Neoprene Dry Suit question

[matt_unique]

....The other thing I have been looking into, is my BC only has 25lbs of lift, my wing..which I havent used yet with the drysuit has 28lbs... I am wearing about 34 lbs and my tank is 1.8lbs negative when full...so I am diving with 36lbs max with a BC with 25lbs of lift.

No problem, common misunderstanding about lift needs vs. weight carried. When you were a kid - every try to lift a huge rock underwater only to find you could not budge it past the surface of the water? Same deal here.....it's Archimedes Principle: Any object, wholly or partly immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.

When you splash into the water you are wearing say 34lbs of lead, you have a 40lb alum 80 tank, 20lb suit, 5lb regulator, your own body weight - say 170lbs, etc., etc. way more than the 25lb lift capacity of your BC! The BC will be able to float you and all your gear no problem. Remember when you add weight to your "system" you are adding enough weight to enable you to sink from the surface and stop at 20' and slowly ascend to the surface. The weight of the water pushing back on you combined with your lift devices will allow you to become positively buoyant.

It is certainly possible to be overweighted for your buoyancy devices though! If you threw on double steel 120's with 100lbs of lead you are going to sink like a stone and a 25lb BC will do nil! So it's important to be carefully "leaded". Figure this out in the shallows such that you can ditch weight or hand it off to a buddy to figure it out.

Sorry...long babble.....

--Matt

 

[jepuskar]

Ok, have done 3 more dives with my suit. The two yesterday were still within 25 feet, but we tried our new DUI dry gloves out and also did more buoyancy checks. I was correctly weighted all along...with my suit I need 35lbs. I proved this by ending my dive with 500 psi, I then did a check on the surface and holding a normal breath..eye level, I exhaled and then sank a little...textbook.

Today we had our best drysuit dive yet... 45ft for 51 minutes in 42 degree water. We used the suit too offset squeeze and plus a little more, enough to where we were comfortable, and then used the BC to get neutral. I probably need to shift weights around a little to fine tune, but that wasn't a concern for today.

Those dry gloves rock! 20 minutes into this same dive with wet suit gloves they would have been numb, but they were only a little chilly when we surfaced, nothing to complain about. We can't equalize the gloves at all, but the squeeze at 45 feet actually makes the dexterity of the gloves even better as they mold to our hands...but its not uncomfortable.

I wish we could get out there more...with all this new stuff to put on and learn, I feel like a new diver all over again...we are just now finding our setup routine and getting comfortable.