Non-ditchable weight thought question

[nielsent]

I was fiddling around with some gear the other day and came across a conundrum in my head and wanted to see what others thought of it.

I was fiddling with the trim weighting for my BP/W and was wondering if there were other places to organize and put the weight, and the thought occurred to me:

If you can't ditch it, why not put it inside the Drysuit somehow?

So the question here is:

Has anyone thought about what the consequences of having non-ditchable weight inside your drysuit would be?

At this point I wouldn't worry too much about the weight size/shape/distribution. Just the idea of making yourself magically denser.

Thanks for your thoughts on this in advance

-- nielsent

 

[grantwiscour]

It doesn't really sound that comfortable but I don't have much dry suit experience.

I read a post the other day where somebody's dive buddy put weight inside their wing. Maybe they'll see the thread and add some insight.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Has anyone thought about what the consequences of having non-ditchable weight inside your drysuit would be?

I wouldn't do it.

Let's say that your drysuit floods (it happens, you know). In addition to being cold, you've lost the buoyant lift of air trapped inside your drysuit, which under normal circumstances means you should be approx. neutrally buoyant (depending on the inherent buoyancy of you + the drysuit + drysuit undergarments). If you stuffed lead weights inside your drysuit, once the suit floods, that lead would probably make you negatively buoyant (depending on how much lead weight we're talking about and inherent buoyancy of you + DS + undergarment). If you get separated from your BCD, surface float, or some sort of holdable structure at the surface (dock/pier, chain, etc.) and get tired of kicking to remain at the surface, you're going to sink.

That scenario ain't ideal in my book. The only way I would consider putting non-ditchable lead weight inside the drysuit is if I were 100% sure that the inherent buoyancy of lead weight + drysuit + undergarment + me was still positively buoyant...or at the very worst neutrally buoyant. I can think of too many dive emergencies in which I might want to ditch my rig and float easily at the surface.

Depending on the kind of lead weight we're talking about (I'm thinking of shot weight, in particular), there's the theoretical risk of lead exposure while wearing a flooded drysuit filled with soupy, lead-laced water for an extended period of time. To be clear, this almost certainly wouldn't be an issue because we're talking about a single exposure of limited duration to lead-laced water through the skin. Still, it's not my idea of fun.

 

[Scared Silly]

Would give a whole new meaning to "lead butt"

 

[k ellis]

So long as all the weight was not in the suit (Say half was in a BCD) it would in theory be ok. The idea is to be able to ditch enough weight to make you float without fear of resinking. Now as others have said your putting yourself in a bad situation from start to finish as the suit could flood or tear. What if you had to ditch all your weight then you would have to fight the battle of the titans being only a mouse and try to ditch the weight in sub thermal temperatures.

This is not a good idea at all.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

When you say non-ditchable weight inside a dry suit, you mean it!

Most of the time, non-ditchable weight is on your rig (cam-bands pouches, heavy back plate, etc...) and you can in fact ditch it. Maybe not easy and maybe if you are under you have to give up you air supply, but you have options and your rescuer has options. Inside the dry suit, I don't see any options to drop lead, even if you just distressed on the surface. Kinda scary...

Edit: Oops... missed the reference to trim weight, if that's the case, who cares...

 

[Queequeg]

OP did say this was for trim weight. Trim weight.....maybe 2-4lbs at most? Seems like it would be okay to me. However, its easy enough to place the weight, anywhere else rather than inside your drysuit....like on a cam band or even dry suit pockets, depending on where you need it. So yeah...while in theory it seems okay, I find it hard to believe there is no place to put "trim" weight other than inside your drysuit. But if absolute necessary, I dont see it being a problem if you can ditch the bulk of your weight.

 

[Hatul]

I agree with Bubble. Just put a gun to your head and be done with it. Reminds me of the way the Mafia get rid of bodies by tying weights and dumping in the ocean.

 

[TSandM]

I've put four pounds in my undergarment pockets before. My dry suit is 28 pounds positive. Unless I ripped the entire thing mostly off me, it's going to retain some of that lift. I'm not worried about four pounds in the suit. I have, by the way, had a flooded suit where my UG was completely saturated from head to toe. The big problem with that was that my wing didn't have enough lift to lift the water in the dry suit out of the water to get my head up very high.

 

[Hatul]

I just saw that you're located in Newfoundland and so may be using a neoprene drysuit. In that case I take back what I said-- a small amount of weight to offset some of the intrinsic positive buoyancy of the suit material should be OK. The bottom line I believe, is that should you need to ditch your SCUBA unit and your suit floods, the suit with the inserted weight should be positively buoyant to help you surface rather than pull you down.