:shocked2:Went down for the chilly Willy dive. A warm day, but water temps from 30' down were37 degrees. A little cool!!
Millbrook conditions!
- Thread starter Lone Wolf
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emcbride81
Contributor
brrrr
Its 46 at the bottom in august - dry suit temps either way.
OP
I would have to agree. Last august I did intro to tech there, and didn't have a dry suit yet. We spent a lot of time at the plane, and it got a little chilly.
Fly Girl
Contributor
I dove Millbrook in February for my dry suit cert. My instructor's reg froze and free flowed. Being a newbie, I didn't know such things could happen. I'm sort of giggling at the thread in advanced scuba discussions right now where people with way more experience than I seem so sure that a reg never freezes in cold water. Yup, it can.
Many "experienced" divers think 50-60 degrees is "cold". In fact, 50 degree is where it just starts to get interesting. The closer you get to feeezing, the smaller the temperature gradient the reg has to work with to regain heat from the surrounding water that it lost to adibatic cooling of the expanding gas flowing through it and 50 degrees is the point where it gets critical in many regulator models.
Good technique also helps:
1. Use low presure tanks
2. Don't pre-cool the reg by breathing, testing or inflating on the surface until the reg is fully submerged
3. Don't over breathe the reg
4. Use several small additions of gas spaced several seconds apart when inflating rather than one long blast (ie: don't fall behind on buoyancy control on descent)
5. Don't inhale and inflate at the same time, and
6. Pull the rubber hose protectors and trim boots free of any metal fittings to increase the surface area and heat transfer of the regulator.
But there is no substitute for a well designed, fully sealed first stage designed specifically for cold water use.
In the distant past, it was all but unheard of unheard of for an all metal second stage to freeze. However todasy mostly plastic second stages, and in particular those with plastic air barrels that allow little or no heat tranfer to the internal parts, commonly freeze up. This will often happen if the reg falls out of the divers mouth and freeflows for just a few seconds.
For the ultimate in reliability, use a double hose reg (other than the recent Aqualung Mistral), as by design the first and second stages (if it has one) are full sealed and the reg itself has an enormous amount of surface area to transfer heat.
Good technique also helps:
1. Use low presure tanks
2. Don't pre-cool the reg by breathing, testing or inflating on the surface until the reg is fully submerged
3. Don't over breathe the reg
4. Use several small additions of gas spaced several seconds apart when inflating rather than one long blast (ie: don't fall behind on buoyancy control on descent)
5. Don't inhale and inflate at the same time, and
6. Pull the rubber hose protectors and trim boots free of any metal fittings to increase the surface area and heat transfer of the regulator.
But there is no substitute for a well designed, fully sealed first stage designed specifically for cold water use.
In the distant past, it was all but unheard of unheard of for an all metal second stage to freeze. However todasy mostly plastic second stages, and in particular those with plastic air barrels that allow little or no heat tranfer to the internal parts, commonly freeze up. This will often happen if the reg falls out of the divers mouth and freeflows for just a few seconds.
For the ultimate in reliability, use a double hose reg (other than the recent Aqualung Mistral), as by design the first and second stages (if it has one) are full sealed and the reg itself has an enormous amount of surface area to transfer heat.
Sinbad the Diver
Contributor
Was talking to a guy at TDS today and he said the plane is one of the coldest places in the lake because there is a spring that feeds nearby. I can tell you from experience that no matter what the temp is like other places it does seem colder there, but I had always just attributed it to depth.
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