Frustrated with Dry Suit Buoyancy - HELP!

[scubascobey]

Thanks to all of you for your input. I worked hard on this today, spending a lot of extra time on weight checks before and after my first dive (with only 500 in tank). For this dive, I dropped from 27.5 down to 23.5. After this dive, I did another round of weight checks and decided to remove another 1.5 (from tank). I dove with 22 lbs on the 2nd dive (which was my Buoyancy Dive) and I totally mastered it! It was a HUGE difference going down in weight. I was able to find neutral all the way to 100 feet on my first dive (my Deep Dive) and held it all the way to ascent and easily handled the safety stop.

Thanks to everyone for your input!! This is a great site. You guys are really amazing.

 

[scubapatton]

Great job. Everyone noted exactly what I was thinking.. as I scrolled down the messages, I kept thinking... lower wait 4'5" at 115 or so and near 30#?! Then the Steel 110 tank?! The tank is almost half your height... :11:

Great to hear you mastered the skill. So did you truly have to do a 5-min hover? I think I might fall asleep trying to lie still and do nothing for 5 minutes...

The instructor would have to wake me up for sure...

 

[scubascobey]

I hovered for 3 minutes. He was happy with that. And I'm actually 5'4" tall, not 4'5"...my bad that I blame on my typing!

 

[BarryNL]

I think I might be overweighted or the weights just not distributed correctly. I'm going to try this: 25 lbs (2.5 less weight), distributed as 8 on belt, 14 in BC and 3.0 on my tank. A veteran diver friend thinks 25 is still too much weight for me.

I'm almost certain you're way overweighted. The first thing to do is get your weighting sorted out. Go to a swimming pool with all your kit and do the eye level floating thing. I'd bet you don't need more than about 20 lbs.

You might also wish to ask the instructor why he thinks you should be using a piece of equipment designed to keep you warm to control your buoyancy in preference to a device (BCD) actually designed to do this.

 

[scubapatton]

The limited experience I have with dry suits is that there are typically two main lines of thought. One side advocates use the BCD for what it is called - Buoyancy. But then their is another major line of thought that has people advocating to use your drysuit as buoyancy.

Since neither is truly a wrong way to go for individual people, it seems to make sense... Do what you want between the two, or even combine the two to a point.

I just ordered my drysuit and have not tried either way yet, but I see merits to BOTH sides...

As for the OP, it seems like 20 would in fact be an acceptable weight for you to try (as Barry noted), but try it in the pool first (remembering to add weight for salt water if there is that issue). I do not know if you are using a salt water pool, or are diving in salt water regions for open water.

Great job.

 

[MSilvia]

You might also wish to ask the instructor why he thinks you should be using a piece of equipment designed to keep you warm to control your buoyancy in preference to a device (BCD) actually designed to do this.

I'm pretty sure PADI standards require it to be taught that way.

 

[BarryNL]

Since neither is truly a wrong way to go for individual people, it seems to make sense... Do what you want between the two, or even combine the two to a point.

I just ordered my drysuit and have not tried either way yet, but I see merits to BOTH sides...

Admittedly for recreational diving you should need fairly small amounts for air for buoyancy and can get away with using your suit; I think PADI teaches this on the basis that it's simpler to have all your air in one place. If you need to dump air quickly you only have one place to do it from. In other words, the advantage is simplicity.

If you have ambitions to tech diving though there is no choice. You use your BCD (well, wing). At the start of your tech dive your doubles full of air plus stages and the air they contain means you might need as much as 10 liters of air in your compensator just to achieve buoyancy. Trying to put that much in a drysuit is a recipe for trouble.

Another point is simply the extra flexibility of using a BCD/wing. With that you can dump air from both the top and bottom so you can happily dump air in a feet up position. I guess all it take is one feet up ascent in a dry suit to decide to switch to the BCD for buoyancy

So, my 2 cents - fine, use the drysuit in the course but then start leaning to use the BCD again and just put enough air in the suit to avoid squeeze.

 

[String]

All the symptoms in the original post would hint at being extremely overweighted.

Especially if the physical description is true.