Gear Failure Experience

[TSandM]

Biggest failure: A freeflow nobody could stop. Luckily at 35 feet, and with two buddies standing ready to air-share. Never figured out why it happened.

Other failures: Leaking LP inflator hose, disconnected and used suit.

Mask with unmanageable leak; aborted dive, discovered retaining ring dislodged. Corrected.

Multiple primary light failures, some fixable, some required factory repair.

Burst disc leak on a set of doubles in MX. Aborted dive.

Vytec computer went south. Noted at beginning, before descending. Took buddy's spare gauge and dove.

Failed HP hose. Noted with bubble check. Replaced with spare and dove.

Flooded SPG. Usable for two days, then algae growth in the water obscured the needle. Ever try to find a shop that sells isolated SPGs on Cozumel?

Weight lost from multi-pocket weight belt. Did my deco holding onto kelp stipes. It wasn't fun. I have weight belts with threaded hard weights now.

By far and away, the single piece of equipment that has caused me the most woes is a dry suit. I've had leaks, floods, torn seals, leaking exhaust valves, stuck exhaust valves . . . If some piece of equipment is going to ruin a dive, it's going to be the dry suit.

 

[nereas]

I was lucky with my drysuit !

The wrist seals tore once on the beach when putting it on, after 4 years. Now I use replacable wrist seals, and I bring extras.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

I had a weight pouch from my BC drop out. Later determined that one of the staps had pulled through a slot in the release system. I keep most of my lead on a belt so I was able to maintain control and ascend at a normal rate instead of an elevator ride. Could have been worse.

 

[katdiver]

I had my HP hose fail the other day. It was one of those Poseidon kevlar hoses, they are really thin. It was a couple of years old, but always look like new and gave no warning when it went. We were on descent ~5m down when I felt a thump in the back, like another diver had dropped on me going too fast. Looked around and saw my buddy (he hadn't knocked me) with big eyes pointing at me. I could hear a fizzing, I looked at my spg, read zero, but I'm still breathing! Ok, surface, swim back, change spg and hose. Lost only 20 bar, so used same tank and back in.

 

[Water Bug]

Had LP hose burst above water and almost deafened me. Stuck on inflator.
Free flow 2nd stage - corrected.
Primary light malfunction - replaced and happy for backup.
Dive computer blacked out at 90ft - brand new and on 3rd dive.
significant mask leak - cracked and likely due to damage on boat.
Flooded camera housing due to faulty housing component.

 

[bigken462]

beyond a few broken fin straps before moving over to springs nothing has happened to my gear. However, I was diving with a new diver who came flying over to me holding their broken inflator hose in their hand where she had pulled the whole thing off. The ring around the elbow broke off and separated from the BC.

Ironically I had just went over why I chose to remove all dump valves from my BC hoses, and the importance to NEVER pull on them things. My point was made clear about 20 minutes later.

Kenny

 

[b1gcountry]

I'll add to the list:
Leaking hoses
Torn drysuit seals
Leaking power inflator
Power Inflator's Metal nipple came free of plastic inflator body
leaking burst disk
Free-flow of second stage
Dry glove rings frozen shut

 

[Lucy's Diver]

Both dry gloves flooded in 34 degree water at the start of a work dive so I couldn't really abort, though it was a short dive. It was new gear to me and I assumed the tender who dressed me knew the gear.

 

[Doc Harry]

Failures that I experienced at depth:

1. SPG failure (w/o air leak)

2. BC inflator hose failure on a new wing, with air minor leak (shut down right post)

3. Regulator hose failure (single tank configuration) with major air leak that led to OOA situation

And the most serious and upsetting failure at depth:

4. The fiberoptic cable that triggers my flash failed

 

[ringmod65]

I had a spooky failure ascending from a deep quarry dive the other day. All of a sudden out of nowhere I found myself in an uncontrolled ascent and just barely managed to grab a hold of a line to keep from breaking the surface. My buddy pointed to my SPG which was free-flowing fast. I made a controlled ascent (faster than I would have liked) using the few breaths that I was able to manage before the tank bled dry.

During the post-mortem is became apparent that the super tiny O-ring that fits into the gauge side of the SPG assembly cracked clean in half.

Anybody ever heard of such a thing? This was a new one to me.

Last time I ever dive without a fully redundant air source.