Freeflow at 140'

[Rick Inman]

I am in the process of setting up doubles and planning on a NITROX class. Doubles would not have helped me here though unless I had an H rig with redundat regulators. My buddy and I are not real experienced at the 120-160' range, so we were intentionally limiting our bottom time. The second dive of the day was planned for deco. Since this was our first trip to the Barney, we were just planning on overview with more detailed exploration on the second dive.

Betail,

I finished Advanced Nitrox & Recreational Trimix this year, and am in a full Timix class right now, and the one thing I learned is how much I didn't know that I thought I knew. If you really want to do cold water deco dives below 100', you'll enjoy it so much more on doubles using trimix. Not to mention, it's a ton safer! Safer and more fun - it doesn't get much better than that.

Glad it all worked out and you kept your head.

 

[Jason Ooi]

Technical diving with double setup, do you guys experiences, deco and stage bottle regs freeze in any depth....In this critical situation, what is you solution?.....just pretend you alone with no buddy.

What is your backup plan?

 

[Rick Inman]

Technical diving with double setup, do you guys experiences, deco and stage bottle regs freeze in any depth....In this critical situation, what is you solution?.....just pretend you alone with no buddy.

What is your backup plan?

Actually I had a deco reg free flow on me a couple of weeks ago at the deep switch (130'). I was also getting a half a mouth of water on every breath (turned out to be a rip in the mouthpiece). I simple feathered the valve until it was time to switch to the richer bottle.

There are all kinds of contingency plans on this kind of dive, including "lost gas" scenarios, and plenty of gas to complete the obligation on any/either/or of the bottles.

 

[lamont]

Technical diving with double setup, do you guys experiences, deco and stage bottle regs freeze in any depth....In this critical situation, what is you solution?.....just pretend you alone with no buddy.

What is your backup plan?

My primary started to free-flow this morning at 120' and while I managed to fix it without doing a shutdown, the procedure is to shutdown the right post and switch to the backup reg. Then either go back on the primary and/or abort.

 

[Scubydoo713]

I am in the process of setting up doubles and planning on a NITROX class. Doubles would not have helped me here though unless I had an H rig with redundat regulators. My buddy and I are not real experienced at the 120-160' range, so we were intentionally limiting our bottom time. The second dive of the day was planned for deco. Since this was our first trip to the Barney, we were just planning on overview with more detailed exploration on the second dive.

doubles, with an isolation manifold, long primary hose and secondary on a necklace was designed for exactly the situation you were in. You're diving to 160' (the wreck lies in 160'), on a single tank, on air with a pony bottle too small for the job and you haven't even taken a nitrox course yet? Plus, by the way you describe the events, you were, for all intent and purposes, doing a solo dive, since your buddy seemed to be oblivious to your situation. You're literally diving way over your head.

Your profile says that you have been diving for several years and that you have between 200-500 dives, so it's not like you're a young kid trying to prove how macho he is. you should be old enough and mature enough to realize that technical diving is way beyond the realm of recreational diving, and diving to 160', safely, is way beyond diving a single tank without the very least an H valve and a secondary regulator.

I apologize if I sound critical and harsh, but diving to 160' is not something that should be attempted without the proper equipment and training. We have had at least 4 diver deaths in the Great lakes area already this year. Let's not give the Grim Reaper the upper hand.

Dive safe, dive often

 

[CBulla]

Now thats a sig line quote!

As Diver0001 pointed out to me in my thread, the only emergency is a lack of air. Once that has been rectified, whether it's your pony or your buddy, the rest is an inconvenience.

I'd have to ask . . . If you had a pony, could you switch to it, turn off your primary, and let it thaw? If you had a buddy, could you go on his air supply, turn yours off, and let yours thaw?

I had a freeflow, and it was daunting. It was at 30 feet, but I learned a ton of lessons from it. I agree with you that you can breath off a free-flowing regulator, but why? Turn it off. You had both a buddy and a pony. Your free flow was probably freezing, as was mine. Turn the air flow off. The reg will thaw, and you will get it back. If not, you have two alternate air sources.

The bubbles are very loud and distracting, and interfere with your vision. In addition, the freeflow will bleed your tank down to where you have to have a viz on it before you can get it filled again. Why do that?

You are so very right . . . As Diver0001 pointed out to me in my thread, the only emergency is a lack of air. Once that has been rectified, whether it's your pony or your buddy, the rest is an inconvenience, and should be solved in the least annoying manner possible. It's not an emergency. This was hard for me to swallow when Diver0001 pointed it out, but he was absolutely right.

 

[MikeFerrara]

AIR, I never planned to go deeper than 140. I plan to take a NITROX class this fall and follow up with the mixed gas classes later. Upgrading my gear for deeper dives over the next couple of years.

Upgrading the gear first prevents a lot of problems.

H-valve on a single or doubles (either isolated or independant) would have helped here.

Also, you can just breath the free flow, as you did, and switch to you buddies backup as needed. He should of course have enough gas reserved to get the two of you to the surface. Right?

However, I don't think the reg froze because you spit in it. It froze because at depth, much more air has to move through it because of the increased density. that increased cooling effect combined with the cold water does a great job of freezing up some regs especially when the demand for air is higher than normal. So...sharing air on a single reg in deep water is asking for a free flow also.

Another thing I have to mention is the unreliability of hang tanks in open water. There just isn't any guaranty that you will be ascending on the same line where you hung the tanks. In OW I carry all the gas that I expect to need WITH ME. That includes decompression gas nad contingincy gas.

You lived, so you'll have the oportunity to learn but the first thing to learn here is that you didn't do a deep dive. You did a shallow dive and went too deep...ie your equipment and emergency procedures were all rigged for shallow diving.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Technical diving with double setup, do you guys experiences, deco and stage bottle regs freeze in any depth....In this critical situation, what is you solution?.....just pretend you alone with no buddy.

What is your backup plan?

As Rick already pointed out, it isn't such a critical situation is it? Just feather the tank valve. That was something we had to do in my tech courses and during my trimix course I think both of the other two students had it happen for real. No big deal.

If a decompression gas is lost, you of course have enough gas to deco without it and know what the adjusted schedule will be so it's still no big deal.

If your with a buddy, you can of course even buddy breath a decompression bottle in the case of a lost gas rather than spending a bunch of extra time in the water. Still no big deal.

In the case of a flooding second stage like with Rick's torn mouth piece, a damaged diaghram or a cracked second stage housing (it happens with these plastic regs), just use the purge valve to flush the water and supply air...another required skill in some tech classes. Of course doing a negative pressure check on the reg before the dive usually catches this problem unless the reg is jammed with junk or damaged somehow during the dive.

Of course, learning and practicing all this stuff before doingdeep dives and especially deep dives in cold water turns any one of these malfunctions into minor inconveniences rather than fire drills that divers post as a near miss.

 

[MikeFerrara]

In a real pinch, you can also do just that: KINK THE HOSE. I would replace it before my next dive, but like I said, it's useful in a real emergency.

Are you sure? If it is the first stage that's free flowing, kinking the hose will cause the pressure in that hose to rise to tank pressure (if you are even able to stop the flow). That could be 3000 psi or even more. Will that hose which is designed for an intermediate pressure of 140 psi or so handle that pressure without bursting? Can you even kink the hose in such a way as to have any effect?

I think that kinking the hose might halp in the case of a second stage free flow but seems pure folly in the case of a first stage free flow and you don't have any way to tell the difference in the water.

If you're dressed for the dive there isn't any sense in wasting time or energy doing goofy stuff like kinking hoses.

 

[The Chairman]

Great Point Mike...

I would ONLY do that if I have two Seconds on the First stage. I would just turn off a valve if I had two first stages. Thanks for helping me to clarify that.

However, stopping that horrendous noise coming from a free flow would allow you to think a lot more clearly and would definitely be easy compared to enduring that. As well, you would save your air for a safe ascent.