I lost 2400psi in 30 seconds

[Uncle Pug]

As a general rule (even though I fill my own tanks and know what I filled them to)
I check the pressure:
1) When I load them into the back of the truck
2) Just before getting into my rig
3) Just before descending while taking a breath on the reg
4) At the bottom of the descent
5) Thereafter (depending on the dive) either at regular intervals or at set locations

 

[Warren_L]

I like to check the pressures as well before I leave the fill station. In past, I've had short fills due probably to whoever was filling the tanks forgetting to finish the fill. The filling process requires switching banks to incrementally higher pressure banks. But since I do my own fills 99% of the time, I give myself a good hour, and I know it is done properly. But when someone else does the fill, they typically don't have the time to do a nice slow fill and to top it up properly, so it's not uncommon to end up with a hot fill that ends up short when it cools down. Which is why I do it myself when possible. But always check.

 

[CelticRavenVA]

I always wondered why we looked at the guage when we pulled a breath. This certainly explains why we shouldn't shortcut this step. Thanks for the post. Good lesson for us not to get too complacent.

Jaci,
There are two reasons and one of the gear heads will prob clear up what I am about to grossly mis-state. There is, and I have seen an instance (usually in rental equipment that is getting used alot as I understand it) where the guage will not report the correct amount of air. it reads 3000, you take a breath it drops to like 600.... don't know what the issue is but they had a set of regs at a place I stayed once that were in for repair, that they actually showed me what it did on the gauge...

Oh yeah... the other is to make sure you really have air.

 

[Web Monkey]

Jaci,
There are two reasons and one of the gear heads will prob clear up what I am about to grossly mis-state. There is, and I have seen an instance (usually in rental equipment that is getting used alot as I understand it) where the guage will not report the correct amount of air. it reads 3000, you take a breath it drops to like 600.... don't know what the issue is but they had a set of regs at a place I stayed once that were in for repair, that they actually showed me what it did on the gauge...

Oh yeah... the other is to make sure you really have air.

If the gauge drops from 3000 to 600 when you breathe on it, either the tank valve isn't fully open, the tank valve is broken or has crud in it, or something is clogging up the inlet to the first stage (probably the filter screen).

In any case, if it does that, don't dive until the problem is fixed. The gauge is fine. It's telling you there's an equipment problem.

Terry

 

[georgelawrence]

Hey, I'm back. Wow, I wasn't expecting so many responses in just one day. SB is quite a place!

So here's the story of my ascent...

When I saw the 600 number on the dial, before I could think of anything else, the thought "Don't Panic" snapped into my mind. I had this drilled into me all through the cert classes. And I've had a few other near misses in my life (I drive a motorcycle through the streets of Los Angeles everyday) that have really taught me this. A buddy of mine is an FBI Sniper, he told me that their unofficial motto is "Don't run, you'll just die tired". So actually, that flashed through my mind too. "Don't panic, you'll just die tired".

Anyway, I took a couple of seconds to just relax and thing about my situation. I knew that the dive was over and that we should ascend, so I signaled my buddy that we were going up. My buddy is my wife, and we've had almost exactly the same number of dives together. One of the few times she was too busy to dive with me was in HedoIII, but that's a story that should be posted in a different forum ;-) We are basically both novice AOW divers. But we are very comfortable and accustomed to diving with each other, so that helped us stay relaxed on the unexpected ascent.

So from the "show me / show you" I knew she was in good shape - just a touch under 3k. I decided that my 600 would probably be enough to last me during a slow, controlled ascent. But I wanted her bottle of air close by just in case it wasn't. So I grabbed her arm and indicated that we'd ascend with our arms locked. She indicated with her octo to ask if I wanted to share air. I indicated no.

I flipped my wrist computer around so the dial was facing the same way as my palm. Then I held my pressure gauge in the same hand so I could see them both in one glance. I took this hand (my right hand) and interlocked it with hers like we're doing a square dancing do-si-do. We both put our left hands on our deflators and started kicking for the surface.

From there on out it was pretty easy. Basically I was just watching my depth and ascent rate on the computer, and my air pressure on the dial. Both numbers (depth and pressure) were going down nice and slowly, and everything was peachy. My tiny bubbles were rising faster than we were, and both of us were comfortable with the situation.

There was however, one minor hiccup during the ascent. Which I suppose could be considered another incident in and of itself. With about 25 feet to go, my ascent rate was getting a little too fast even though I was dumping air. Unexpectedly my buddy's arm slipped out of my grip and she was rising faster than I was. With my left hand I dumped all the air out of my BC, and with my right I grabbed her fin and pulled her down (which I know pulls me up a little too). Once we were face to face I showed her the ascent rate warning on the computer, but we were now descending and the warning went away after a few seconds.

She gave me the "something's wrong with my BC" sign, I gave her the ok, grabbed her again (this time with death grip strength) and controlled the buoyancy for both of us during the rest of the ascent. I didn't know exactly what was wrong with her BC, but I figured her deflator was stuck and she had a BC full of air. I suppose I could have used her dumps, but really all I wanted to do was get through the last 20 feet slowly enough to make my computer happy and then sort it out on the surface.

Although I expected it to, the computer didn't call for a safety stop. Normally I would have hung out anyway, just to practice my hover and get my "money's worth" of my air, but if the computer was OK with us skipping it, I was too. We slowly made our way to the surface without any further problems.

Once there we inflated our BCs and started asking each other all of the "what happened" questions. Turns out that her deflator *was* stuck and that it required a really hard push to get it to deflate properly. So she thought she was pushing hard enough to vent air, but actually nothing was happening. That's why she was rising faster than I was.

We switched to snorkel, fin kicked it back to the beach, and then sorted it all out over snacks. As it turned out, I ended the dive with a little bit of air still in the tank. I supposed I could have shared air on the way up, but in the end didn't need to.

BTW, Simply because we didn't want to schlep our BCs on the ferry over to Catalina, we decided to rent them there. Now I see the benefit of diving with your own equipment. I'm sure rental places strive to keep their gear it proper working order, but nothing beats using your own personal gear. As a reult, we've decided to get a nice Pelican case (or similar) and take our one familiar equipment with us from now on.

 

[wedivebc]

Good post. Way to keep your cool even performing a minor rescue while sorting out your own problem.
BZ

 

[bertschb]

Sounds like you did a great job handling the situation (although I'm sure other here will disagree - lots of picky people here).

BTW, thanks for your post. I've been diving a long time and have not yet had any emergencies nor have any of my buddies on any of our dives. Because of that, it's easy to get complacent and that's bad. I like to hear stories like yours to remind of things I should do to stay safe.

 

[georgelawrence]

Thanks guys. Actually, I like getting constructive criticism from others (even if they seem like they're being picky). It's all part of learning and improving.

If nothing else, I'm glad I was able to keep calm. I know I probably could have done things better, but at least I made it through without loosing my cool. I guess I owe a little of that to my quirky habit of visualizing problems and thinking through how I would react.

Sometimes I'll sit at home in a quiet room and imagine myself on a nice peaceful dive. Then I think of all the things that could possibly go wrong. I'll visualize myself calmly taking care of whatever the problem was, without panicking. That way if the same thing happens for real, hopefully my brain will be thinking "I've had this happen to me a few times before, it's no big deal. All you gotta do is..."

I guess it's kinda like in the astronaut movies (Apollo 13, From the Earth to the Moon, etc.). You know, where the astronauts are in the simulator, and the dude in the control booth says something like "and now we're going to simulate an out of control power thruster, let's see how they can handle that". The astronauts know going into the simulator, that they might have some kind of unexpected situation thrown at them, so they are actually expecting something to happen.

 

[Scot M]

I might have taken the octo and saved the little bit of air in my tank "just in case". On the other hand, that would be one more thing to manage during an already stressful ascent.

 

[Wristshot]

Good job. Thanks for sharing.

I have one question: After you initially checked the air pressure in both tanks, did you replace the protective boots over the valves? Were there boots for the valves? Just wondering. (did someone else take a tank away that had the boot off?)

Even when you have your own gear, you won't always take everything with you. While it is nice to think that if you had your own tanks, that sort of thing would not happen, traveling still brings these sorts of things to bear.

You have given us ALL a reminder that we need to check our air many many times, not just occasionally. That is not a mistake that you or your wife will ever make again.


Wristshot