Position of drysuit exhaust valve

[Lone Frogman]

I'm fairly new to dry suit diving less then 200 dives. My old dry suit has a shoulder vent, when I vent my suit I will raise my arm and bend my elbow with my hand on my shoulder. That is way I have found best to remove the most air from my suit. After vent I can see that there is still a large volume of air in the arm of the suit. I'm thinking about locating my exhaust valve on my new dry suit to the wrist. How my others have vents on the wrist? I'm I missing anything? Any thoughts on vent locations?

 

[mania]

I have it on my shoulder and have no problems at all. But it very much depends where on the shoulder you have the valve. It should be in a more "external" side of the shoulder than "internal"

 

[Eau_Girl]

I have a used custom made drysuit. It fits me very well but the shoulder value has always bugged me. It was positioned for the woman who had the suit made, and I have to really work to vent with it sometimes. One of my friends/instructors put in a wrist valve on my suit (I close off the shoulder dump now), and life is much easier.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I have owned/used both and too a very limited extent it depends on the type of diving you do which one may work best, but in general it's a simple decision.

Overall I feel the shoulder dump is much more useable - although as noted above, where on the upper arm it is placed is important. In most cases you can raise the elbow slightly to the outside or roll slightly to the opposite side and easily dump. Lifting the entire arm is not needed and will, as you noted, result in lots of trapped gas in the arm. Less is more in thic case. Also, using the other hand to manually depress the valve is not required - if so it is an indicator you don't have enough gas in the suit or are plugging the valve with undergarment material.

A cuff dump can be a major pita as it will dump any time that cuff is raised above the rest of the suit. It also takes up valuable forearm real estate that is used by many divers for slates, computers, compasses or bottom timers. It is also guarenteed to addanother obstruction near the hand when donning equipment, working with stage bottles, etc.

 

[mania]

I have never tried the wrist one but as DAA wrote - it may be a problem when dealing with more than 2 stages. This is one thing. The other - would it squeeze hand? I mean those of us who dive in really cold water have gloves. Wrist valve means that it may also dump air trapped in the glove, thus squeeze it way too much? I would hate this

 

[Chous]

I bought my first drysuit with Wrist valve. I like it, but i never use Shoulder valve.
In future i think the best way to put both of them. Shuulder as primary and wrist as backup.

 

[mania]

Honestly - I think there is no need to have a back up valve. It may, in fact, cause more trouble than you may expect.
There are other ways to deal with valve failure than having a second one

 

[burna]

I only have one season of drysuit diving up my sleeve, (pardon the pun) and am still learning to drive the damned thing! I have an Evo2 and the shoulder dump seems to be on the front corner of my shoulder.

I find it very difficult to vent it even though I have it all the way open. I've tried rotating my arm and/or body into every concievable position I can think of and still have trouble. I definately can't do it like the videos I've seen where divers just roll a little to the right and it bubbles away!

I am seriously considering getting a cuff dump fitted.

So far I have only done shore dives in it, so maybe when I get back into it this winter (it's summer here ATM) I might take it to depth and see how it goes, just worried I might have a runaway ascent with it.

 

[mania]

I only have one season of drysuit diving up my sleeve, (pardon the pun) and am still learning to drive the damned thing! I have an Evo2 and the shoulder dump seems to be on the front corner of my shoulder.

I don't know what you mean by "the front" but if the valve is closer to your chest than to your back this is the major reason for your problems. That's why positioning the valve on the shoulder is important

 

[burna]

Yeah that's what I thought. If I am standing, the valve is on the front edge of my shoulder. Not on top where I imagine it should be.

When I'm underwater I have to lean backwards to get the valve to be the highest point.

I guess there's not much I can do with it apart from get it relocated??