Originally posted by Warhammer
What is your opinion on diving a steel tank with a wetsuit? By steel, I mean either HP steel or LP steel. Not that I'm a follower of DIR or anything, but they strongly discourage the combination due to the negaitive bouyancy of steel tanks and the compression at depth of wetsuits. The reason I ask is that I'm presently looking at buying my wife a set of gear and the issue of a tank has come up. She's rather small, 5'2" and weighing in at 100lbs. Obviously she has great difficulty in carrying an AL80 and full gear. It isn't so bad if we're at a site that allows easy access and for me to do most of the work for her, but on a dive boat in average seas she has alot of trouble and usually requires assistance of me and the crew to make it to the entry point without falling. So I'm thinking about a HP80 for her, which would decrease the weight on her belt and the total weight of her gear by as much as 10Lbs, depending on the tank. But at the same time it would make her 4 to 6Lbs negative with a full tank and no weights. Then she should be pretty much neutral with the tank empty after taking in consideration the weight of the air. If you factor in a 5mm wetsuit (which is how she will almost always dive this tank), she shouldn't require more than 8 to 10Lbs of lead. I don't know exactly how much the suit would compress at depth, but I'd say she'd be 8 to 10Lbs negative at depth with a full tank. Do you think that's safe? Her BC would have more than enough lift to compensate and if it failed she could ditch the weights and swim up, assuming her buddy, namely me, isn't around.
Yes, I've thought about just getting a smaller tank for her, but the funny thing is that lately she's been using as much or just slightly less air than me, so that would result in shorter bottom times.
For the LP side of this story, I'm considering buying a pair of LP95s for myself and would dive them in a wetsuit alot of the time.
