Flooded Regs

[DNAXdiver]

Undo the hose from both stages. Remove all the port plugs and the inlet filter. Soak everything in the cleanest water you can find - preferably distilled, but tap water or bottled drinking water is better than nothing. Let them soak for a while, then reassemble, hook up to a tank, open the valve very slowly, then purge repeatedly until no more water comes out. Then go for a dive to finish the drying process.
This may be overkill for a swimming pool flood - SCUBA air is very dry, and chlorine very volitile, so just purging repeatedly may do the trick. But it's a great procedure to follow after a salt water flood, and, if done promptly, may avoid having to overhaul the reg, and certainly will allow putting if off until convenient.

 

[Norm]

I doubt that submerging a capped Sherwood first stage, unpressurized, would hurt it any - at least at the depth of a freshwater rinse. That's why the point where the bubbles emit from the first stage is called a "check valve". When I use one for a stage bottle I pressurize it before submerging and just before dropping it off, I valve it off. Never had a problem yet.

 

[The Chairman]

to flood a Sherwood reg through it's bleed. All regs have water get into the equalization chamber... thats how they keep the pressure 120-150psi above ambient. Some manufacturers have a system to environmentally seal these chambers, but Sherwood keeps a fine stream of bubble to keep the water and other crap out. The orifice is so tiny and the bubbles are quite minimal when under pressure. I would think that the surface tension of water would prohibit it from entering this orifice it is so small.

 

[Norm]

You are correct about the tiny orifice, (flow control element), but it is internal, not external. The balance chamber has to be variable volume, thus the need to bleed off excess pressure. The tiny stream of bubbles emits through the check valve which keeps water out, under reasonable pressure, but lets the bubbles creep around and under the seal.