Flooded reg - what to do?

[miketsp]

Ro has it right, even if you never blewit out, it would evaporate eventually. Not a huge deal. All the hoses pass the air and what little water is there through to the regs or BCD which gets expelled, the reason for removing the SPG is that you dont want water in them as there is no opening on the end.

Interesting point about the water in the SPG. Does it really matter?

The reason I ask is that it is quite common on CMAS courses to do "circuits" in the pool and a typical scenario is you get to the corner and you find a cylinder and a regulator set dismounted. You breath off the bottle, mount the regulator on the cylinder, purge, take a few breaths and then leave it & move on to the next corner.

Now although I remember conversations about what first stages may be damaged by this procedure according to their construction (piston / diaphragm) I never heard any comment about water in the SPG.

Even if some did get in, I do not see that it would alter the reading.
I also suppose that after pressurising and depressurising a few times to 200bar the water would tend to come out by itself. Just to make sure one could hold the SPG vertical while going through a few cycles.

 

[turnerjd]

sounds like you caused a 1st stage freeflow (hmm apeks eh) Stuff happens - glad you're OK. Successfully negotiating this, is whats makes a safe <read - good> diver. It takes a combination of training AND experience.

Are we reading the same board here?

In the post above yours, (#8), MASS-Diver said that 1/3 of the O-ring was missing.......

Now, I would suggest that as this was a 7' hose it was not an original Apeks hose, and somebody had just 'nipped' the o-ring whilst installing the new longer hose.

Simple error, simply fixed.

Blank out the HP port for the SPG, put it on a tank, and purge many times - short but frequent bursts.

HTH

Jon T

 

[msandler]

and he didn't catch this at the surface? think about it...

 

[redacted]

Rather than removing the HP hose, I remove the SPG from the hose which blows any water from the hose .

I have a button SPG on a pny reg that has flooded a couple time in SW over the last few years. Once I grabbed the wrong knob as I went to cycle the pressure and once when I tried a G500 which will flood if not maintained under pressure - duh. Although I can see water in the glass, it seems to be working OK.

The rest of the rig I rinsed in FW and blew it dry. Disassembly & cleaning when I got home showed some water remaining in the 1st stage but no worse for the wear.

 

[rescuediver009]

Interesting point about the water in the SPG. Does it really matter?

The reason I ask is that it is quite common on CMAS courses to do "circuits" in the pool and a typical scenario is you get to the corner and you find a cylinder and a regulator set dismounted. You breath off the bottle, mount the regulator on the cylinder, purge, take a few breaths and then leave it & move on to the next corner...

Sorry, I don't mean to offend you, but I see no benefit to that, and would most definetely not do it, or use my regs for it. It seems completely useless and a waste of good equipment. It has no practical use or beneficial skills...
As for the water in the SPG, it would not affect the reading so much as stay in there and corrode over time which rusts the spool (the mechanism that provides the swivel) causing a leak or damage....

 

[MASS-Diver]

Hi Guys,

First of all, thanks for all the feedback. Just to add some details, this is my right post (primary reg), I do not have an SPG on it, so I don't have to worry about that.

I went to my LDS today to pick up a new o-ring and they stated the blown o-ring was probably the result of me having the reg screwed on too loose (as you can see in this thread I had noticed the reg was loose when the problem developed).

Just to be clear, I had just completed a dive and I was standing in waist deep water free flowing the reg (holding it underwater to not bother the neighbors) to drain my doubles down to 500psi - this took a while and the water was 44deg. The violent action of the reg freeflowing probably was enough to jar loose the improperly tightened reg from the hose. [I'm always scared of overtightening stuff and I must have went overboard here]. I then (at 500psi) swam down to 15' at which point I immediatly noticed the bubbling and shut down the post (on instinct - I could have easily just surfaced and keep everything drier).

 

[miketsp]

Sorry, I don't mean to offend you, but I see no benefit to that, and would most definetely not do it, or use my regs for it. It seems completely useless and a waste of good equipment. It has no practical use or beneficial skills...
As for the water in the SPG, it would not affect the reading so much as stay in there and corrode over time which rusts the spool (the mechanism that provides the swivel) causing a leak or damage....

Doesn't offend me, it's not my idea. But circuit training of this type is fairly standard practice on advanced CMAS courses. The LDSs that I know where this is normal have been doing this for years, at least 10. It's not done with the customers own gear but with equipment reserved for this training. This gear spends a lot of time lying at the bottom of the pool. Since the shop does its own maintenance they must know what the long term effects are.
As for the "no practical use or beneficial skills" they consider the circuit training a great confidence builder and a prelude to more technical diving.
All the tech divers I know would quite happily swap regulators around or strip down a second stage while at depth if say a stage bottle reg gave trouble and there was a long obligatory deco. I think most of them carry more tools than I have at home!

 

[tangfish]

I recently had my first stage completely flooded by a friend who forgot to put the cap on it. The whole reg soaked in fresh water for quite a while before I went to pick it up and realized that my SP Mk 25 was completely flooded. I called my LDS in quite a panic and here is what they told me to do.