LP port on top of Mk25

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kouhoutek

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Location
Denver
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25 - 49
I was going over my Mk25, and I noticed in addition to the 4 LP ports on the sides, it had another right on the top. I checked manual, and confirmed that was an LP port, mentioning it also had a 15% greater air flow than the others.

What exactly does that mean? Is the intermediate pressure 15% greater, or is it talking about something else?

Also, what would the port be used for? Greater airflow would only really help the second stage, I would think, but then the hose routing would be weird, and a lost reg might wind up anywhere.

Any ideas?
 
It makes doubles hose routing way easier. I wish oceanic made a reg with a bottom LP port. Here is a picture with m25s on a set of AL80 doubles:

hosekit_doubles_baretanks.jpg

And the regs off the tanks:
hoseconfig-all.jpg


As to greater flow, it means it can supply more air, which is good if you are deep and/or working hard. The port is used on doubles for the BC inflator on the right post and the backup reg on the left post.
 
The 15% higher flow bit is somewhat misleading. All the LP ports originate in the same chamber, and so share the same IP. The top port supposedly has a lower friction coefficient with rapidly moving air. Which means that if the reg was hooked up to an unlimited volume of air at 3000PSI, and if both the top port and a side port were wide open, sure, more air would come out the top port. But, seeing as how the MK25 can flow 300SCFM, or enough to theoretically empty an AL80 in 12 seconds, it's hardly realistic to think that a 2nd stage hooked up to the top port will receive any more air than one hooked up to a side port. They're both going to result in the 2nd stage getting any amount of air it demands.

The top port is great for long hose routing on single tanks, as well as the really good photo of doubles above.
 
Mattboy covered it. The highest first stage you can find will have a flow rate no more than 70 SCFM.

SP measures flow rate with a constant supply pressure, a special valve with large enough flow passages to keep up with the reg and an open LP port (no hose, no second stage). So the connection to the real world is non existant as the tank valve, LP hose and second stage all impose limits on the flow rate that are reached long before the 300 SCFM flow rate of the first stage can be reached.

In practice, 110 SCFM is more than enough to support any diver at any depth reachable on open circuit with enough flow rate to feed the second stage plus some left over for inflators, etc. 150 SCFM is enough to support two divers fully purging two regs simultaneously, but that really only applies to recreational diving as technical dives will have first stages each feeding one second stage. In reality, two divers inhaling simultaneously at depth will use far less than 150 SCFM. The Mk 10 has a flow rate in the 110-120 SCFM flow range and has long been acknowledged to be more than adequate for any technical diving application so 300 SCFM is about 180 SCFM more than you need.

So in short, the high flow rate of the MK 25 and 15% bonus out the top port make divers feel better, but it is basically hype. It does offer a different approach to hose routing, but it is a chicken or the egg argument. When you really look at it, it is a hose routing approach that makes a swivel turreted reg like the Mk 10/15/20/25 useable for technical diving as it avoids havng hoses sprouting in inconvenient directions. It is not an ideal hose routing in the larger scheme of things as the routing offered by just about any first stage with 2 LP ports per side side and an HP port per side like the Mk 17 , Poseiden, etc, allows the hoses to be routed straight down for a cleaner and simpler hose routing that allows better access to the valves.

Consequently the Mk 20/Mk25 is over kill in terms of perfromance and the top port hose routing is a crutch to make the hose routing workable with that style of reg - but is has oddly enough become a reason people dive the reg in the first place. Go figure.

Where a swivel turret reg like the Mk 25 offers advantages on hose routing is on a single tank set up where it angles the hoses partially forward rather than straight out to the sides as will occur if you have a reg like the Mk 17 set up with more than 2 LP hoses. And in that application, you would rarely use the top port as that would require tilting the reg which again with more than 2 LP hoses, puts one of them off at an odd angle.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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