Don_Rickles:
Reefraff, I assume you never look or check your bottles after you hit the water.
Why lead with an insult? Arrogant smugness may endear you to the cyberdivers but doesn't facilitate conversation.
It seems to me instead of this half-pregnant approach could be easily fixed by doing a quick roll-on-roll-off approach every few minutes as a part of regular diving activities.(you don't even have to look at the bottles to do it either) If you do want to look, great, you'll see you need it recharged or you don't.
Again, with the insults. However, you've acknowledged, as have others, that depressurization occurs. Unlike some, you have tacitly acknowledged that this is a potential problem and that you are taking steps to correct the situation. You're doing a rote roll-on, roll-off - not the solution I've found works best for me but you're still addressing the same concern. Maybe that's something we could talk about - I already know how thick my stream is and how short a distance it would have to go to wet your shoes.
Very simple, and takes nothing away from the dive, infact it becomes part of the program before you know it and you don't even consciously know you're doing it. It is SOP with our divers.
If you bump it, it's the same as any valve or piece of gear - check it.
Checking your gauges can be difficult to do if you're in the middle of a restriction or otherwise task loaded - the most likely time that the system will be accidentally purged. Roll-on, roll-off is only effective if you're doing it often enough to catch water before it enters the first stage. How often do you mindlessly do this during your dives?
What you don't want to get into is the idea that leaving anything half-way, part way, whatever, is anything other than a cludge where none is needed.
More than anything, your caveat regarding half-way efforts should include solutions, which is exactly what I've found roll-on, roll-off to be - a half-way solution to the problem. Better than nothing? Yes. Good enough? No.
I'm sure the first time you forget to shut off a bottle when you're dropping it and it runs off will be the last time you do it that way. I'd rather someone just use a safer approach than learn the hard way where your only inwater concern is the loss of the gas.
In reverse order, loss of gas isn't the "only inwater concern" - the potential for a free-flow is real, too, as you have indicated. Aside from the loss of gas that can represent, it also adds to the task-loading and disrupts the protocols. Second, and to repeat what I've said twice before, when dropping a bottle, the system should be charged and the valve off. Carefully staging the dropped bottle should make an accidental purge nearly impossible and leaving the valve open, even partially, in this situation isn't worth the risk.
It really doesn't matter if it hasn't happened to you yet either.
I will admit I tend not to bash the crap out my gear while penetrating wrecks which is why I guess I don't flood them....yes even in salt water.
Dropping them down a couple decks? Whatever are you doing dude?
Diving wrecks - you know, something bigger and deeper than a jonboat in a quarry. Sheesh. I wasn't talking about dropping the bottles down a couple of decks, I was talking about the increased likelihood of flooding that comes from an increase in depth with a purged system. Sorry if I wasn't clear.
I'll skip the cheap parting shot in hope of a kinder, gentler world.
