NorthWoods,
Our team may be unique because we are in a transition phase, from wetsuits to drysuits. All members have been issued a full wetsuit and members assigned to the "dive house" are issued Viking drysuits in addition to their wetsuits. We also have several drysuits on our dive truck but there are challenges with multiple members sharing the drysuits on the dive truck.
In addition to every member being issued wetsuits, they are also issued weight belts with soft lead. The soft lead bags ARE standardized AND color coded. (red=2, blue=3, black=4, etc) This way, when looking through the mesh on the belt, we can tell exactly how much lead is in the belt. For us, it beats looking for the stamped numbers on lead bricks.
When using the drysuits, our divers are using weight harnesses and soft lead.
In Florida, many of our dives are in open ocean and because of 365 days of sunshine (a plug from our Chamber of Commerce), we are challenged with divers in drysuits getting overheated. For the most part we are working through the challenges of heat and are primarily burdened with budgeting drysuits for each team member. Understand at one point we had more than 60 divers on our team.
We feel we have done a good job getting Viking suits for our most active divers (the ones assigned to the dive house) and will work to get additional suits as our budget allows.
To answer the question on the poll though, because we use two different suits, we use two different weight systems and it is largely due to budget constraints.
Best of luck with your decision! As the (former) dive team officer, I feel for ya brother. Cost/Benefit decisons can be tough.
FOR ALL MY FRIENDS WHO MAY BE WONDERING ABOUT THE "former" TITLE ABOVE, I RETIRED FROM MY FIRE DEPARTMENT LAST FRIDAY AFTER 27 YEARS ON THE JOB. I PLAN TO DEDICATE MORE OF MY TIME TOWARDS THE I.A.D.R.S (INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF DIVE RESCUE SPECIALISTS).
