How to 'check' hoses?

[buddhasummer]

In theory it shouldn't but in practice it could. We had an accident in Miami a few months back when a woman diver was found without any gear on EXCEPT for a weight belt. God only knows what was going through her mind.

I know, it's sad. I had an incident a few years ago that almost ended badly, if was a new diver I can see how it could have.

 

[nimoh]

The point is is that not every diver is as experienced and as skillful as you. And if you understood anything about the way your gear works you would know that the intermediate pressure in your regs is maintained by the fact that the gas leaving the LP system is replaced by more gas delivered from your first stage, if you make a big enough hole in the LP system the first stage cannot deliver enough gas to maintain the intermediate pressure. If you are right try diving to 30 feet and then putting a knife through the hose on your alternate. Then when you come back you can tell us all how well you could breath.

on my reg set, the IP is set at 135psi, and if I hold the purge button down, it drops to 130psi and holds steady which is sufficient to breathe off of the backup.

I am not a regulator expert, but it seems to me that you would need a bigger hole than the orifice on the first stage to leak fast enough that the backup wouldn't work. Now, I probably would get the hose replaced as soon as possible (as did chrpai), but would probably carry a stage if I were doing any diving in the meantime (also, as did chrpai).

However, I probably would have held out for the proper length hose

 

[elan]

Just to clarify a bit.
This is NOT The Basic scuba forum and the posters are NOT obligated to tailor their post to the beginners level and can discuss technicalities.

I understand what you're saying but you need to remember that not everybody reading these threads is veteran with hundreds of dives and new divers are bound to be reading this thread because how to check your gear is something that any new diver should be wanting to learn about. My point is that if you have a piece of gear that is suspect then you don't dive it, you fix it or replace it. In my 20+ years of diving I have heard of too many people being hurt by diving faulty gear or gear they did not understand. When a new diver has a problem particularly with regs the first thing they do is panic and the panic injures or kills. When we post in public forums we have a responsibility to encourage safe practices.

---------- Post added April 29th, 2013 at 06:26 PM ----------

A balanced 2nd will deliver air even at 0psig you can see that if you leave the dust cap off your first stage and breath through your 2 nd.

The point is is that not every diver is as experienced and as skillful as you. And if you understood anything about the way your gear works you would know that the intermediate pressure in your regs is maintained by the fact that the gas leaving the LP system is replaced by more gas delivered from your first stage, if you make a big enough hole in the LP system the first stage cannot deliver enough gas to maintain the intermediate pressure. If you are right try diving to 30 feet and then putting a knife through the hose on your alternate. Then when you come back you can tell us all how well you could breath.

 

[TravisD]

This seems somewhat appropriate....

Cutting a Divers Hose

 

[halocline]

In theory it shouldn't but in practice it could. We had an accident in Miami a few months back when a woman diver was found without any gear on EXCEPT for a weight belt. God only knows what was going through her mind.

How does this story demonstrate that a gear failure causes injury?

---------- Post added April 29th, 2013 at 08:34 PM ----------

And if you understood anything about the way your gear works you would know that the intermediate pressure in your regs is maintained by the fact that the gas leaving the LP system is replaced by more gas delivered from your first stage...

Well, I understand two things about the way regulators work: 1) IP does not drop to zero in a hose failure. Maybe 10-15 PSI, but not more. This also happens when you purge or even take a big breath, BTW. How do you think it works? 2) If my regulator was to magically cease to allow air to flow from the tank at 30 ft, my life would not be in any danger. I'd simply get air from my buddy or swim to the surface. Anyone who is not able to do one of those two things probably does not belong diving. That's not you, is it?