Regulator Freeze

[techdiver12]

you can get cold kit for thoese reg. as for the guy whit the apex

you can try tow breath of one reg and the bc on the one.If you to do not have a dry suite inflate system put the dry suite hose on the other reg. whit the bc. inflate. If you all ready do this sorry.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Bob,

Nemrod is gone! That's interesting, and news to me. Now the Navy doesn't have any suppliers of two hose regs. Maybe they'll just have to start training with the "new" single hose regs

I'll talk to Vintage Dive Gear, but last I heard they did not have the duckbill valves either.

--------------

I just looked at the Vintage site, and darned if they don't have the duckbills advertised. This is very, very good news. I've been nursing one along with coatings of silicone grease for a year now. The old ones are so, so fragile! I hope these are built a bit better.

SeaRat

 

[oxyhacker]

I would have to disagree. How are you detirmining which probs are 1sts and which are 2nds?

We do some ice dives every winter, with many of the participants doing it for the first time. We have a good number of freezeups, and keep a pot of warm water on a camp stove. When someone has a freeze up, we just drop the 2nd in the warm water. 9 times out of 10, this stops it almost instantly, which it wouldn't do if it was the first stage that was frozen. This is not a perfect cure, as it leaves the stage full of water and hence more likely to refreeze (a 50/50 mix of vodka and water would be even better since it would have anti-freeze abilities not dependant on temperature) but if the diver immediately starts breathing on the reg and gets on with the dive the reg will stay warm long enough the diver to get underwater where its warmer. I'm sure there have been more, but I can recall only one confirmed 1st stage freezeup, a Poseidon.

The people who have freezeups are invariably the people who mess about on the surface fiddling with their gear and taking the reg out of their mouth. I tend to use old Scubapro regs for ice, grease-kitted 1sts and metal seconds, and have never had a freeze up.


Oh and we leave the octopuses at home. They only double the chances of a freeflow.

Bob3 once bubbled...

The most common type of regulator freeze-up is the first stage. Unless you're using an environmentally sealed reg, there is water inside your first stage. That water freezes from the air absorbing heat upon expanding (compliments of the similar set of physical laws that make your referigerator work).
The result is overpressurization of the second stage, resulting in a free flow. Most folks THINK their second stage is frozen up, but it's actually the first stage that causes the second to malfunction.

 

[Bubble Boy]

Don't take the octopus off. Its for your buddy when his/her unit fails to allow a safe exit from the water.

Oh and we leave the octopuses at home. They only double the chances of a freeflow.

IP's on some regs should be changed for cold water diving. Check the manufacture's specs. With properly serviced gear you should not have a problem if you dont breathe through the regs on the surface prior to the dive. I have used USD arctic, posedion, Apex and the sherwood Blizzard without incident.

 

[joens]

I think taking the octo off for ice diving is a good idea. the main problem you run into in cold water is free flows . you can keep breathing a free flow . if you switch to an octo you just waste that much more air. I did that one time and ended up with 2 free flows.
joens

 

[MikeFerrara]

joens once bubbled...
I think taking the octo off for ice diving is a good idea. the main problem you run into in cold water is free flows . you can keep breathing a free flow . if you switch to an octo you just waste that much more air. I did that one time and ended up with 2 free flows.
joens

If you feel like you need to detune it that's ok but don't take it off unless your diving solo. Oh...and don't do that either.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Any reg can freeze and free fllow it's just that scubapro does it way more often. None of my Zeagles or Apeks have ever frozen. I have only had a sherwood freeze once and that was after having the purge bumped on the edge of the ice with an outside temp of about 10 F. If it is cold and there are SP regs around someone's reg freezes almost every single time.

 

[jamiei]

I bet my wetsuit that there are plenty of people out there that have had zeagles and apexs freeze up though and I bet there are plenty of people that have never had their SP freeze up either. Most likely if you used a SP and followed the same procedures you do with your zeagles and apexs, then the SP would never freeze up either. I would venture to say that if took all the SP freeze ups and disected them you would find that either it wasn't properly cared for/serviced or the diver did not follow the correct procedures for diving in such conditions. Maybe you could even find that a greater number of SP divers are less experience in those conditions and therefore place their equipment in a situation where they are doomed to failure. Or maybe you just can't have your cake and eat it too. As for me, I love how my SP setup breathes and don't plan on doing that much frigid diving, but if I do, I'll know what not to do.

 

[Rooster1]

couple of weeks ago one of the divers from our dive club was with us at Gilboa and he was using the SP S600/MK25 down at 126 feet in 45 degree water and it started free flowing...he lost 700 psi out of his twin 95s before it stopped

 

[roakey]

Rooster1 once bubbled...
couple of weeks ago one of the divers from our dive club was with us at Gilboa and he was using the SP S600/MK25 down at 126 feet in 45 degree water and it started free flowing...he lost 700 psi out of his twin 95s before it stopped

Ah, why didn't he shut down the post? That's just the kind of failure that twins are designed for.

Roak