The Importance of a Balanced Rig - A true tale

[lamont]

I've both unscrewed my dump valve (that was at 60 feet while on a dive), and had my LP inflator hose pop off the corrugated hose (on the surface right before descending). Both times the wing still held enough gas to float me.

Gives me a little pause for thought, though, since you've now potentially compromised your ability to float on the surface, so if you complicated the problem by also running OOA then you could wind up with a very difficult time. With a reg in your mouth and a balanced rig, it should be largely a non-issue, but it would be pretty bad to be in the habit of breaking the 500 psi surfacing rule and then also find that you happened to lose your dump valve or pulled off your wing elbow on that dive and were overweighted.

 

[rlynch]

This would have been an issue had I been wearing my 112's with my wetsuit. I potentially would not have been able to swim up my rig and hence putting myself and my teammate in danger. This constituted the 1 failure we plan for and so I terminated the dive and fixed the problem at the surface. The core of the failure was in essence "user error" on my part and its easy to do. net result: add checking your OPV valve not just for function but also that its tightly screwed on. and be able to swim up your rig.

 

[Scott L]

Hmm, a spare Halcyon dump valve and spring would be very easy to carry. That along with my wet notes would make for some very interesting UW negotiations.

 

[lamont]

Hmm, a spare Halcyon dump valve and spring would be very easy to carry. That along with my wet notes would make for some very interesting UW negotiations.

you should have 2 or 3 dump valves in your team on your SMBs and you typically only need to use one.

just checking it is screwed in as part of the pre-dive can completely prevent this though. you shouldn't wind up in a situation where you've swapped out one of the SMB dump valves for a lost wing valve and then wound up losing the team's other SMB without a whole lot of bad planning and skills on that dive.

 

[Gombessa]

This has happened to us before, and I think John is absolutely right. If you find the cord by wrapping your finger around the valve, you can loosen it. My team always does a dump valve tighten as part of the gear check now.

Aside from that, we've also had a complete dump valve failure (as in it broke off, not just unscrewed). Caught it on camera on our ascent, and like the OP, having a balanced rig made it a non-issue to swim back to shore.

Turns out there was a recall on the OPV for that wing...because this kind of thing happens :/

 

[Jaydubya]

I've personally seen quite a few wing/BC failures and I haven't been diving that long. I've had two myself in the last 5 years. I had a butt dump break off completely and then had a crack at the elbow attachment point a few years later. Both were due to the same manufacturing defect. I heard it was a bad batch of material used to make the threaded plastic nipples. There was a "recall" but I had no idea until later.

 

[Hepcat62]

This happened to a GUE instructor on one of my fundies checkout dives. Thankfully, it was a shore dive and the OPV was found and screwed back in quickly. Since then, I always check that the thing is present, dumps, AND is screwed all the way in.

I'm still amazed at how quickly Gideon managed to find/grab those parts. I swear he had them in hand before the aforementioned instructor even realized they were gone, AND he was sick at the time! :shocked2: