Dry suit exhaust valve problem

[do it easy]

I still had some air in the suit, not completely empty, but I think that I am not so buoyant that it would be a super problem at depth.

Sounds like you had some fun DIY adventures. Keep in mind that buoyancy is very forgiving at depth. But it punishes harshly in the shallows, when you are trying to hold a stop and have used up most of your air.

 

[fisherdvm]

Sounds like you had some fun DIY adventures. Keep in mind that buoyancy is very forgiving at depth. But it punishes harshly in the shallows, when you are trying to hold a stop and have used up most of your air.

You are right. I might have to use the manual deflate or cut a few more bits off the spring if I can't hold at 20 ft. Is your autodeflate set so you can vent all the air automatically at 20 ft??

 

[TSandM]

The increment above ambient that opens the valve shouldn't be any different in shallow water than it is in deep.

 

[do it easy]

You are right. I might have to use the manual deflate or cut a few more bits off the spring if I can't hold at 20 ft. Is your autodeflate set so you can vent all the air automatically at 20 ft??

I think that my vent can be set loose enough that the suit will be snug if I shift to let the gas out. And Lynne has the important conclusion- if it is trapping air at depth, then it will trap air at the stops. This may or may not be a problem, depending on your overall buoyancy.

I'm backwards in a lot of ways, but I tend to close my vent a little on the ascent and use the wing a lot less or not at all. For me, this is an advantage because 1) it keeps me warmer on the stops, 2) I find that it makes buoyancy control easier since the suit will dump automatically or with a change in body position, while the wing requires one hand to release air.

 

[rcontrera]

Yeh, yeh, yeh.... Got it fixed. Played with it for a long time, then I figure, the spring is too strong. So I cut about 2/3 inch off from it. Dove with it, and it still didn't work.

Then I cut another 1/2 inch off it. Still didn't work. But I did it on dry land. Then another 1/4 inch off, still didn't work. Then I just took a plier, and bent the spring back against its curvature (but preserving the original round shape and diameter). I kept doing it until the whole spring is shortened by 1/8 inch. Put it back on the valve, and inflated my drysuit. (I did the disassemble and assemble while I had the drysuit on). Finally - it deflated.

I still had some air in the suit, not completely empty, but I think that I am not so buoyant that it would be a super problem at depth.

Well, now we know how to decrease the tension on these auto exhaust valve. I could have also heated the spring, but this might denatured it too much.

Thanks for all the great advises.

Man ... there is something seriously wrong here! Springs don't get stronger all of a sudden. I would guess that the valve was taken apart by someone and assembled improperly. The Sitech exhaust valve is designed to dump more air out of the auto dump than the inlet valve is designed to put into the suit. That way there can be no chance of a balloon up. If the spring is holding the auto dump shut when fully screwed open, then either the valve was re-assembled incorrectly (easy to do) ot was damaged when taking apart or assembling.

When you take it out for a test dive, BE CAREFUL!! And only dive to test the valve in all kinds of situations. Don't take your camera, speargun or whatever you normally take with you.

 

[fisherdvm]

Tested it out today, and it seems to dump fine under water. It dump almost all the air at eye level.

The exhaust valve is very simple, I don't think anyone could assemble it the wrong way, even if they wanted too.