Deep South Divers
Contributor
Short story: Seriously rocks. Five stars. You need one. No, you can not have mine.
The details: I am not related to Thermalution or the company that sells them here on the East Coast of the 'States (http://www.heatedwetsuits.com) in any way, but I might decide to be after diving this thing today.
I received my Thermalution yesterday via FedEx... But not until I was already out of the water from the day's work (I'm a commercial diver and dive most days). I had a dive club (http://www.BeaufortDiveClub.com – my company’s recreational affiliate) meeting to attend, so I unboxed the shirt, assembled the batteries and such, and wore it under my T-shirt to the meeting.
On the way there I tested the shirt. The controller was on a “leash” coil cord and extended over my right shoulder and draped across my chest. When I held the spring-loaded toggle switch to the “ON” position for a second, the green LED lamp illuminated and told me that the shirt’s twin heaters on my back were on. A minute later I could feel an amazing amount of heat coming across my back. It was like having a heated seat back in my truck… Except on steroids. The effectiveness of this system was unbelievable. Not what I expected at all. The manufacturer claims more than two hours of battery life in this position.
Tapping the controller’s momentary switch to the next position (yellow LED), was too hot for my tastes, sandwiched between the truck’s seat back and my bare skin. Another tap got me a red LED… Apparently representing the primary colors in Hades. The manufacturer claims a one-hour runtime at this level, and says that the shirt can generate temperatures around 140 degrees! Clearly too hot for the truck, but how would it work underwater? I didn’t have long to find out.
The next morning, after an overnight charge of the shirt’s batteries, I wore it to work. Air temperatures hovered around 52 degrees Fahrenheit, with a water temperature of about 46. Being a commercial diver in February sucks.
I dive both wet and dry. This season I used drysuits made by SANTI and Northern Diver, with undergarments by DUI, SANTI, Fourth Element, and UnderArmour. My wetsuits are made by Henderson and O’Neill and range from 3mm to 7mm. For commercial diving, I prefer to dive wet, and today would be no exception. I was diving a Henderson 7mm one-piece jumpsuit, ScubaPro booties (5mm), NeoSport bibbed hood (5mm) and NeoSport 3mm gloves under my work gloves.
The suit was still wet from the previous day’s diving (as it always is), so I turned on the Thermalution (low setting) before sliding the cold suit on. I was donning before I could feel any heat from the shirt, but I did notice that the back of the suit seemed much warmer than the legs and hips as I donned. I was surprised to find that the twin batteries in the shirt just aft of my armpits were not even noticeable… I figured for sure that they’d be in the way. Ditto with the wires. I thought I’d have to spend some time donning the suit and being careful not to pull unnecessarily on the wiring in the shirt, but it all seemed pretty solid and unobtrusive. Frankly, I was surprised.
I donned my hood, thinking that the wire sticking out of the back of the neck-hole of my wetsuit would be a problem and interfere with the hood. Not at all. Even my over-the-head don of my scuba rig didn’t interfere with the controller wires.
Before giant-striding into the water, I turned the shirt up to HIGH. I do this every day, and know to expect a flood of water through the back-mounted zipper of the wetsuit. I figured I’d turn the shirt down if it got too hot.
We all know that feeling… The water seeps in for the first time. Only… This time it was like a cool trickle, not a bone-chilling spine-shrinking breath-taker. As the water flowed into the suit (which was already wet – that always seems to help some), it flowed past the heating elements in the shirt and warmed up before striking my bare skin. Nice!
20 minutes into the dive, I was toasty. Like diving during the summer. I didn’t have a thermometer on my rig, so I figured that I just happened to be diving in an area that was maybe warmer than at yesterday’s dive site. Weird. After all, this couldn’t be the shirt… I mean, my hands and feet were warm, my face (not covered) felt fine, and in general, except for the thick wetsuit, I could have been doing a summer dive. Wet. In the 40’s.
Of course, the only difference was the shirt… And these two, seemingly-too-small heating elements on my back along my spine, sandwiched between my skin and 7mm of neoprene – with a backplate and wing pressing on them. To test the theory, I turned the shirt off and waited for the cold to arrive.
20 minutes later, I could feel a chill beginning to envelop me, but just barely. It was taking a lot longer than I expected to cool off and feel any cold at all. Surprised, I figured that I’d chosen a bad day to test this shirt… ‘Cause the water simply wasn’t cold enough.
I turned the shirt back on, noticing that I’d been dragging the controller through a bit of mud and muck all through the dive. It seemed “crunchy” in my hand, and I was unimpressed with the quality of the controller. A good shake underwater got it to clear out easily, but I could see this becoming an issue at some point unless you tuck it away.
Over the next 20-30 minutes or so I tried switching the shirt from LOW to MED to HIGH several times. I couldn’t honestly feel a difference. In fact, I couldn’t honestly feel a difference between the shirt off or the shirt on… Clearly I had picked way too warm of a day to really test this thing.
Exiting the water and doffing gear and tools and such, I noted that, for the first time in probably my entire dive career, I really didn’t want to get out of the water. Normally, commercial divers look forward to finishing the job. After an hour or two of work, we are rewarded with sun and air and warmth and finally getting some of the cumbersome gear off. We look forward to being able to chill out and breathe for a little bit, and the pressures of work can subside for a little while. Well… I didn’t want to get out of the water. The sun was shining through the surface, the water was winter-coldwater-clear, and I was totally comfortable in a weightless environment. “Ahh, yes,” I thought… “This is why I dive for a living.” What a beautiful, gorgeous dive on a gorgeous day.
Not wanting to return to the world of cell phones and gravity, I doffed my fins, climbed the ladder, and chicken-winged out of my rig. Tools hit the dock and I removed my mask and gloves. I pulled on my hood and popped it off and stood there for a moment, realizing just how freakin’ cold it was outside.
The sun was shining, but the wind was whipping and 50 degrees bit at my ears just enough to let me know it was there. I doffed my booties and that’s when I really realized what was going on.
My boots were steaming. An hour or an hour and a half dive in a wetsuit, and my boots were steaming.
I pulled at my back zipper and let my shoulders test the air. Yep, a chill bit at them too. And when I turned the hose on to rinse off, I realized just how freakin’ cold everything was. Holy Mother of God cold.
How do I put this to accurately describe what I had been experiencing? I had basically been working in a Jacuzzi the entire dive. Inside that suit, submerged just a few feet below the water’s surface, I basically had been cocooned in bathwater… Probably surprisingly close to 98.6 degrees. Those little heating elements had totally warmed the entire layer of water between the wetsuit and me. I was totally faked out by this and believed it to be pretty much a summer dive. Warmer, actually.
I’ve been in diving a long time… And every year some manufacturer somewhere comes along with some product that claims to totally revolutionize scuba diving. I’ve seen many come and go… And in some cases, they actually use the term “revolution” in their company name. Silly, right? The problem is… We’ve all seen this so many times that we’re totally numb to it.
Well… Let me tell you… This Thermalution is a very serious revolution. Really. This changes everything. I am shocked and thrilled and in awe that this simple product can be so effective and change so much.
What’s even cooler is that the shirt can be worn under anything. Want to dive wet? You can use this. Dry? You can use this. Under your ski jacket on the slopes? Yep. At your kid’s soccer game? You got it. This is a very cool product!
For me, warmth isn’t about luxury… It’s a safety issue. I have been so cold at my job that my hands stop working and I can’t think logically anymore. Over the years, I’ve learned to simply deal with it and figured out how to work with these handicaps. Sad, but true… Such is the plight of someone that dives for their paycheck. “Comfort” isn’t the issue… Learning how far you can go into hypothermia and still work is. It’s just part of the job.
This… This changes everything.
A glowing review? Well… Yes. But that’s not to say that the product is perfect. The aft-armpit-mounted batteries and wired controller over the shoulder gives the shirt all kinds of flexibility in application… You could literally use it anywhere and in any way. If it were up to me, though, I’d mount the heating wires inside of a wetsuit and externally plug the wetsuit into a can from a can light… And have that on my backplate and wing. The controller could live on the can’s lid… And in something other than a plastic slider switch. The battery would be ONE battery, not two, and it’d be can-light sized, promising a run time of 10-20 hours or more, not two… That way, I wouldn’t have to charge it every day. But of course, there’s issues with that whole application, and it would only work in that suit that the wires were installed in (which I replace every few months, so this idea sounds expensive) and only for diving. I couldn’t wear the shirt, for example, to an oyster roast/shrimp boil like I am this afternoon.
More criticism: The shirt itself is inexpensive nylon, not quick-drying poly like an UnderArmour shirt, and takes too long to dry. And while the wiring seemed very solid, I hate that it’s so obvious and kinda stiff in those areas. With the shirt on, I could not tell they (or the batteries) were there – hinting at the excellent design – but with today’s conductive fabrics, it seems there would be a simpler, more integrated solution than wires in a shirt.
…Which, by the way, leads me to another criticism… The price. With a $20 controller, a $20 shirt, and maybe $40 worth of batteries and wires, I’m not sure why the shirt costs $400-$700 depending on what features you get. It’s not like it uses any special and expensive conductive fabrics. It’s basically a pair of waterproof, very efficient and impressive heating pads with two cell phone batteries sewn into a false-UnderArmour shirt.
…But those are small criticisms, probably addressed by time and generations of improvements to undergarments such as this.
…For now, I will say this: Diving a battery-powered, heated undershirt is literally a revolution. It changes everything. And frankly, it's totally worth the price. It's that good.
…And yes, you need one.
The details: I am not related to Thermalution or the company that sells them here on the East Coast of the 'States (http://www.heatedwetsuits.com) in any way, but I might decide to be after diving this thing today.
I received my Thermalution yesterday via FedEx... But not until I was already out of the water from the day's work (I'm a commercial diver and dive most days). I had a dive club (http://www.BeaufortDiveClub.com – my company’s recreational affiliate) meeting to attend, so I unboxed the shirt, assembled the batteries and such, and wore it under my T-shirt to the meeting.
On the way there I tested the shirt. The controller was on a “leash” coil cord and extended over my right shoulder and draped across my chest. When I held the spring-loaded toggle switch to the “ON” position for a second, the green LED lamp illuminated and told me that the shirt’s twin heaters on my back were on. A minute later I could feel an amazing amount of heat coming across my back. It was like having a heated seat back in my truck… Except on steroids. The effectiveness of this system was unbelievable. Not what I expected at all. The manufacturer claims more than two hours of battery life in this position.
Tapping the controller’s momentary switch to the next position (yellow LED), was too hot for my tastes, sandwiched between the truck’s seat back and my bare skin. Another tap got me a red LED… Apparently representing the primary colors in Hades. The manufacturer claims a one-hour runtime at this level, and says that the shirt can generate temperatures around 140 degrees! Clearly too hot for the truck, but how would it work underwater? I didn’t have long to find out.
The next morning, after an overnight charge of the shirt’s batteries, I wore it to work. Air temperatures hovered around 52 degrees Fahrenheit, with a water temperature of about 46. Being a commercial diver in February sucks.
I dive both wet and dry. This season I used drysuits made by SANTI and Northern Diver, with undergarments by DUI, SANTI, Fourth Element, and UnderArmour. My wetsuits are made by Henderson and O’Neill and range from 3mm to 7mm. For commercial diving, I prefer to dive wet, and today would be no exception. I was diving a Henderson 7mm one-piece jumpsuit, ScubaPro booties (5mm), NeoSport bibbed hood (5mm) and NeoSport 3mm gloves under my work gloves.
The suit was still wet from the previous day’s diving (as it always is), so I turned on the Thermalution (low setting) before sliding the cold suit on. I was donning before I could feel any heat from the shirt, but I did notice that the back of the suit seemed much warmer than the legs and hips as I donned. I was surprised to find that the twin batteries in the shirt just aft of my armpits were not even noticeable… I figured for sure that they’d be in the way. Ditto with the wires. I thought I’d have to spend some time donning the suit and being careful not to pull unnecessarily on the wiring in the shirt, but it all seemed pretty solid and unobtrusive. Frankly, I was surprised.
I donned my hood, thinking that the wire sticking out of the back of the neck-hole of my wetsuit would be a problem and interfere with the hood. Not at all. Even my over-the-head don of my scuba rig didn’t interfere with the controller wires.
Before giant-striding into the water, I turned the shirt up to HIGH. I do this every day, and know to expect a flood of water through the back-mounted zipper of the wetsuit. I figured I’d turn the shirt down if it got too hot.
We all know that feeling… The water seeps in for the first time. Only… This time it was like a cool trickle, not a bone-chilling spine-shrinking breath-taker. As the water flowed into the suit (which was already wet – that always seems to help some), it flowed past the heating elements in the shirt and warmed up before striking my bare skin. Nice!
20 minutes into the dive, I was toasty. Like diving during the summer. I didn’t have a thermometer on my rig, so I figured that I just happened to be diving in an area that was maybe warmer than at yesterday’s dive site. Weird. After all, this couldn’t be the shirt… I mean, my hands and feet were warm, my face (not covered) felt fine, and in general, except for the thick wetsuit, I could have been doing a summer dive. Wet. In the 40’s.
Of course, the only difference was the shirt… And these two, seemingly-too-small heating elements on my back along my spine, sandwiched between my skin and 7mm of neoprene – with a backplate and wing pressing on them. To test the theory, I turned the shirt off and waited for the cold to arrive.
20 minutes later, I could feel a chill beginning to envelop me, but just barely. It was taking a lot longer than I expected to cool off and feel any cold at all. Surprised, I figured that I’d chosen a bad day to test this shirt… ‘Cause the water simply wasn’t cold enough.
I turned the shirt back on, noticing that I’d been dragging the controller through a bit of mud and muck all through the dive. It seemed “crunchy” in my hand, and I was unimpressed with the quality of the controller. A good shake underwater got it to clear out easily, but I could see this becoming an issue at some point unless you tuck it away.
Over the next 20-30 minutes or so I tried switching the shirt from LOW to MED to HIGH several times. I couldn’t honestly feel a difference. In fact, I couldn’t honestly feel a difference between the shirt off or the shirt on… Clearly I had picked way too warm of a day to really test this thing.
Exiting the water and doffing gear and tools and such, I noted that, for the first time in probably my entire dive career, I really didn’t want to get out of the water. Normally, commercial divers look forward to finishing the job. After an hour or two of work, we are rewarded with sun and air and warmth and finally getting some of the cumbersome gear off. We look forward to being able to chill out and breathe for a little bit, and the pressures of work can subside for a little while. Well… I didn’t want to get out of the water. The sun was shining through the surface, the water was winter-coldwater-clear, and I was totally comfortable in a weightless environment. “Ahh, yes,” I thought… “This is why I dive for a living.” What a beautiful, gorgeous dive on a gorgeous day.
Not wanting to return to the world of cell phones and gravity, I doffed my fins, climbed the ladder, and chicken-winged out of my rig. Tools hit the dock and I removed my mask and gloves. I pulled on my hood and popped it off and stood there for a moment, realizing just how freakin’ cold it was outside.
The sun was shining, but the wind was whipping and 50 degrees bit at my ears just enough to let me know it was there. I doffed my booties and that’s when I really realized what was going on.
My boots were steaming. An hour or an hour and a half dive in a wetsuit, and my boots were steaming.
I pulled at my back zipper and let my shoulders test the air. Yep, a chill bit at them too. And when I turned the hose on to rinse off, I realized just how freakin’ cold everything was. Holy Mother of God cold.
How do I put this to accurately describe what I had been experiencing? I had basically been working in a Jacuzzi the entire dive. Inside that suit, submerged just a few feet below the water’s surface, I basically had been cocooned in bathwater… Probably surprisingly close to 98.6 degrees. Those little heating elements had totally warmed the entire layer of water between the wetsuit and me. I was totally faked out by this and believed it to be pretty much a summer dive. Warmer, actually.
I’ve been in diving a long time… And every year some manufacturer somewhere comes along with some product that claims to totally revolutionize scuba diving. I’ve seen many come and go… And in some cases, they actually use the term “revolution” in their company name. Silly, right? The problem is… We’ve all seen this so many times that we’re totally numb to it.
Well… Let me tell you… This Thermalution is a very serious revolution. Really. This changes everything. I am shocked and thrilled and in awe that this simple product can be so effective and change so much.
What’s even cooler is that the shirt can be worn under anything. Want to dive wet? You can use this. Dry? You can use this. Under your ski jacket on the slopes? Yep. At your kid’s soccer game? You got it. This is a very cool product!
For me, warmth isn’t about luxury… It’s a safety issue. I have been so cold at my job that my hands stop working and I can’t think logically anymore. Over the years, I’ve learned to simply deal with it and figured out how to work with these handicaps. Sad, but true… Such is the plight of someone that dives for their paycheck. “Comfort” isn’t the issue… Learning how far you can go into hypothermia and still work is. It’s just part of the job.
This… This changes everything.
A glowing review? Well… Yes. But that’s not to say that the product is perfect. The aft-armpit-mounted batteries and wired controller over the shoulder gives the shirt all kinds of flexibility in application… You could literally use it anywhere and in any way. If it were up to me, though, I’d mount the heating wires inside of a wetsuit and externally plug the wetsuit into a can from a can light… And have that on my backplate and wing. The controller could live on the can’s lid… And in something other than a plastic slider switch. The battery would be ONE battery, not two, and it’d be can-light sized, promising a run time of 10-20 hours or more, not two… That way, I wouldn’t have to charge it every day. But of course, there’s issues with that whole application, and it would only work in that suit that the wires were installed in (which I replace every few months, so this idea sounds expensive) and only for diving. I couldn’t wear the shirt, for example, to an oyster roast/shrimp boil like I am this afternoon.
More criticism: The shirt itself is inexpensive nylon, not quick-drying poly like an UnderArmour shirt, and takes too long to dry. And while the wiring seemed very solid, I hate that it’s so obvious and kinda stiff in those areas. With the shirt on, I could not tell they (or the batteries) were there – hinting at the excellent design – but with today’s conductive fabrics, it seems there would be a simpler, more integrated solution than wires in a shirt.
…Which, by the way, leads me to another criticism… The price. With a $20 controller, a $20 shirt, and maybe $40 worth of batteries and wires, I’m not sure why the shirt costs $400-$700 depending on what features you get. It’s not like it uses any special and expensive conductive fabrics. It’s basically a pair of waterproof, very efficient and impressive heating pads with two cell phone batteries sewn into a false-UnderArmour shirt.
…But those are small criticisms, probably addressed by time and generations of improvements to undergarments such as this.
…For now, I will say this: Diving a battery-powered, heated undershirt is literally a revolution. It changes everything. And frankly, it's totally worth the price. It's that good.
…And yes, you need one.
