Drysuit Buoyancy ????????????????????

[tight rope walker]

I do not wear a bc with my drysuit, just an old sp back pac.

 

[elan]

I think PADI teaches it wrong, personally. using the BC for buoyancy and just inflating the suit to take care of squeeze is no more task heavy than using a BC and wetsuit, and clearing your ears as you descend.
just one mans opinion, but its what I think.

It's not an issue of taping on inflation buttons, it the issue of dumping air of both of your buoyancy devices in case of a problem. It's about how well you can dump air when you have a failure say frozen hose and time is critical. You just have to be familiar with the feeling of which one is inflating you and react correspondingly

Looks like the seals on the suit you had was trimmed wrong, they were not fitting you properly and you probably was overweight. PADI school applies well to shell suits and average tanks like AL80. Not so well to neoprene ones and bigger tanks.

 

[Teller]

I recently purchased a Waterproof crushed (3.5) neopreme drysuit and have had one pool cession with it. Accourding to the PADI Text & My instructor my BCD is only to be used at the surface and not during the dive: buoyancy to be controlled by adding and venting air from the drysuit. The text further states that the only exceptions to this are 1) when using a neopreme drysuit--not crushed, and for technical divers that use a combination of air in the bcd and drysuit. At our world underwater this weekend I talked to a Technical diver and instructor that told me just to add enough air to avoid suit squeeze and to use the BCD for buoyancy ( I have a rear inflation bcd). My guess that it is easier to control a smaller BCD air space. Is is possible that both situations are correct depending on circumstances? Is there a reason that one method is preferred to the other, could someone give me some reasoning. What do other non PADI agencies teach? Also the neck seal seems a bit tight. I tried to stetch it out around a kitchen canister for a week about 1 & 1/2" smaller than my neck. After abouty an hour and 15 minutes I thought that I wasd going to pop. I was told by my instructor not to trim the neck seal because if there is a small nick perpindicular to neck seal it will conmtinue to tear and I will have to replace it. I was further told to stretch and spray the neck with food grade silicone spray. I would really appreciate a good explination from anyone who has the time.

SSI says to only add enough air in your dry suit to avoid the squeeze and then add air to your BCD as needed. I have tried both ways and I find it easier to control the air in my BCD rather than in my dry suit. Good luck.

 

[David_57]

Drysuit for buoyancy when diving doubles not a good idea requires to much air in the drysuit so use my wing for buoyancy, drysuit add just enough air to make me comfortable and adjust my trim

 

[techintime]

I'm with the majority on this...dry sut inflation to eliminate squeeze and stay warm...BC for bouancy. I will add this...as a new tech diver still getting familiar with my double 120s I have been wrestling with trim problems that want to drive me head down. I have moved the tanks down in the bands, added some weight to the bottom of the tanks, added gaters, and cut off the clunky boats for dry socks/rock boots, and now have the trim pretty squared away. I can manage head-down trim issues by adding a little extra air to the dry suit. So I add one more variable to my dry suit inflation...no squeeze, warm, and trimmed level.