rig, your BC should have sufficient lift to account for a total drysuit failure (and typically with single tanks, a ~30 capacity should be enough). It won't help you walk out of the water or get back on the boat with a suit full of water though.

 

[MSilvia]

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

Not necessarily... it can make a big difference what kind of connector you have, and what kind of gloves you use. Mine is difficult on the best of days, but I find one of these makes it a total non-issue: https://www.deepseasupply.com/index.php?product=45