Not trying to thread jack but I saw this thread with the SeaQuest Balance in the subject line so, I thought I would report and ask about an issue that happened to me with this BC.
I have 11 dives with this BC and I was on my 12th dive with this BC so, it is what I would call relatively new. I only dive in warm water, mostly in the Carribean and Central/South America. My Balance has the integrated octo and about 2 minutes into the dive at a depth of 25 feet, I pressed the inflator button just to add a little shot of air into my BC and the inflator stuck in the "on" position. My BC started inflating immediately and by the time I reached around and pulled the quick-release on the inflator hose out, I was sitting on top at the surface.
I was given some oxygen but luckily I didn't suffer any DCS symptons and I stopped diving for 5 days. Once I got back to the shop, I dropped the BC off with the tech and he went over it for 4 days, cleaning and trying to replicate the problem. I was given the BC back with a clean bill of health and on the 6th day after my initial incident, I went back down again with the Balance on.
Everything was fine with this dive, we went down to roughly 80', began ascending slowly and about 20 minutes into the dive at roughly 60' I notice that I was having trouble staying down. So, I reach over and tug on my inflator hose to exhaust some air, nothing happens. I reach behind me to tug on the rear exhaust, nothing happens. At this point, I realize that I'm definately starting to ascend alot faster than I would like to so, I invert and begin kicking to stay down. The dive master notices that I'm having problems, comes over and he begins to start tugging on everything on my BC trying to get air to vent. Nothing is working/venting. Ultimately he has to let me go and I reach the surface with a partially inflated BC again. At the surface, I realize the dive master must have pulled my inflator hose as I wanted to add more air to my BC to help me remain afloat but the inflator hose isn't attached anymore. Looking back at the incident now, my inflator must have been very slowly introducing air into my BC so, I didn't realize what was happening to me at first until it was too late.
So, now I have a looooong swim back to the boat, on the surface, with a partially inflated BC that isn't really helping to keep me afloat. I was sucking air ridiculously fast at this point, my mask was all fogged up now and I could not for the life of me get the inflator hose back on. I tried to put some breaths into my BC manually, but I just couldn't get my breathing under control and the water was rough that day so, I just couldn't do it. I began to feel panic setting in and I just wanted to ditch everything that was weighing me down. Instead, I put my reg back into my mouth, tried to start controlling my breathing, rolled over onto my back and just started kicking, in order to reach the boat. I consider myself to be a good swimmer and I run 1.5 miles every other day... but that ended up being the toughest swim of my life.
Everyone else at this point had surfaced and was making their way back to the boat. I did eventually make it back, utterly exhausted and after a visit to the hospital, I'm glad to be sitting here typing this out in front of my computer.
I didn't mean for this to turn into a report of my dive incident, I guess it just turned out that way. I am interested in hearing about other people having anything similar happen to them and their SeaQuest BC. About a week after this happened to me, I was speaking to an instructor at the dive shop who happened to be wearing a SeaQuest Black Diamond BC and he told me that he had issues with venting air from his rear exhaust valve. At this point, I cannot trust this BC anymore and I'm looking into purchasing a ScubaPro BC now. But has anyone else had issues with the inflator sticking, slowly inflating, or their BC not being able to vent air?