Dumpable weight vs trim

[lowwall]

Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here because some of the discussions are so foreign to me, and I have very little in common with the majority of posters on SB.
so many of the topics definitely don’t apply to my diving environment.
Nobody on my area dives with a “balanced rig” with no ditchable weight. They never even heard of such a thing and would consider it absolute craziness.

Great post. I guess the point is "horses for courses". Figure out what works best for your environment rather than blindly following someone else's recipe.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

At some point scuba became it’s own thing and moved away from it’s skin diving roots. I started to see integrated weight systems come in with BC weight pockets and trim pockets about the late 90’s. Prior to that it was poodle jackets used with weight belts. For PADI OW we had to r&r the weightbelt, learn to roll it on on the surface.
Then I started reading Internet forums and GUE came along with their tech ideas and introduced the “balanced rig” concept from cave diving where you would never have to ditch a belt because it
When I did tech diving the standard was to
I still use a weightbelt for various reasons. I can think of several scenarios both emergency and non emergency where a ditchable weightbelt is a good thing. We dive off kayaks and to have all weight attached to my rig would be miserable. To have to drag that heavy rig off the back of the yak while I’m floaty as hell in my 7mm wetsuit trying to put it on in the water not to mention having that much weight at the back of the yak. I put my weightbelt up front further which spreads out the weight. I roll it on as soon as I get in the water which keeps be stable so I can move around and get my rig off the boat and onto me.
Shore diving. A weightbelt is nice because I can split up my weights and make hikes easier. Wetsuits can take the abuse climbing over rocks and sharp mussels on rocks without damaging a drysuit. A Drysuit being the answer to redundant buoyancy with non ditchable weight, where a ditched weighbelt would be the redundant buoyancy solution to a wetsuit. If you fump a belt at depth in a wetsuit you won’t rocket to the surface like they say. Depending on depth, you will most likely be very slightly bouyant at depth and you will gradually get lighter as you go up but you wouldn’t be a middle like an expanding BC would make you.
Ditching at depth, if the need ever came about I have that option. Why not swim up your balanced rig? Because maybe my leg or legs are injured, maybe I got bit, maybe I had a hell of a deal fighting a current or surge and cramped out and ran OOA and need out now, maybe there’s fishing line and I got entangled, it could be a good tool to dump the weightbelt to get light with tension on the line then cut it below you which will send you up. Maybe I might need to take my rig off to clear the line or kelp or a net, I can do that and still be neutral. Maybe I’m lobster diving and want to get crazy and take my rig off and crawl back in a hole on a hookah, with a weightbelt I can do that.
I’ve posted threads a few times before advocating the use of weightbelts and the advantage of splitting up weighting. Having everything on the rig scares me where I dive. Maybe if I was in a very controlled and steady environment it would be different but not here.
Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here because some of the discussions are so foreign to me, and I have very little in common with the majority of posters on SB.
so many of the topics definitely don’t apply to my diving environment.
Nobody on my area dives with a “balanced rig” with no ditchable weight. They never even heard of such a thing and would consider it absolute craziness.

Yes, diving has taken many directions from skin diving. Remember that GUE isn’t all about caves, but deep open water dives as well where the deco obligations. Don't want to rocket up to the surface. We don't want panicking recreational divers shooting to the surface. @boulderjohn has commented about a joint PADI/DAN study looking at air embolism deaths (correct me John if I misrepresent what you said or get anything wrong) where people were not able to perform emergency ascents in a speed appropriate fashion.

Given the reality that people often don't go beyond OW/AOW for training, they don't refresh their skills, and that some divers don't receive decent training to begin with, I'm a big believer in proper weighting/balanced rigs. Excessive weight is a problem. Especially when people lose their weight belts or weight pockets and up they go.

Now sure if you hurt your leg at the same time your wing fails (I think multiple problems at the same time is God's way of telling you your time is up - only kidding), where is your buddy? If you are diving solo, what is your redundant buoyancy source? You don't just dive with redundant gas and call it good (though I'm sure many people do).

And yes, we do tend to wear horse blinders for the diving we do. I'm not a freediver. I don't harvest on dives (I would hope those folks would have redundant buoyancy).

For single tank diving off a kayak, I can see having a weight belt. But for doubles or sidemount, no.

 

[CT-Rich]

Just a reminder, this is the basic forum. Cave and deco are not really the topic here, they are specialties where considerations can be very different. Overweighting is a different subject also, like wise is equipment that malfunctions. A weight pouch that won’t stay buckled should be looked at the same as a leaking hose, time to replace. I was diving in the Caymans and the belt supplied had a nylon buckle, not worth a crap. In the future I will bring my own. I may look at a dive buddy as a redundant air supply, both of our rigs are specifically designed for that. But I would never look at him as redundant buoyancy. His ability to remove some or all of my weight is the way a typical Recreational diver should guarantee buoyancy on the surface.

I am not a fan of ditching weight at depth because it is dangerous. A diver should be able to swim his rig off the bottom.

 

[halocline]

I have an interesting choice to make. I have very heavy legs that make trim difficult. I found a way of getting in trim but it leaves me with no dumpable weight.

For reference I dive in a 8mm wetsuit and I need 3kg on the shoulders then another 2kg in trim pockets for a total of 5kg in fresh water with an AL80. So I guess my question would it be better to be in trim or have dumpable weights.

And this is the minimum weight I can use. I can do a safety stop @ 50bar with no air in my bcd.

I admit I did not read the whole 8 pages of comments, so I apologize if someone already posted this. Try a combination of lighter fins and a steel backplate. You could just borrow the gear to try it, if it makes a big difference, then you can buy it. Positive fins sound like just the thing for you.

As long as you can swim your rig to the surface without inflating your BC, I would not worry about ditchable weight.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Yes, diving has taken many directions from skin diving. Remember that GUE isn’t all about caves, but deep open water dives as well where the deco obligations. Don't want to rocket up to the surface. We don't want panicking recreational divers shooting to the surface. @boulderjohn has commented about a joint PADI/DAN study looking at air embolism deaths (correct me John if I misrepresent what you said or get anything wrong) where people were not able to perform emergency ascents in a speed appropriate fashion.

Given the reality that people often don't go beyond OW/AOW for training, they don't refresh their skills, and that some divers don't receive decent training to begin with, I'm a big believer in proper weighting/balanced rigs. Excessive weight is a problem. Especially when people lose their weight belts or weight pockets and up they go.

Now sure if you hurt your leg at the same time your wing fails (I think multiple problems at the same time is God's way of telling you your time is up - only kidding), where is your buddy? If you are diving solo, what is your redundant buoyancy source? You don't just dive with redundant gas and call it good (though I'm sure many people do).

And yes, we do tend to wear horse blinders for the diving we do. I'm not a freediver. I don't harvest on dives (I would hope those folks would have redundant buoyancy).

For single tank diving off a kayak, I can see having a weight belt. But for doubles or sidemount, no.

Just to be clear, I never said anything about being overweighted. I’m a strong advocate of proper weighting and some even say to the light side. My criteria is that a diver should be able to hold a 15’ stop at the end of their FULL LENGTH DIVE with a near empty tank (or an ending pressure that is within their spec) and control their stop with breath control alone with a completely empty BC.
What this means for me diving in a 7mm wetsuit is that at the beginning of my dive with a full tank I can dump all my air in my BC and still remain floating. I have to actually tip forward and fin downward to get my dive started. Once I get to depth I only have to shoot small amounts of air into my wing and not until I get to around 30’.
At the end of the dive when I am at the surface with an empty tank I would have to fight to try and sink. Hearing about divers who sink back down after reaching the surface and drowning just reeks of overweighting and is insane!
Overweighting to me is the current biggest problem in modern diving.
Combine this problem with no ditchable weights and you have a dormant disaster waiting to happen.
I have a feeling that too many uninformed new divers are still carrying around way too much weight then they read on SB that they need to dive balanced rigs with no ditchable weight so they just transfer all that weight over and still have not cured the problem, they just made it worse.
If some one chooses to dive a “balanced rig” with no ditchable weight then they better have a VERY thorough understanding of proper weighting. Unfortunately proper weighting seems to be very rare in modern scuba teaching. It has somehow become a specialty. I’m not sure if they work on actually shedding unneeded weight or just teach them to become better elevator divers?

 

[boulderjohn]

We don't want panicking recreational divers shooting to the surface. @boulderjohn has commented about a joint PADI/DAN study looking at air embolism deaths (correct me John if I misrepresent what you said or get anything wrong) where people were not able to perform emergency ascents in a speed appropriate fashion.

The study found that of all the dive fatalities that could relate to training (as, for example, heart attacks do not), the most common was an air embolism following a panicked ascent to the surface, assumedly while holding the breath. Let's look at the implications and what can be done through training to prevent that.

1. Saying it is the most common training-related cause of fatality does not mean it is common. Despite what many will want you to believe, training-related fatalities are pretty rare.
2. The implication is that these fatalities could have been avoided if the divers had exhaled throughout the ascent. That is already covered in the training for the CESA. Actually, the study indicates that the cause of the fatalities was a poorly done CESA, so we have to wonder about that training. I have written many times about my disagreement as a professional educator about the way CESA is taught. In fact, I believe it does as much to encourage breath holding as discourage it. Reading the many threads on ScubaBoard indicates that it is common for people to fear they will not have enough air in their lungs to reach the surface when they start the CESA, which is a function of the way we teach the horizontal CESA. If you watched the Navy training film on buoyant ascents, you will not that the trainees are told to exhale ALL the air in their lungs before starting the ascent; there is no danger a diver starting a CESA will run out of air, unless they are ridiculously slow.
3. The most common reason for a diver to initiate an ascent is an OOA situation. Because of the study, PADI made the following changes to their OW training.
   1. Increased emphasis and practice on using the buddy system.
   2. Increased emphasis and practice on gas awareness. In confined water, students are supposed to spend extensive time in free swimming, and during that time they are expected to be able to respond to a request for their current gas level without looking at their SPG because they should have looked at it recently enough to be able to give an answer that is close enough.

 

[boulderjohn]

I want to make sure people understand that I do not advocate avoiding carrying ditchable weight. If you need weight to dive, there is nothing wrong with carrying some of it in a way that can be ditched. Some people don't need weight when they dive. As I indicated earlier, I don't need it when diving recreationally with a wetsuit and one of my Worthington LP 85's. In that case, I am not worried about not having ditchable weight.

I also agree that many and perhaps most recreational divers are very much overweighted, in which case, yes, some of that needs to be ditchable. It is better, though, to just be properly weighted.

I also think it should be obvious that if you are properly weighted as you are, it makes no sense whatsoever to add additional weight so it can be ditched.

 

[boulderjohn]

Unfortunately proper weighting seems to be very rare in modern scuba teaching. It has somehow become a specialty. I’m not sure if they work on actually shedding unneeded weight or just teach them to become better elevator divers?

Proper weighting is still a part of the OW course. Nothing has changed there. The problem is that instructional technique used by most instructors favors overweighting. That has always been true, though, so it has always depended upon the individual instructor. Divers are actually more likely to be taught proper weighting today than in the past.

A number of years ago, I filled in for a sick assistant in the confined water portion of the OW class. The instructor knew that I taught OW differently from the traditional method, and he made sure I understood that as the assistant in the class, I was to teach his way--on the knees and anchored to the floor with plenty of weight. When we came to the portion of the class where we were required by standards to teach proper weighting, he jokingly remarked about what a waste of time that was, because you can't teach a class with students having so little weight. He did the exercise and then had the students return to the overweighted norm.

In contrast, if you are teaching the class to students who are neutrally buoyant and in horizontal trim, as is becoming increasingly popular, overweighting students is your enemy. The students perform best with proper weighting. If you are teaching in a freshwater pool with students in 3mm wetsuits, they need very little weight, and many will need none at all. This creates a problem with teaching the surface weight drop skill that is now required. I had to have a separate weight belt set up by the side of the pool so I could have the students see what it would be like to drop weights while on the surface. If they just dropped what they were carrying (or not carrying), they would not feel any real difference dropping their weights.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Proper weighting is still a part of the OW course. Nothing has changed there. The problem is that instructional technique used by most instructors favors overweighting. That has always been true, though, so it has always depended upon the individual instructor. Divers are actually more likely to be taught proper weighting today than in the past.

A number of years ago, I filled in for a sick assistant in the confined water portion of the OW class. The instructor knew that I taught OW differently from the traditional method, and he made sure I understood that as the assistant in the class, I was to teach his way--on the knees and anchored to the floor with plenty of weight. When we came to the portion of the class where we were required by standards to teach proper weighting, he jokingly remarked about what a waste of time that was, because you can't teach a class with students having so little weight. He did the exercise and then had the students return to the overweighted norm.

In contrast, if you are teaching the class to students who are neutrally buoyant and in horizontal trim, as is becoming increasingly popular, overweighting students is your enemy. The students perform best with proper weighting. If you are teaching in a freshwater pool with students in 3mm wetsuits, they need very little weight, and many will need none at all. This creates a problem with teaching the surface weight drop skill that is now required. I had to have a separate weight belt set up by the side of the pool so I could have the students see what it would be like to drop weights while on the surface. If they just dropped what they were carrying (or not carrying), they would not feel any real difference dropping their weights.

It’s been a long time since I’ve participated in any sort of class environment so I’m trusting what you say about the problem of overweighting is indeed getting better.
When I got certified we were overweighted - I found out later.
The training was thorough and good but overweighting was still the ugly duckling of the trade. One guy had 40# on! I think they slammed me with 35#. Later, after diving on my own for a while and gleaning info from other divers, I was able to shed that down to about 24# and that was in a 7mm with a jacket- no plates yet.

Just the other day during a shop sponsored fun dive, a couple newly certified guys showed up to get on a few dives. We were at a popular cove up on the coast. They ended up coming up way out in the ocean because they navigation skills were still a little weak. They got tired trying to fin in on the surface and kind of got pulled off course by currents and ended up getting caught up in a wash against some rocks. Both were in typical shop gear (jackets, integrated weights, aluminum rental tanks) and were overweighted. They made it in OK and didn’t need to be rescued, but all they kept saying was how they had to put enormous amounts of air in their jackets to stay afloat and that squeezed on them making it hard to get deep lungfulls of air. At one point one almost tried to figure out how to unclip the weights pouches and get rid of some weight but didn’t want to buy expensive replacement pockets for the BC, or a new BC if they weren't available. So apparently OW in my area hasn’t gotten the memo yet.
Back on the beach some of us made it into a learning moment and had a very positive conversation with them about what took place. They are very thankful for the insight and vowed to rethink their weighting strategies.

 

[boulderjohn]

It’s been a long time since I’ve participated in any sort of class environment so I’m trusting what you say about the problem of overweighting is indeed getting better.

Overweighting students is still very much a problem. I assume it is getting better because of the trend toward neutral buoyancy teaching, which is done best with properly weighted students.

When I posed for pictures comparing the methods for the PADI article 10 years ago, I posed for the neutrally buoyant pictures with my normal instructional weight, which was about 6 pounds heavier than ideal so that I could descend quickly to assist students as needed. I was fine with that. When I tried to do the skills on the knees for the comparison shots, I could not do it. I had to wear at least 12 pounds to perform the skills that way.