I do not use helium. Should I bother with drysuit inflation bottle?

[mello-yellow]

For anyone who uses trimix, a separate bottle for drysuit inflation is obvious (whether to fill it with air or argon is less obvious, and there is a thread about it on DIR forum). But I do not, so does such bottle provide me any advantage?


One less hose coming down over my shoulder -- but that can be accomplished simply by using a longer hose and routing it under my arm. Conceivably, if my drysuit is connected to a regulator and that regulator free-flows, I have to shut of the valve and lose ability to add air to the suit. But in such cases the only way I would go is up, so no need for more suit inflation. So is there any real use to drysuit inflation system?

 

[nimoh]

The only reason I can think of for using a separate bottle for nitrox dives is if you regularly do trimix dives, then there is no need to swap hoses for nitrox dives (which is my case).

However, I never dive trimix with a single tank, so my single tank reg has a drysuit hose on it

 

[tbone1004]

If you are diving doubles and a drysuit, you should have a drysuit hose in case of emergency, your drysuit is much more important than your wing for inflation, so make sure that you either have a wing inflator hose that is long enough to reach your drysuit, this is typically accomplished in twinsets by running the wing inflator from the right post, or leave a drysuit hose on just in case.

If you aren't diving mix, there really isn't a huge point in argon, unless you're doing dives in the 2+ hour range in sub 40f water regularly. Then you might see the benefits of argon, but if you're following normal recreational profiles and aren't doing long deco, you won't really see much benefit in it. It's an extra bottle to fill that can be a pain to find places to fill it for you, it's not a cheap gas, so there's that, and then it's extra gear to worry about. It is quite rare that non mix divers will carry a suit inflation bottle with them, and even then it's only because they are doing long complex dives in cold water on a regular basis so it's habit.

 

[TSandM]

In very cold water, there might be an advantage to not increasing the flow rate through your first stage by simultaneously breathing and inflating the suit. In addition, should you enter the water with your gas turned off, you could arrest your descent with the suit bottle (which you can easily reach and turn on, if you have forgotten to do so). I personally found Argon helpful in water in the 40's, even for dives in the one hour range.

Whether all of that is worth the $200 or so to set up a suit inflation system is probably dubious. But $200 for Argon is cheaper than $1000 for a heated vest!

 

[manni-yunk]

All of my local dives involve doubles. Just over half of them involve Trimix. For simplicity I use an inflation bottle for all dives, regardless of back gas. This is for the simplicity of keeping my gear and habits consistent and not changing hoses dependedant on gas mixes.

If I was never diving Trimix and had no desire to ever end up that way - I would likely not have an inflation bottle.

 

[mello-yellow]

Thank you all! Your answers confirm what I already thought -- I have no need of an inflation bottle.

 

[tangfish]

I like argon for inflation, and having the bottle on one side balances out the can light on the other side nicely. To each his own.

 

[Hickdive]

There is no need for a separate inflation bottle unless you are using trimix.

If you are diving twins (doubles (sic)) in a hog configuration then your drysuit inflation hose comes off your left post and is therefore not subject to high flow rates caused by inflating/inhaling at the same time (not that that is anything more than a theoretical hazard).

This also provides a useful telltale that your left post isn't off for any reason.