Freeflow at 140'

[MikeFerrara]

Calling 55 degree water warmish is a stretch for me.

I wonder if it would freeze in 85 degree water? I bled about 1/2 of my AL doubles out and my Apeks didn't freeze.

55 degrees is warm. Throughout much of the world it's colder than that at depth and colder than that even at the surface for much of the year.

Temp is only part of the problem. The other is depth. The deeper you go, the more air the reg has to deliver and the greater the cooling effect.

Apeks and some other regs just don't freeze easy but not every one is using them.

 

[Soggy]

Bottom line....you shouldn't have been at the depth you were at with the equipment, training, and gas you had available to you. That dive should have been thumbed at the surface.

 

[Soggy]

I was planning a second dive and didn't want to go to the pony if I didn't have to. I figuured if the primary didn't get me to the deco tanks, I would go to the pony.

Clarify something: when you say "get me to the deco tanks" do you mean to say that you had dropped them somewhere?

 

[TheRedHead]

55 degrees is warm. Throughout much of the world it's colder than that at depth and colder than that even at the surface for much of the year.

Well, of course I know that. That's why I said for me and put a smiley. It was more a joke.

Seriously, I emptied half the gas in my doubles at 120 feet. I wanted to see if I could swim them up from the bottom half-full (at that time, couldn't do it when full). It took a pretty long time to purge the gas and I don't think that I would allow a freeflow in doubles to continue that long anyway.

 

[Web Monkey]

Around here the issues seem to be more mechanical rather than icing. It has worked for me to just shut it down and then open it up. Have to ask someone that dives in less than 45F/5C water how long it takes to thaw a reg...

Hey, I can answer that! (sort-of)

The time required depends on the water temp and how long you want the thawed reg to last after you restart it, and whether you catch it right when the freeflow starts, or after it's been running for a while.

In 36 - 38 degree water, you can leave it shut down until the ice just thaws in the hex-key holes, which takes maybe 3 minutes, and then restart it and it will be fine until the diver starts using a lot of air.

If you leave it shut down longer (maybe 5 minutes), until the whole first stage really warms up to ambient, it will last longer.

As the water gets colder, it becomes much more difficult and time consuming the thaw the reg, and less likely that it will be good for any long term use.

Terry

Edit: PS. If you're diving in cold water, you'll be in much better shape with cold water regs.

I've never managed to freeze my Atomic M1 or Z1 (both sealed) even in 35 degree water, while pressing the purge. There are a number of other brands of cold water regs that work as well.

 

[Scuba_Steve]

Clarify something: when you say "get me to the deco tanks" do you mean to say that you had dropped them somewhere?

In typical Padi AKA 'wrong' fashion, I'll bet they were hung on the line @ 15ft.

This is standard DIY (dumb-a*$$) gas planning, the kind that is typically taught in Padi Deep specialties....no doubt other rec deep diving classes of other agencies do this too, I do not know, but we know who the leader is here......

I tried once to explain to a CD why this was dumb planning regardless of what the book said but his TecRec IT card out-ranked mine so he would continue to do it this way...... Oh well...

It really grows hair on your chest to do such ballsy diving so I am told.

The even funnier thing here is the quote that you referenced about the guy not wanting to go to the pony because of the chance of screwing up the next dive.....lol

Gotta get those priorities straight Priceless....

 

[Scubydoo713]

In typical Padi AKA 'wrong' fashion, I'll bet they were hung on the line @ 15ft.

This is standard DIY (dumb-a*$$) gas planning, the kind that is typically taught in Padi Deep specialties....no doubt other rec deep diving classes of other agencies do this too, I do not know, but we know who the leader is here......

I tried once to explain to a CD why this was dumb planning regardless of what the book said but his TecRec IT card out-ranked mine so he would continue to do it this way...... Oh well...

It really grows hair on your chest to do such ballsy diving so I am told.

The even funnier thing here is the quote that you referenced about the guy not wanting to go to the pony because of the chance of screwing up the next dive.....lol

Gotta get those priorities straight Priceless....

I agree with you about hanging the tanks. I learned that lesson the hard way. I started out hanging the O2 at 20' on a line that also had a quick link at 10', so that I could do both 20 & 10' stops, if I so chose to. After diving a 170' wreck in Lake Huron, my buddy and ascended to the the deco tank, that was a brand new Aluminum 80, equipped with a first stage, 2 second stages and an spg. after doing our stops, we got back on the boat and removed our gear. As I started to haul up the line that the deco tank was on, I realized that there wasn't anything on the line. All I got was the first section of line with the steel thimble still intact and nothing else. Apparently, the quick link had worked loose and the chop had caused the tank to jump off the line. Since the wreck we were diving on wasn't buoyed, we had to use grappling hook, which we released when we left the wreck. So, my boat was drifting all the time we were doing our deco and after we got back on board, which means that I couldn't pinpoint with any accuracy where the deco setup might be. A $500.00 lesson that will not be forgotton.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

150 ft is not a recreational dive.
If all that happens is your reg free-flows due to icing on a cold water dive and you shut it down and it thaws, and then you're good -- why not continue the dive? You're not in any worse of a situation than when you started.

And if you're at 150 feet and you can't take the time to shut down, then you don't have enough gas to do the dive in the first place.

No, you shut it down and then when you thaw it out, you are certainly in a worse condition compared to when you started the dive. You have probably lost a significant amount of air from your primary tank due to the free flow. You have also used up either some of your pony or your buddy's air while you waited for the thaw and now you are also unsure if it will freeze up again..

It seems reasonable to abort the dive since this was a single tank, non-deco dive to 150 feet or so. After you get the tank off, then thawed, then back on again..I would think it is time to go anyway. So what benefit would be realized from shutting it down, when it seems that you would have to be heading up anyway? I really don't understand this logic.

Having a reg freeze up on a 150 ft dive is much different from having the "breeze" from the scooter causing the second stage to free-flow at 60 feet, under this situation it should be very easy to diagnose: you stop scootering the freeflow stops, you tighten it down a little and you ARE good. However, comparing this to a regulator freeze up which may re-occur at any time seems to be an entirely different situation.

 

[onfloat]

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.

This has me curious, your planning on a NITROX class, but you used deco tanks at 30ft? You dove to 140ft without planning on making it a deco dive? Do you know how many cf of gas you need to make a safe ascent from a 140ft dive? for one or two divers?

 

[lamont]

No, you shut it down and then when you thaw it out, you are certainly in a worse condition compared to when you started the dive. You have probably lost a significant amount of air from your primary tank due to the free flow. You have also used up either some of your pony or your buddy's air while you waited for the thaw and now you are also unsure if it will freeze up again..

If you know it froze up due to pulling too hard on the first stage, and it was a technique error, and you've got adequate gas reserves after doing the shutdown, then this should not be an issue.

It seems reasonable to abort the dive since this was a single tank, non-deco dive to 150 feet or so. After you get the tank off, then thawed, then back on again..I would think it is time to go anyway. So what benefit would be realized from shutting it down, when it seems that you would have to be heading up anyway? I really don't understand this logic.

I wouldn't be doing a single tank "no-deco" dive to 150 to begin with, so that's where the logic starts going wrong.

If your equipment is functioning exactly as well as can be expected on any dive, and you have adequate gas after the thaw, then there's no real reason to call the dive, other than nerves (which is a perfectly acceptable reason). I called a dive on saturday due to a free flow at 120 after having detuned my regs fully and hitting the point where I didn't trust them not to catastrophically free-flow in the near future. That's very different from a situation where you know that you froze your reg because you pulled on it too hard, and you can recover from it, and you have lost no trust in your gear.