Safety question about BCD lift capacity and weights

[cummings66]

20# with a tank at 800psi. Once my tanks pressure had droped to 600 I found myself too bouyant to stay down anymore. (this is actually a good thing before you ever find yourself OOA)

Another diver already said this is a bad idea, and I'll agree with him. I'd also add another reason beyond the need to hold your safety stops which you can't do if you're light.

Suppose you have your tank at 600 psi and surface and your buddy isn't there? What are you going to do? You can't duck under to take a peek, you've just lost the ability to locate your buddy. Consider your buddy, things happen. Weight yourself properly in the first place. IMO you should be able to submerge (with slight effort) even with 500 psi. That amount of air will last me about 20 minutes as long as I don't go too deep, long enough to pick up the dropped mask, find the lost diver, etc.

 

[Tatsubon]

Thanks everyone for such great pointers! I will tune my weights to 24#, and for extra safety I am going to hang an extra 2# at my safety stop float line at 15'. You are correct to emphasize that we need to maintain control of neutral bouyancy throughout our dive.