The CCR One Year Later - Some Random Thoughts...

[Cruisin Home]

Well said ScubaDad but let me change to "....Any of these WILL break. ..."

Jimmer, I appreciate your point that it also enables very deep dives, thanks for mentioning. If thats what you want to do then RB is probably the way to go.

Good luck guys, maybe in future when complexity decreases, reliability increases, cost decreases, my kids grow up, ... then I will join you folks. I am sure these things will happen and who knows there may be a day when we look back at OC like it was a dinosaur!

 

[naimis]

• My buddy dives a Meg & I dive an Inspiration (we both use Hammerhead electronics), and you definitely throw away more scrubber material using the smaller canister.

I don't understand this statement. Can you explain? I'd always figured that the smaller canister would result in *less* discarded scrubber material.

Also, which one had the smaller canister, anyway? The Meg has a number of canister size options, but I think the Inspiration only has the one, right? What size can did the Meg have?

 

[padiscubapro]

I don't understand this statement. Can you explain? I'd always figured that the smaller canister would result in *less* discarded scrubber material.

Also, which one had the smaller canister, anyway? The Meg has a number of canister size options, but I think the Inspiration only has the one, right? What size can did the Meg have?

it depends on the dives you are doing.. if you plan to do 2 BIG dives in a day you can usually do it on a big scrubber, but with a smaller scrubber you frequently dont have enough margin so that you have to dump it and refill..

if you dont dive everyday, the big can is a waste of sorb since most people discard it after a few days.. fo everyday diving with reasonable dives The sorb use works out to be quite similiar..

 

[Gill Envy]

I've owned an Evolution and now own a Copis meg and a rEvo. I have to say that in terms of using scrubber efficiently, the dual scrubber design of the rEvo comes in first place. When you do long dives you bin both scrubbers. when you do a short dive, under about two hours, you just bin half the sorb. the system works beautifully. this approach cuts waste so much i'm less inclined to push the limits and it's being used on hundreds of rebreathers without incident.

for diving in remote places, you get to ship half the sorb for the amount of bottom time you plan, and that's where the savings really pays off.

in general, sorb is cheap and not worth stretching in a way that increases risk. The rEvo approach achieves this if the perimeters are followed.

g

 

[naimis]

I've owned an Evolution and now own a Copis meg and a rEvo. I have to say that in terms of using scrubber efficiently, the dual scrubber design of the rEvo comes in first place.

Do any meg owners purchase varying sizes of canister to support differing dive profiles? Seems like kind of an obvious thing to do but maybe my ignorance is showing.

 

[lemon]

in general, sorb is cheap and not worth stretching in a way that increases risk.

exactly. who would want their last thought to be "why didn't i shell out a few bucks for some fresh sorb?"

 

[Gill Envy]

exactly. who would want their last thought to be "why didn't i shell out a few bucks for some fresh sorb?"

On one end of the spectrum there's folks being cheap and pushing things to the max and getting in trouble, on the other end of the spectrum there are folks being unnecessarily wasteful. I find the rEvo system to offer a nice, sane middle ground for sorb/risk management. You might want to take a closer look!

George

 

[tracydr]

I'm very interested in CCR, mainly because of the quiet factor. Diving, for me is a meditative process. But, my husband is my buddy and he's an Electrical Engineer. He knows more than enough about CCR and says he wants nothing to do with them, to much electronics to go wrong when life is depending on them. I'll believe him since I only have a rudimentary understanding of the way they work.
Besides, I wouldn't be diving it solo, or without his support.

 

[netmage]

What is the major attraction: bottom time? silence?

IMO Seems like the higher statistical odds of catostophic failure without notification is a large price to pay for the benefits above.
...
I like you am spooked by Stiles death, and by countless others, some my friends, who i know could have survived an equipment failure on OC system.

I'm a very active diver... I found myself hauling 6-8 sets of tanks between the LDS, my truck and my 2nd story apartment. After having multiple AGE hits, which led to discovery of a PFO, I also saw myself taking a deco bottle along on every dive so I could still do the dives I wanted with the conservatism level I wanted.

I was a CCR skeptic... two of my buddies made the switch prior to me, and I dove with and around them for a year before I saw the light... Once I fully understood the system, its failure modes and the options available - the whole CCR issue was distilled and demystified quite a bit. We all relegated ourselves to the shallow end of the pool to focus on the basics, skills, and get us back into shape on the new platform for deco dives. And I'll freely admit, during my first year I had quite a few expensive mistakes where I really should have been more on top of things - something as simple as a good pos/neg check... The statistic kinda speaks for itself - I've never had to bailout well into a dive. If I have a problem - it shows up right at the get go...

 

[netmage]

Do any meg owners purchase varying sizes of canister to support differing dive profiles? Seems like kind of an obvious thing to do but maybe my ignorance is showing.

I don't know folks who switch between actively... I have a 5.5lb axial and an 8lb radial in a standard length can. I only dive the 8lb radial... The efficiency and flood resilience is a no brainer to me.

I have thought about getting a 5.5lb radial just so my rig would be a little less 'heavy', and I kicked around the idea of a cave can for travel - but I've packed my normal can in a carry on just fine.

But the reality is in Florida waters folks dive 8lb radials to 10-13 hours of recreational depths. I'd think the 5.5 radial would easily do 6-10... So your talking about a weekend of diving the 5.5, or 2 weekends w/ the 8.... You really don't have a need to switch between the two.....? And yea - never be cheap about cells and sorb...