Near reg failure - all ok

[johndiver999]

In my experience, managers never venture into the fill shed or dock. The staff never knows who exactly is in charge between captains and instructors of different specialties and seniority. If you do anything beyond the basics that no one told you to do, you won't get paid for your time, and you might even get in trouble for doing it.

yeah it is funny. the local dive shops will have a heart attack if you try to fill a pristine tank that is one month out of vis, but "some" of the tourist dive operations, fill their tanks 2-3 times per day, and they never seem to open them up. Visual inspection is a big money maker for the shops, takes 2-3 minutes.

They should be checked every few months if used a lot in rental by careless customers.

Also, it does NOT require a tank to be drained to get saltwater in it. All it takes is for the fill operator to not blast the valve open before filling it each time. Often a slug of saltwater sits in the opening of the valve and if present, it is injected into the tank. Once that happens several times, the potential for serious corrosion is there.

 

[BlueTrin]

This is such an interesting issue and learning experience for me. When the reg began to breathe hard I actually thought "well, this is the second trip I've used this reg on and I remember Roger saying he didn't think it would breathe as easily as the old one" and I actually wondered if my head was playing games with me. Then I realized the breathing was like a wheezing, and knew it wasn't in my head. When it happened I had been shallow enough, long enough that my safety stop was complete - no reason to panic - but if it had happened on one of the dives we were at 80-90ft ... yikes.

So this is when I rethink just how far away from my buddy I'm comfortable being. Might be revisiting this.

@Kimela just thought I’d mention that a safety stop is not a mandatory stop: if you have a failure and it is dangerous to stay underwater, you may want to elect to skip it.

It is an additional protection against being bent from an “undeserved” hit but this additional protection is not worth taking a risk of drowning and also being bent is not binary: the severe cases will be correlated with having missed long mandatory stops rather than safety stops.

 

[tursiops]

When I worked as a dive instructor in the Caribbean, we would have 40 - 50 cylinders filled and ready to load in the morning and afternoon. Once we tied up from the two-tank afternoon dives, we'd start filling. We just hooked up as many as we could as fast as we could. A cylinder could have been empty or may have even contained water and we wouldn't have discovered it until it was a problem.

Bad practice.

 

[CycleCat]

Doesn't compressing air from the atmosphere into a tank create moisture in the tank? The more humidity in the air, the more water in your tank. Even if you never run your tank down to zero, moisture is still being introduced. I know with the air compressor in the vehicle maintenance shop at work I have to drain it a couple times a year and get about a gallon of water each time.

 

[Dark Wolf]

Doesn't compressing air from the atmosphere into a tank create moisture in the tank? The more humidity in the air, the more water in your tank. Even if you never run your tank down to zero, moisture is still being introduced. I know with the air compressor in the vehicle maintenance shop at work I have to drain it a couple times a year and get about a gallon of water each time.

Not if the filter tower is working correctly and being changed at the right intervals.

DW

 

[MarkA]

@Kimela Thank you for an interesting write up.

Assuming that it was the first stage filter being blocked causing the issue. Is it still a thing to have a quick look at this filter before fitting the first stage to the cylinder? Is it even possible with the newer self sealing first stages?

 

[rob.mwpropane]

I don't think there's anything you can do to prevent this besides having an alternate air source? Correct?

Can't trust people to VIP or VIP stickers. Can't VIP every rental before a dive.

Edit: @Kimela I didn't mean anything by my post (it sounded short when I read it again). Glad you're ok, I'm not sure of any way to 100% prevent that except for another air source given vacation dive shops are what they are.

Perfect world would be differnet, but a place is only as strong as it's most incompetent tank monkey.

 

[Tournesol2000]

@Kimela , glad you are ok and appreciate you sharing this story.
As a seasoned diver you were probably more aware of hard breathing. New divers might not be as aware. I appreciate knowing this as it is a valuable lesson for vacation divers like me.

 

[johndiver999]

Not if the filter tower is working correctly and being changed at the right intervals.

DW

No, on all the dive compressor systems that I have seen, the separate water separator(s) must be drained frequently, otherwise the filters get wet and will fail. They generate a lot of water, especially if taking air directly from the atmosphere, rather than from inside an air conditioned space.

Some "clean" water inside a nice clean aluminum tank is not that big of a deal, but saltwater in the tank, especially if it partially dries out during numerous fills, will form a hypersaline and very corrosive solution.

 

[johndiver999]

I don't think there's anything you can do to prevent this besides having an alternate air source? Correct?

Can't trust people to VIP or VIP stickers. Can't VIP every rental before a dive.

An alternate air source does nothing unless it is from a different tank, (if that is not obvious).