Pull Dumps — lose them

[chris kippax]

The Halcyon inflator with the stainless steel buttons was the one reported with issues (precision inflator from memory). I still use mine, if maintained well it is a non issue. It! costs less than two dollars to rebuild it and imho is made so well I will last a lifetime.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You're a big dude, Eric. With 4-5 liter lungs, you've got 11# of buoyancy adjustment just by breath control alone.
We should all be so lucky.

Did your buddy ever decide what he wants me to build him? I've got four sets just about ready to look at. PM me. My Mk5 tools are sitting by the door.

Rob

My buddy has still not mentioned moving forward, but I’ll kick him and get him moving. The season is coming up.

Ok you got a point. Big deep rib cage, years of freediving, packing air into the lungs, etc.

But what we should probably do is get more specifics on what the diver in question was using. Al 80?, wetsuit and thickness?, the type and brand of BC? Familiarity with gear?

From that it would be easier to try and pinpoint why he had such struggles beyond just possibly being incompetent. I’d bet 99% it was overweighting.
There was a gal on here that I heard about, she was diving somewhere warm. At the end of her dive she somehow got into distress on the surface and slipped back down underwater and drowned.

Several years back two guys were shore diving in San Diego. One of the divers drowned in the surf zone as they were coming in on the surface. His inflator elbow broke off the BC bladder and all the air escaped sending him to the bottom. He couldn’t find his weight releases on his integrated BC or find a reg to breathe off of. He panicked and drowned in 15’ of water 50’ from the beach.

The one thing these two cases had in common was overweighting.
My whole point is that a BC is not supposed to be a giant lift bag that holds an overweighted diver on the surface so they can elevator dive and do feet first descents. The BC was invented as a device of convenience in the case where it has already been mentioned, to keep divers from bouncing off the bottom.
It was originally used to take the edge off at depth. Somewhere along the line it has become the industry standard to abuse it’s capabilities and use it as a lift bag and surface bouying device.

IMO, overweighting and then overcoming that condition with another gear fix like these huge air cells in these modern BC’s is very dangerous. All it takes is a catastrophic failure at a critical connection for a BC and down you go. Some of these new BC’s I saw don’t even have a quick release system, you have to try and squeeze a clip to undo the weight pocket to pull it out. This was in response to too many people complaining that they were inadvertantly losing weight pouches. So the companies answer was to come up with a locking system.
Brilliant!!!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

The Halcyon inflator with the stainless steel buttons was the one reported with issues (precision inflator from memory). I still use mine, if maintained well it is a non issue. It! costs less than two dollars to rebuild it and imho is made so well I will last a lifetime.

Did they not stop making those? The Halcyon wings I purchased back in 2005-2006 came with them ... the one I purchased more recently came with a plastic inflator ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Bob DBF]

IMO, overweighting and then overcoming that condition with another gear fix like these huge air cells in these modern BC’s is very dangerous.

The BC wasn't a fix for overweighting, but it allowed instructors to cut short or skip the time needed to properly weight a diver. Probably why a lot of divers think that by being neutrally buoyant whilst diving, that they are properly weighted.


On a lobster trip I found a weight pocket on the bottom and it looked recent. Back on the boat I talked to everyone trying to find the owner with no takers. Next morning, before the first dive, one of the guys comes to me for his weights. He noticed a list while diving, but since he could maintain neutral buoyancy, he couldn't have dropped the weight pocket.

Two things I thought were funny was the fact he didn't go over his gear with a fine tooth comb to find the problem causing the list. And the look on the face of the boat DM behind him trying not to laugh out loud while I explained why the diver should put the weights in the pocket into his dive bag, and even out the weights that were left in the BC. I might have been sarcastic at a few points in my explanation.

I'm a believer in SCUBA divers learning some basic freediving, if for no other than learning how to properly weight oneself.



Bob

 

[kmarks]

Probably why a lot of divers think that by being neutrally buoyant whilst diving, that they are properly weighted.

I must be one of those divers, because I don't understand. Are you suggesting that we should be positively buoyant in the water to be properly weighted?

 

[mcohen1021]

I like the pull dump. Surely beats the crud out of holding the inflator over your head like it's a 1980 cousteau tv special

 

[JohnN]

Sorry to pull this thread back to its origins, but I realized some time back that a pull dump is a LESS likely configuration to disconnect where the inflator hose attaches to the elbow. . .

There is, after all, a stainless cable that attaches at both the dump valve and the elbow (and that cable is designed to be shorter than the inflator hose). I have no idea what the breaking strength of that cable might be, but I'm certain it is more than could possibly be exerted (even in a full scale panic)

 

[boulderjohn]

If it were me I would have been incredulous, not said anything at the time, discussed it later with others, and then decided that something ought to be done, at which time it would be too late because I would not have a name or agency for the guy in question. Probably. What I ought to have hypothetically done is get the name and agency and give them a call, at which point it would be their problem. I don't know what that would accomplish, but it would be the best I could reasonably do. Peace of mind and all that. An experienced dive professional would probably have a more effective response.

The dive operator has the name of the diver and the agency, so they would not have any trouble identifying the agency to be called for a report. The question is what they would say in that report.

If it were a training situation and the instructor were violating instructional standards, they could identify what they saw and what standard was being violated. The agency could then act upon that standards violation. They would do further investigation, contacting both the instructor and students involved for more information. This was not, however, a training situation.

The operator would have to tell the agency that they saw one of their instructors out diving on his own, and they thought he was not doing a good job of it. What would the agency do in response? There are no training standard violations. They have no power whatsoever over what an instructor does on his or her own time. That report would do no good whatsoever.

 

[guyharrisonphoto]

Did they not stop making those? The Halcyon wings I purchased back in 2005-2006 came with them ... the one I purchased more recently came with a plastic inflator ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I had one of those Halcyon SS inflators. It was a thing of beauty with precision air delivery. But, it failed and began inflating my wing on a dive. I had to disconnect the LP hose and do the dive manually inflating/deflating the wing (no big deal since I mainly control my buoyancy at depth with my lungs anyway). Halcyon would not fix it, possible liability issues, I believe, because this was a pretty common failure of this device, but they sent me a new "regular" plastic inflator that is ubiquitous across the industry. No problems since then, and that was years ago.

As for shoulder dumps, I have no problem with them. In fact, I put a Dive Rite shoulder dump on my wife's Halcyon wing at her request as it made dumping for the descent more convenient than raising the hose. It has a nice strong wire that attaches to metal pins in the inflator to prevent over-pulling and I change zip ties at least once a year anyway as part of my standard maintenance. Don't see any safety issue with it. Really, between the wire and pin, and the LP hose attached to the inflator, I just don't see how you could pull the inflator "clean off" of the hose.

 

[johndiver999]

I think the idea is that if the hose has no pull dump feature then nobody should be yanking on it - so with a much gentler touch, there is less chance of failure????