OW - Float at eye level?

[Pullmyfinger]

I weight myself so that I'm neutral during my safety stop. I've been lighter, and it has been manageable but I prefer to not have to swim down during my safety stop. Try the different methods of weighting that have been suggested and adjust your weight over a few dives.
Doing this will improve your control and will go a long way toward helping you dial yourself in.
-Mitch

 

[lulubelle]

I'm no instructor and will not argue the merits of any agency's teaching. I'm just a newer diver who dives in a challenging ocean.

I found trying to dial in my weight requirements in the pool pretty useless, I had a new suit and I guess it just wasn't compressed enough at 8-10 feet. And given that our dives are relatively deep here, it just wasn't helpful except as a starting point.

Doing weight checks at the surface with an empty tank doesn't work too well here either, the surface is way too choppy.

So I aimed for being neutral to slightly negative at 15 feet. It isn't always easy to stay in place for a safety stop in our currents. Now that I have my steel tanks, I am happy as a bug. I use 4 pounds in salt and not one iota of air in my BC during my dive. But for me this was not something figured out in one dive, I kept good records in my log book of what I was wearing, what the conditions were like, how much lead I carried, what tanks I was using, how much I had left when I did my ascent, whether or not I used air for buoyancy control, etc.

I think the materials for new divers seem to imply that you can dial in your buoyancy on your first dive or two. Personally, I think that is not realistic.

 

[Walter]

I found trying to dial in my weight requirements in the pool pretty useless

It doesn't have to be.

1. Weight yourself in a pool.
2. Let your gear dry.
3. Get on a scale with all your gear (including tank and lead).
4. Take the weight (of you and all your gear) and multiply by .025.
5. Add that much lead for diving in sea water.

Assuming you are small, you and your gear might weigh 150 lbs. 150 * .025 = 3.75 so add 4 lbs to what you used in the pool.

 

[RU4SKUBA]

Walter, I'm curious if you need to account for body fat and water weight in the calculations to get an accurate number or if that has already been accounted for?

 

[Walter]

If you were to figure the diver's (and their gear's) density, you could calculate their weighting (in either fresh or sea water) without ever putting them in the water. I'm not sure how you could figure their density without outting them in the water, but in theory....

In answer to your question, if you are weighted correctly in fresh water, the formula will work. It also works going from salt to fresh, you just have to subtract lead instead of adding.

 

[Hank49]

Mine don't. I start them in the shallow end of the pool with no wieght, floating face down on teh surface. I have already had them practice breathing properly and working on breath control skills for bouyancy above water. We lay there and breathe. And try to see if any can get themselves to sink. We then add small amounts of weight slowly until they can sink and stay down. Then I have them add a small amount of air (fin pivot...), then learn to hover. They then work on moving up and down in a hover right there. First class. Before mask clearing underwater. They have already cleared their masks above water and with snorkles on anyway.

That sounds like a good plan. It's not as easy to do when you have to wade with the class 40 yards off the beach to get to chest deep water.
I"m not talking grossly overweighted by 8 lbs or so. A couple lbs maybe. And I would wager that even your students, after 15 dives or so, will reduce your training wt by at least a couple lbs.

 

[scubadada]

ok guys. Time to summarise.

Assume empty jacket-type BC, almost empty tank, 3mm neoprene, relaxed lung volume.

PADI, and Walter, says neutral at surface, eye-level.
Al Mailkovsky says neutral at 8 - 10 ft.
Scubadada says neutral at 15 ft.
ZenDiver.3D says
...1. add small amounts of weight just enough to 'sink and stay down',
...2. float on surface with a full breath, sink slowly with breath release (presumably back to relaxed lung vol).
both of which means neutral somewhere (5 ft?) below surface

Personally
I need to kick a little to descend, and to stop sinking at 15 ft safety stop,
so that means i am neutral somewhere 5 - 10 ft.
Walter, just because there is no air in my BC does not mean i have to ascend feet up kicking to slow my ascent. I have air in my lungs which can be vented. I go up pretty slow. Yes, i know, I'm gonna die (plus i have an Air2 to make doubly sure)

Marek K is correct (others probably were too), my suggestion was misleading. You want to be neutral at the surface at the end of the dive with no air in your BC and minimal air in your tank. Not only do you want to be able to hold the safety stop, you want to then be able to ascend slowly to the surface in a controlled manner. Being weighed like this will allow you to descend easily with the extra weight of air in your full tank at the start of the dive.

I frequently check my buoyancy by how I feel at the safety stop and my ascent to the surface. I occasionally make small changes based on exposure protection, specific steel tanks, etc. This generally does not amount to +/- a pound.

From experience, I know my appropriate weight with with all combinations I use. These are recorded in my log in case I need to refresh my memory.

Good diving, Craig

 

[toddthecat]

I've seen some talk about instructors over weighting students to make it easier. I have my students set up weights the way PADI describes and I overweight MYSELF. Two reasons:

One, if a student needs more weight, especially later into the dive, I can take one of my weights out of my BC and put it in theirs.

Two, if one of my students were to start ascending too fast, I can dump my BC and can stop their ascent.

 

[joolz]

One of the reasons I don't participate much in these boards is the number of people who are quick to label an instructor as incompetent or lazy based solely on a single comment without the full context. It's even more disappointing to see these judgments coming from other instructors, who should realize that different conditions warrant different teaching approaches. Unless there's evidence of something completely inappropriate or dangerous, is it too much to ask for a little professional courtesy instead of making disparaging comments that undermine another instructor's teaching efforts before their student has even finished their confined water training?

A key part of the OP's comment was "in the pool". Is it possible that the OW conditions are going to be done in completely different gear -- a drysuit or 7mm wetsuit -- such that a proper buoyancy check in the pool has limited applicability to real world conditions? Or maybe the instructor wants to emphasize the safety skills first to make sure the students are 100% comfortable with their masks off before moving on to buoyancy control in a later session.

Personally, I see a difference between a weight check and a buoyancy check. In a weight check, I want to make sure that students have enough weight to descend since it's a long swim back to shore if they can't. For a buoyancy check, I want to see the extent to which they're properly weighted. I can do part of this during the initial weight check based on the rate at which they sink, but it's more easily done at the end of each OW dive on an empty tank -- and even then, we only go in small increments.

And yes, I overweight my students but only by a couple pounds. While I'm sure some may think this makes me lazy and incompetent, the rationale is that it provides students with a safety margin in case they have trouble venting their drysuits without seriously impairing their ability to achieve neutral buoyancy. It's not a tactic to plant them on the bottom for my own convenience, since all that ensures is that we'll be swimming through a silt cloud for the entire course. Being perfectly neutral in a drysuit requires you to be on top of bubble management at all times -- especially at the end of the dive in 15' of water with an empty tank -- and this is more than I expect from students during their first ocean dives. Buoyancy control takes time and practice, and if my students leave the course with knowledge of how to perform a proper buoyancy check, then can perfect their weighting on their own as they gain experience.

To the OP: I'd encourage you to discuss this with your instructor before seeking opinions from others who know nothing about the environment in which you're training. Every skill has a purpose, and the instructor should be able to explain precisely why you're doing each skill -- and more importantly, why this skill appears to contradict what's in the book. If there's any criticism to be made based on the info that's been provided, it's the instructor's inability to provide you with sufficient information to understand why you're not following the book. Push for an answer -- and post it here when you get a clear one that makes sense