pisauron
Contributor
I think he is afraid of complete manifold failure - meaning a leak in the manifold that will cause losing both tanks together.If you have to shut off a valve post, you're just not feeding gas to the regulator on that side. You're still able to feed gas from both tanks to the other regulator on the other post. If you shut down your right post, you can now longer use your power inflator on your wing, but you can certainly orally inflate via the corrugated hose. If you shut down your left post, you can no longer add gas to your drysuit, but you certainly have options available such as switching the inflation hose from your power inflator to you drysuit, if that is even necessary or helpful (wouldnt really be necessary during a blue water ascent). If you have a failure on the valve itself and shut down the manifold connecting the two tanks, you're now down to the contents of the single tank feeding the working post, but your inflation options are identical, it just makes it that much more time sensitive to clear any overhead obligations and get you and your buddies to the surface on remaining gas.
You could do an entire dive without the low pressure hose even connected to the power inflator of your BC, just by pressing the button and blowing into the inflator manually. Thats how you managed bouyuancy compensation before my time when using a horse collar:
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Inflating your dry suit is the least of your worries in that situation.