OW - Float at eye level?

[bestyman]

I am taking my PADI OW course and for the theory I was taught that I should float at eye level with empty BCD and lung full of air.
When in the pool I did not float at eye level, in fact I sank like a brick.
My DI said not to worry and I should ignore what PADI says about this in the pool.
My question is why would my DI opinion be different to that of PADI s official stance? He says that as long as you can go up and down then whats the problem. Im just curious as to why your supposed to float at eye level.


Thanks in advance

 

[BrotherBear]

Floating at eye level is part of the weight check, you should be negatively buoyant (sink) when properly weighted with a tank that has greater than 500lbs in it. Sinking like a brick sounds like you were overweighted...as I have come to understand this is a common practice among instructors when dealing with beginners.

FWIW any instructor in any discipline that gives me a "don't worry your pretty little head" kind of answer without offering explanation has just terminated him/her self as my instructor. You should have come away from that experience understanding the what and why of buoyancy and weighting. If it was too soon in the course you should have been told that you would cover it in detail later and been given at least a cursory explanation.

I am taking my PADI OW course and for the theory I was taught that I should float at eye level with empty BCD and lung full of air.
When in the pool I did not float at eye level, in fact I sank like a brick.
My DI said not to worry and I should ignore what PADI says about this in the pool.
My question is why would my DI opinion be different to that of PADI s official stance? He says that as long as you can go up and down then whats the problem. Im just curious as to why your supposed to float at eye level.


Thanks in advance

 

[diggerled]

for the theory I was taught that I should float at eye level with empty BCD and lung full

This is correct. One POSSIBLE reason that your DI wants you to be overweighted is because inexperienced divers are "easier to handle" from his point of view. An overweighted diver has no trouble "getting under". This can save him a lot of time especially if he is certifying several divers a once.

Is this a proper training technique? No. Does this happen? Yes, all the time.

DMs on dive boats will also try to overweight less experienced divers. It makes their job easier.

 

[soonerwink]

Most instructors I have worked with like for their students to be over-weighted while doing skills on the bottom of the pool and the lake. It helps to keep them stable on the bottom while performing the skills that are required. He still should have given you an explanation, instead of telling you just to ignore it.

 

[Marek K]

I should float at eye level with empty BCD and lung full of air.

Actually, not quite. The rule of thumb is to float at eye level with an almost-empty cylinder (~500 psi, when it's most bouyant), empty BC, and a "normal breath." It's on p. 188 of my son's PADI Go Dive book. (Is the 1999 version still current?) And that's not just according to PADI.

That way, you'd start to sink or descend when you let out all your breath.

Now, obviously, to do this in a fresh-water pool where you're less bouyant, you'd need significantly less weight than in salt water. About 4-5 lb less, if I'm not mistaken.

But I doubt that was what the instructor was getting at. I suspect, as the others have said, that he wanted you over-weighted so that you'd stay on the bottom while you did your skills. Very badly explained...

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

And that entire eye level thing may be in the book but there are a lot of flaws to it. When you're new venting the trapped air in your ill fitting wetsuit makes you use more weight that you need. What I've always done is to get a bout 8 to 10 feet deep, lay on the bottom with no air in my bc and start dropping weights until I start to rise. If I stay down fairly easy then I am pretty certain that late in the dive with a low air tank I'll be able to stay down at 15 feet. Being weighted as I do usually requires me to actually kick to get below the surface. But if at the end of the dive you don't propertly vent your BC you'll likely rise to the surface when you get shallow.

Being weighted as I do also makes buoyancy pretty easy to achieve.

 

[Marek K]

And that entire eye level thing may be in the book but there are a lot of flaws to it.

I agree it's not perfect; that's why it's a rule of thumb for OW students.

It does tend to leave you a bit over-weighted -- not just because of air trapped in a too-loose wetsuit (though that would be minimized at the end of dive, when you'd have 500 psi), but because it's tough to vent all the air out of your BC.

But it's good enough, easy, and can be done almost anywhere.

Having to kick down to descend, and only being neutral at 8-10 ft, would just be cutting it too close for me.

 

[Scott L]

Being weighted as I do usually requires me to actually kick to get below the surface. But if at the end of the dive you don't propertly vent your BC you'll likely rise to the surface when you get shallow.

Being weighted as I do also makes buoyancy pretty easy to achieve.

A custom wetsuit made of Rubatex is a nice luxury. Does not compress as much as conventional neoprene...

 

[scubadada]

You really want to be neutral at 15 feet with a nearly empty tank and no air in your BC at the end of your dive at the safety stop. I would work toward this goal.

Good diving, Craig

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Most instructors I have worked with like for their students to be over-weighted while doing skills on the bottom of the pool and the lake. It helps to keep them stable on the bottom while performing the skills that are required. He still should have given you an explanation, instead of telling you just to ignore it.

I do a weight check with my students at the beginning of every pool session and at the end on the last three. Overweighting students is poor practice. It only enforces bad habits. And if you do not do skills planted on the bottom but hovering and horizontal in the pool it shows when they get to checkouts. They naturally drop down the line and at 5-10 feet get horizontal the rest of the way to the platform. Stop a few feet above it, get stable, and then we do skills. Overweighting would result in them having excess air in the bc to remain neutral or force them onto the platform. That excess air due to overweighting could result in a runaway ascent if they freak and don't dump fast enough on the way up. The pool is exactly where proper weighting should begin and from day one on scuba.