Help With Trapped Air in Drysuit

[mikeyjoe]

I need some advice.

I dive in a 7mm neoprene drysuit and am having troubles with trapped air in my suit at the beginning of a dive.

I burp my suit (open the neck seal and crunch down as low as possible) before I dive but still feel there is too much trapped air. Although I carry plenty of weight - still slightly neg with 500 psi - I struggle to descend and usually revert to a heads down descent kicking. Once below 15-20 feet I am fine and feel the residual air squishing around.

Does anybody have any other tricks to get air out of a suit?

 

[MyDiveLog]

I used to put a lot of effort into getting the air out of the dry suit before I entered the water, then I realized that 1) it made it less comfortable walking around and 2) the water pressure does a better job anyway. Now I leave the vent closed until I've entered the water. Once I'm ready to descend I open the vent and raise my left arm, and the ocean squeezes all the water out better than I ever could on land. Once all the air stops coming out, I deflate my BC and down I go ...

 

[Diver0001]

try starting the descent feet first and venting on the surface.

Patience is the key, drysuits don't generally vent as fast as your BCD does and you need to wait for all the air to migrate to the vent. Also, the undergarment you're wearing will have a big impact on how fact you'll be able to get it to vent.

Another thing to consider is that the air might not be in your suit. It might be in your lungs.... If descending is stressing you out I'd even be willing to put money on you holding too much air in your lungs.

R..

 

[dlndavid]

plenty of weight might not be enough, I had to add a bunch more than what I dived with in my 7 mil.

 

[mirrocraft]

i would add more wieght you can never have to much as long as you have good bouyency control add weight if your to heivy ad air and then slowly take some weight off till you have it just right

 

[jonnythan]

Burping the neck while standing shoulder-deep in the water usually does the trick. If you're floating in the water, carefully burping the neck while vertical will do it too.

 

[mikeyjoe]

Thanks all - lots of good advice, especially the trapped air in my lungs because of being uptight about things......

I used to descend feet down and then dropped some weight in a peak perfomance buoyancy class, but had to revert to kicking head down. I have added back all the weight I dropped and now feel I am back to square one. Maybe with these tips I can drop some lead........