R190 on a bungee as a secondary?

[Troutmaster]

You should strongly consider using a LONG hose on your primary (7 footer). I have done alot of air-share drills both ways and the 7 footer makes doing what you are doing more easy. If you are not wearing a can light, put your knife on your belt on the right side and tuck the hose under that. Try it out, I think you will like it.

My humble opinion is you should try to borrow or buy the right lenth hose rather than using a coupler.

If you are ever diving anywhere with me, I will loan you one to try. If there is a tech guy arround you will probably not have any problem bumming his/her spare.

 

[halocline]

My first concern is not having an issue underwater (although that sucks and is a real problem), its the waste of a perfectly good dive due to shoddy equipment and nickel rocketry.

Excuse me, but who said anything about "shoddy equipment" and "nickel rocketry"? Obviously you don't understand what I'm talking about here. It's exactly the same equipment; just two hoses instead of one. An extra hose hardly qualifies as "shoddy" or "BS" especially when it's a temporary measure to simply find the right length hose. You say borrow something, okay, fine, go ahead and try borrowing a 5'6" hose.

It sounds like you're just regurgitating some general quasi-dogmatic equipment concepts about limiting "failure points" that one of the tech agencies is particularly known for, instead of really understanding what's being suggested. I work on this gear all the time, and I can tell you that two extra LP hose o-rings are not going to increase your chances of "wasting a dive" beyond an exceedingly tiny factor, as long as the hoses and o-rings are in good condition, as I posted before.

Look, if someone tries a 5ft hose and it works for them, fine. Same with 7ft. But, there are a lot of divers for whom the 5 ft is too short and the 7 ft is too long.

 

[halocline]

My humble opinion is you should try to borrow or buy the right lenth hose rather than using a coupler.

I will agree that a single hose of the correct length is a better solution long term than a coupler, but often the best length for average sized people will be a custom hose. Using the coupler can help divers who want to experiment with the long hose to find that length, and it allows divers who don't have a long hose try it out at very little cost, assuming they have the extra short hoses.

I've been using a coupler for about a year and, as I expected, not a hint of a problem. I also have a 5ft and 7ft hose, and I'll get around to ordering a custom hose one of these days.

Actually, the real solution here is for one of the companies known for tech gear, like Halcyon or dive rite, to really take the OW long hose idea more seriously and stock hose lengths that are more practical for OW divers, like maybe 6" increments from 5 ft to 7ft.

 

[PfcAJ]

snip

Anyhow, as a couple of people have posted, the bungeed-octo setup typically uses a 5ft or longer primary hose, routed under your right arm, over the left shoulder, behind your head, and around to the right. It's a nice tight routing for the hose. Sometimes 5 ft is a little too short; for this I would take two LP hoses, maybe a 30" and 26", or something like that, and join them together with a LP hose coupler. That's available at divegearexpress, or the trident catalog, and costs a couple of dollars. Put your secondary on a short hose, 24" is pretty common, and you'll be set to go. Just don't forget to take the bungee necklace off before taking your harness off!

Of course it's not ridiculous. Don't tell me you're worried about the "failure point"; it's one of many in any scuba set up, exactly like either end of an existing hose. Just use hoses and o-rings that are in good shape. This is recreational diving, not technical. I wouldn't take it in a cave, but that's very different.

snip

Except its two hoses...

Excuse me, but who said anything about "shoddy equipment" and "nickel rocketry"? Obviously you don't understand what I'm talking about here. It's exactly the same equipment; just two hoses instead of one. An extra hose hardly qualifies as "shoddy" or "BS" especially when it's a temporary measure to simply find the right length hose. You say borrow something, okay, fine, go ahead and try borrowing a 5'6" hose.

It sounds like you're just regurgitating some general quasi-dogmatic equipment concepts about limiting "failure points" that one of the tech agencies is particularly known for, instead of really understanding what's being suggested. I work on this gear all the time, and I can tell you that two extra LP hose o-rings are not going to increase your chances of "wasting a dive" beyond an exceedingly tiny factor, as long as the hoses and o-rings are in good condition, as I posted before.

Look, if someone tries a 5ft hose and it works for them, fine. Same with 7ft. But, there are a lot of divers for whom the 5 ft is too short and the 7 ft is too long.

So lets take a look at the progression of your posts. We start with a post suggesting coupling them and you're set to go. Then it gets kind of shaky with the "its rec diving" line, admitting its not a great idea. Then at the end, there's the fold. The "its for experimenting" comment.

Maybe I'm just not a fan of ghetto rigging things when a better option exists and is easily acquired. YMMY.

Btw, I've yet to see someone who's too small for a 7 footer. If its properly managed (the key here is 'properly') it works on everyone.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I will agree that a single hose of the correct length is a better solution long term than a coupler, but often the best length for average sized people will be a custom hose. Using the coupler can help divers who want to experiment with the long hose to find that length, and it allows divers who don't have a long hose try it out at very little cost, assuming they have the extra short hoses.

I've been using a coupler for about a year and, as I expected, not a hint of a problem. I also have a 5ft and 7ft hose, and I'll get around to ordering a custom hose one of these days.

Actually, the real solution here is for one of the companies known for tech gear, like Halcyon or dive rite, to really take the OW long hose idea more seriously and stock hose lengths that are more practical for OW divers, like maybe 6" increments from 5 ft to 7ft.

THe argument here is badly flawed. At a minimum, you have to have a coupler, and an extra hose, but more importantly an extra hose of the correct link to give you the "correct" length for your long hose. By the time you are done experimenting that will be a lot of hoses.

In contrast, the diver could just buy or borrow a 7' hose. Once in the water, if for some reason you decide a 7' hose is too long, switch to the back up briefly and with your head swiveled all the way to the left extend the long hose past your mouth until you have the right length. Then just subtract the number of inches past your mouth to get your "custom" dimensions.

But its obvious that if you have been using a coupler for a year now, your goal here is not really to end up with a custom hose.

Even if you ignore the extra connection and two extra o-rings, you also have two more barbed connections and swaged fittings, all of which reduce the flexibility over a 4-5" of the hose.

It's a bad idea, and while you can dive the way you want, its another issue to suggest someone else should dive that way.

As for a tech oriented company offering hoses in 6" increments? Why? 7' works fine for techncal divers and 5' works fine for most rec and some sidemount technical applications. Having 6" increments in between would just mean stocking hoses no one really needs.