Mares Horizon - few questions before the decision about course.

[KenGordon]

The question is are there many people for whom those benefits are worth the effort of learning how to dive a rebreather that's so restricted in it's capabilities?

I think the question is whether there are enough people who think “oh, that is nice” but don’t realise there are proper ones too.

The marketing materials are nice. The brand new plastics look nice. It is more interesting than a single etc. If your ambitions don’t include deep dives it probably seems like a fun toy.

 

[Wibble]

Personally, as a rebreather diver, I cannot but suspect that engineers see creating "recreational" rebreathers as an engineering challenge and overlooked the basic facts: rebreathers are complex machines that need a lot of skill and training to pilot safely and recover from the inevitable unit failures. Those skills are well outside those of single tank holiday divers.

Aside from core skills, rebreathers need a certain attitude that is quite pedantic and detail oriented. If you treat a rebreather like I treat my OC kit — roughly and little or no maintenance between dives — a rebreather will kill you without a second thought.

An example. On OC all I do when I get home is shake out and hang up the regs and get more gas for the tanks. OK, I do analyse and mark up the gas after. 5 mins tops.

With the rebreather, I spend at least an hour preparing it the night before a dive using printed checklists. On the boat I’m very particular in running through the pre-dive checklists and pre breathing the unit. Once a week I spend two hours cleaning and disinfecting the rebreather. On the dive I’m very aware of what’s going on and do bubble and bailout checks at the bottom and constantly monitor the vital information on the unit.

OC is simply assemble the kit, turn on the gas, check pressures, breathe, quick pat-down kit check then jump in.

The two diving systems couldn’t be more different.

 

[Marie13]

Aside from core skills, rebreathers need a certain attitude that is quite pedantic and detail oriented. If you treat a rebreather like I treat my OC kit — roughly and little or no maintenance between dives — a rebreather will kill you without a second thought.

An example. On OC all I do when I get home is shake out and hang up the regs and get more gas for the tanks. OK, I do analyse and mark up the gas after. 5 mins tops.

With the rebreather, I spend at least an hour preparing it the night before a dive using printed checklists. On the boat I’m very particular in running through the pre-dive checklists and pre breathing the unit. Once a week I spend two hours cleaning and disinfecting the rebreather. On the dive I’m very aware of what’s going on and do bubble and bailout checks at the bottom and constantly monitor the vital information on the unit.

OC is simply assemble the kit, turn on the gas, check pressures, breathe, quick pat-down kit check then jump in.

The two diving systems couldn’t be more different.

You have to be OCD to do the CCR stuff properly, as far as I’m concerned. I dive with a number of CCR divers now. I keep getting the question of when I’m going CCR, mainly due to the cost of helium. My answer is always nope! First thing when I get home from a day of diving is head for the bathtub for a long, relaxing hot bath. Having to take care of a CCR first? Nope. My gear (aside from drysuit and computers) can sit in the car for a few days after diving. I’ve had water in my wing freeze in the winter. You can’t do that with a CCR. I’ll deal with $4-5/cft for helium. OC is so much simper and low maintenance.

 

[broncobowsher]

Problem with that is it limits travel. Places like Truk and Bikini have such limited Helium supplies that you have to run a rebreather. There simply isn't enough Helium available to support OC regardless of the cost.

 

[Marie13]

Problem with that is it limits travel. Places like Truk and Bikini have such limited Helium supplies that you have to run a rebreather. There simply isn't enough Helium available to support OC regardless of the cost.

Have at. I simply throw my gear in the back of my Escape and off I go! International travel (outside of driving to dive in Ontario) isn’t something I ever worry about.

 

[KenGordon]

Personally, as a rebreather diver, I cannot but suspect that engineers see creating "recreational" rebreathers as an engineering challenge and overlooked the basic facts: rebreathers are complex machines that need a lot of skill and training to pilot safely and recover from the inevitable unit failures. Those skills are well outside those of single tank holiday divers.

I agree, but I do wonder how come the big (in scuba terms) companies seem to keep making the same “mistake”. This and the Hollis Explorer are pretty much interchangeable wrt concept, downsides, upsides etc. Why do Mares think they can make it work?

Maybe if we look at it from the point of being an upgrade to a single 80 for warm water diving, then you get as much time as you like (comparatively speaking) and can still stand up. Compared to a “normal” approach of a twinset or a CCR plus bailout it is quite lightweight.

Personally I am often quite tempted by the Poseidon Mk6. I look at it and think it weighs half of my JJ and would be fine for a week in the Red Sea... I rehearse the “Look what I bought you dear” lines and then I see sense...

Or it might just be the gateway drug for rEvo? Seems a bit backwards though.

 

[KenGordon]

You have to be OCD to do the CCR stuff properly, as far as I’m concerned. I dive with a number of CCR divers now. I keep getting the question of when I’m going CCR, mainly due to the cost of helium. My answer is always nope! First thing when I get home from a day of diving is head for the bathtub for a long, relaxing hot bath. Having to take care of a CCR first? Nope. My gear (aside from drysuit and computers) can sit in the car for a few days after diving. I’ve had water in my wing freeze in the winter. You can’t do that with a CCR. I’ll deal with $4-5/cft for helium. OC is so much simper and low maintenance.

The overhead of a proper CCR is mostly per trip. So a day dive is relatively speaking a hassle. Once you are on a boat for a week though it is just about changing sorb and gas fills. At the end of the week you give the thing a proper rinse. On my last dive before the winter Covid wave the boat hosed us off as we got off the lift. Then once all the kit was in bits, mainly OC bits, they got left in big buckets (garden ‘trugs ’) to rinse so my car was not subject to salt. When I got home I did spend two hours taking the wing and lungs off and washing them out properly but that was a special end of season treat rather than a typical requirement.

On the other side of the coin I have enough gas at home to do a week’s diving unsupported, and it would all fit in the car. If I want to do three days in a row out of Brighton using trimix I can, OC that is impossible as it takes all day to get the gas. I would need someone on shore ferrying a second twinset (and deco cylinders) to the shop. Owning multiple sets of 3l cylinders is a lot easier than multiple twinsets.

If you live in a flat (aka apartment) a CCR is a more manageable beast, and this Horizon thing would be too.

SB is quite behind the times wrt CCR. Maybe it is because the cave divers are over represented and all the DIResque stuff, but really once you get past occasional 60m, either in frequency or depth, a CCR is the thing.

 

[rjack321]

I agree, but I do wonder how come the big (in scuba terms) companies seem to keep making the same “mistake”. This and the Hollis Explorer are pretty much interchangeable wrt concept, downsides, upsides etc. Why do Mares think they can make it work?

Marketing people pitching ideas to investors who think "this time" will be different?

 

[Wibble]

I agree, but I do wonder how come the big (in scuba terms) companies seem to keep making the same “mistake”. This and the Hollis Explorer are pretty much interchangeable wrt concept, downsides, upsides etc. Why do Mares think they can make it work?

Maybe if we look at it from the point of being an upgrade to a single 80 for warm water diving, then you get as much time as you like (comparatively speaking) and can still stand up. Compared to a “normal” approach of a twinset or a CCR plus bailout it is quite lightweight.

Personally I am often quite tempted by the Poseidon Mk6. I look at it and think it weighs half of my JJ and would be fine for a week in the Red Sea... I rehearse the “Look what I bought you dear” lines and then I see sense...

Or it might just be the gateway drug for rEvo? Seems a bit backwards though.

I love my Revo — can never have too many cells! Mine’s a mini and am waiting for a couple of 2 litre cylinders which I’m hoping will make it a bit lighter and smaller for taking underground.

Regarding the Horizon, a Revo instructor I know who’s been trained on the unit says that it has a lot of clever and well thought through features, so it’s impressed him at least.


My got home tear down process takes 10 to 15 mins. Basically open the unit and put the scrubbers in sealed Tupperware containers. Pull out the cell and injection trays and clip off outside the unit. Use the internal cloth to mop out the "lung butter" from the counterlungs with a couple of rinses and wring-outs under a cold water tap. Remove the mouthpiece hose and rinse under a tap. Leave the unit to dry.

I always allow an hour for the build process.

 

[Heat Miser]

I rehearse the “Look what I bought you dear” lines

The first second hand one I've seen just came up for sale on FB in OZ.

I had been suggesting to my wife that we could get it for her IE similar deco profile to my rEvo 0-40m. The exact reply is I don't want to mess around with anything I have to build, if I dived that you would be building it for me, I.E. she talked me out of it, pretty quickly.