Dry suit questions?

[LittleU]

Im was woundering is it advisable to use a dry suit that is made for river / white water operations for scuba diving? I know that their are some difrences like the valves. thanks

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

don't do it

 

[El Orans]

Hello LittleU,

have a look here: Exposure Suits

Laurens

BTW, welcome (Scub)aBoard!

 

[Spoon]

welcome to the board!

 

[Dive-aholic]

Welcome to the 'Board. No, it is not advisable. Scuba dry suits have inflator and exhaust valves that allow us to compensate for the squeeze at depth. The dry suits you are describing aren't designed to be taken to depth, only to be used at the surface. There's no way to compensate for depth/pressure changes. You would realize this about 10 feet down and probably abort the dive anyway.

 

[crpntr133]

Only if you are into big body hickies. The squeeze would be unbearable.

 

[MarkH]

Im was woundering is it advisable to use a dry suit that is made for river / white water operations for scuba diving? I know that their are some difrences like the valves. thanks

The suit I've been using for the last couple of years is a "SAR" suit (search and rescue). The guy I bought it from used it for white water rafting. The suit is the same as the diving drysuits from the same manufacturer, but it had no valves. That problem was easily solved when I put the valves from my old drysuit on it.

 

[Bob3]

Most of the surface drysuits are too light weight to make good dive suits, and if you don't have a set of used valves to slap on, expect to add another $150 or so for them.
The early rubber & canvas suits didn't have any inflator valves but it was possible to blow some air into them by pulling the chin over the mouth & blowing.
Bottom line is if you want to go cheap, look for an older used neoprene drysuit, you can find them for around the price of a wetsuit.