how often should i service ?

[gooner69]

how often should i service my regs? i dive approx 20 times per year (warm salt water )

 

[Zung]

Every 5 years if you have no issues with warranties/free parts and if you rinse your gear carefully.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

Here is a good starting point, that will allow you to do your own inspections between services, and will help you make more informed decisions regarding if and when you need to service your regulator:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/regulators/346813-regulator-inspection-checklist-rev-7-a.html


The rule I go by is: "Inspect and Test often, Service only when needed".

Best wishes.

Edit: I just discovered the regulator checklist is "sticky" again.... whoohooo!!! I've changed the link above to the Rev. 7, "sticky" version.

 

[knowone]

Ahhhhhhh. The sound of listening to the informed.

What? England? Do you have a salt chlorinated heated pool?

 

[Scared Silly]

LT has some good advise which is also what I follow. I rinse my gear very well after each trip. By rinse I mean a good long soak, 1 hour or so. That lets the salts dissolve in hard to reach places like screw threads. Next dry well before storage. I may let it sit out (not in the sun) for a day or more before I put it away, sometimes just cause I get busy. I inspect my gear as well - a simple check is to get a simple IP (intermediate pressure) gauge and check that reg is with in spec. If they are not in spec I service them.

BTW I know of a couple of people who use their regs for 5-6 years without servicing them. They sell them at that point and buy new ones.

 

[beachnik]

@gooner69

I highly recommend that you follow the good advise posted by the members above.

I'll give you another reason to read and follow their advice: you need a simple method to check the basic quality of the dive shop's repair work.

I recently got my regulator back from a dive shop. My relatively new regulator needed a 'repair under warranty'. So, although I only had 30 dives on the gear, I had them do a routine over-haul at the same time (there's a good reason for this, but it's too long a story to explain here - I'm not recommending that other people get their gear over-hauled after 30 dives - unless of course they learn how to test the stuff and the tests indicate that something is wrong). When the gear came back to me, I discovered that the dive shop made several mistakes - so I sent the gear back to them. The second time the gear came back to me, I discovered that the dive shop made an additional mistake when they reassembled the gear - and I don't mean something as simple as a loose port plug! By this time I was getting frustrated with them and fixed it myself.

I only caught the mistakes because I've read and followed the advice that you can find here on SB.

Incidentally, the shop I sent my gear to is frequently recommended by experienced divers - sooner or later, they all make mistakes and no one is going to be as concerned about your gear as you will be.

 

[jbird71]

I was told by my LDS to bring in my Reg once a year for servicing. At the time this seemed "reasonable" for such an important safety device, but I take good care of my gear and don't dive a huge amount, so I guess once a year is overkill.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

I was told by my LDS to bring in my Reg once a year for servicing. At the time this seemed "reasonable" for such an important safety device, but I take good care of my gear and don't dive a huge amount, so I guess once a year is overkill.

I think in many cases annual service is overkill; But you do need to keep track of how your regulator is performing and inspect it carefully and often (before & after each dive is what I do).

In some cases, servicing 1x/year may actually not be often enough (regulator seeing high level of use, not being rinsed properly, etc.).

And if the only time the regulator is getting "looked" at carefully and tested is 1x/year, I think that is possibly inadequate.

Investing in an IP gauge and inspecting and testing your regulator frequently is a good thing for every diver to do.

Best wishes.

 

[redacted]

We are getting ready for a trip and I inspected my wife's Mk20. It had been breathing quite well (leaking just a bit with the S600 adjuster wide open) but I always do a good inspection before a trip. I noticed IP was on the high side (I usually set hers about 135) close to 145 with less than 5 psi creep. It had similar performance about a year ago and I had removed the washer under the seat retainer to bring IP back to 140. With the trip coming, I decided I might as well service it. The reg was reasonably clean but the lube (Christolube) looked dried out a bit and dirty (dark gray). I'm sure I could have just gone with a good cleaning and not replaced any parts but, since it was my wife's reg, I replaced the seat and dynamic o-rings. When I finished I went back and checked my records on when it was last serviced. Four years and 192 dives ago. And I'm confident that just a cleaning and lube would have gotten at least another year of good performance (but it is my wife's reg).

With good user care and periodic inspections, many regs will go well beyond the manufacturers recommended service interval.

 

[Zung]

Thanks for this valuable datapoint, awap.

If I may extrapolated a little: your lady did 192 dives over the last 4 years, so that's 50 dives a year. The 1st sign of warning (IP high) was last year, or about the 150th dive, give or take. That's perfectly in line with what DA said in others threads. Then you have this 2nd warning at the 200th dive.

From this, we can derive a fairly reliable rule of thumb for the MK25/20/10Plus which all use the same seat:

• 100 dives between service is safe
• 150 dives between service is achievable, with a little attention (de-shimming)
• 200 dives is push it a little far

Note that SP claims 1 million cycles for those seats: assuming 15 breaths per min. and 1000 breaths or cycles per 1h dive, that's 1000 dives.