useful dry suit tips

[hantzu701]

From the recent posts, it looks like a bunch of people just bought dry suits. I also just got my dry suit and have three dives with it. I did a search for tips and found a few general comments. I thought that it might be useful to put these comments into a thread.

What tips did you get for diving in a dry suit? Below are the tips that I got.

*If you have latex seals, ****expect your dry suit to leak the first few times that you use it****.
Apparently very few people stay dry on their first pool session. Clenching your fist creates channels in your wrist which allow water to seep in. The obvious solution is to move the wrist seal further up the wrist where the channels are not as pronounced. One useful tip that got was to rubber band the latex seal with a thick, 1/2 inch rubber band.

*Don't twist your neck when looking from side to side. Move your torso. This prevents leaks from the neck seal.

*Don't use your BC for buoyancy initially. Get comfortable with the process of adding air and venting the dry suit. Then, as you get used to the task loading, add the BC to fine tune your buoyancy.

*If you're in a serious runaway ascent, consider breaking your neck seal to vent gas.

*Use ankle weights. Personally, I didn't take that advice, but it seems to be recommended.

Anything else?

 

[CD_in_Chitown]

If you're in an uncontrolled ascent, vent your neck seal. You'll get a little wet but you'll stop the ascent.

"*If you're in a serious runaway ascent" - Cut the suit, patches are cheap, bubbles are bad.

 

[MechDiver]

If latex seals leak, they don't fit correctly. There should be no reason to put a rubber band around your wrist, other than to make your hands cold by cutting off the blood flow. Use talc or seal saver if you need to help put the seals on. Do NOT use scented talc on latex.

Learn to use the drysuit correctly from the start. It is not a BC, it provides exposure protection. You have a BC to use as a BC.

You're correct, you don't need ankle weights.

Good point on the ascent. Wrist seal works also. You have to stay ahead of the suit, which is another reason not to use it as a BC.

MD

 

[SparkySFD]

I dont know if I'd cut the suit. You can dump an extraordinary amount of air by breaking the neck seal.

By the time you decide to do it, get to your knife and then actually cut through a tough suit your screwed. And could have dumped all the air in the suit from the neck.

 

[Redshift]

I dont know if I'd cut the suit. You can dump an extraordinary amount of air by breaking the neck seal.

You can indeed... I've tried that by overinflating (very very much!) the suit at 6m and I could stop the ascent very quickly. But I wasn't wearing gloves and I was told that with gloves it can be more difficult to grab the neck seal to pull it.

 

[daveg1]

I have 2 tips. The first you may think it's easy to remember untill 1 day you forget and you will.

Tip 1: remember to plug in the air hose. Adding water instead of air is cold.

Tip 2: Never let someone in a WET suit zip your DRY suit. They have little intrest in making sure it's zipped all the way.:wacko:

 

[cavanhills]

Get a tube of KY jelly and apply it to your hands before passing them through the wrist seals - I've tried a few different products but nothing's as good as KY. Bonus - it's latex friendly.

 

[Mo2vation]

* Wax the zip after a day of diving... makes it much easier to deal with and extends the life of your pull tab!

* Clean thoroughly - my rule: gear gets washed before I get in the shower after a trip...and I'm usually pretty ripe so I'm very motivated to clean the gear. I have a big trash can filled with fresh water. I drop in the suit and push it feet-first to the bottom of the can...this whooshes air out the up-stretched arms and open neck. I grab the seals and clamp them in my hand, and dunk and swish and dunk and swish until the salt taste is gone off the outside of the suit. Hang in shady spot to dry. When dry, I turn inside out and let it air out. I figure salt water is harsher on the outside of the suit than sweat and methane are on the inside of the suit...so the outside gets dunked first.

* Packing - be sure to keep the seals away from the dive bag zipper...on a recent trip I was rushing my packing and came about a zipper-tooth away from closing a wrist seal in the zipper... that would not be good.

* Ankle weights... I'll never understand the idea of putting lead weights on your motor. If you have floaty feet, I recommend trying 10 very stout toe rings. If that doesn't work, try re-thinking your fin selection and getting neg fins (jets, turtles, etc.)

* Gaiters - I see more of these now that I ever have before. On the last boat trip Arnaud and I took, easily half of the drysuit divers had them. Don't really get that one either. Maybe try less gas in the suit? They're lost on me.

* When putting on my neck seal, I open the seal with both hands, look sharply to my right and pull it over. I don't get the open side-to-side with two hands, then pull it over your ears method of donning. Maybe its just my dome, but I put less stress on the neck seal turning my head and pulling it on that way (right hand sliding over forehead, then nose, then chin...as opposed to hands over ears and just letting my chin and nose break through on their own...)

Those are some of mine.

K

 

[Dryglove]

Most important of all.......make sure your P-valve hose is not kinked

 

[Genesis]

KY for seal lube. That makes two "clean" uses for it...

In an uncontrolled ascent your friend is the neck seal. You will get cold. In very cold water you will get REAL cold. However, that beats bent or embolized, so....

If you have a "warm neck" collar be aware that it makes getting to that seal in an emergency more of a problem. Doubly true if you have heavy gloves on as well.

If you unplug the LP hose because the intake valve is leaking, you will get wet. Its time to consider an abort. You may not figure it out for a few minutes - but if the valve is leaking air, it will also leak water. If the water is cold (that's why you're wearing the dry suit, right?) you can get VERY cold.

You do not need ankle weights/gaiters. If you think you do, either (1) your suit doesn't fit right or (2) you have way too much gas in it (or both!) Fix the real problem; ankle weights are a particularly poor choice as that's weight which you must then accelerate with each kick cycle, and that will impair your mobility AND increase your gas consumption! If you MUST, the gaiters are better than the weights.

You WILL feel air move around as you change your trim. You can use this to your advantage. If you'd like to (intentionally) stand on your head, if you are trimmed correctly you can and this will be a "stable" position. Try it! (This, in a wetsuit, is nowhere near as simple!)

Don't pee in a dry suit. There are technological solutions that are better than "Depends" for this problem

Do not use the suit for a BC. You already have one. The amount of gas you must put into the suit when dove properly is quite small. Putting excessive amounts of gas into the suit will NOT reduce the squeeze on the part of your body that is "down", but it WILL make a very uncomfortable and potentially unsafe "bubble" of air in the suit. You want enough gas in the suit to relax the squeeze in the TOPMOST part of your body - and no more. Dive the dump wide open. This also makes it very unlikely you will ever need the first bit of advice (about the uncontrolled ascent) because you won't have one

On ascent your dump must be the highest point if you expect it to dump. This usually means rolling on your side a bit if you ascend in the recommended horizontal position every once in a while.

If you have a self-don suit, be careful not to get anything caught in the zip. Catch something in one of the teeth and you can bend it, which hoses it and requires replacement. If you don't have a self-don suit (e.g. back zip) be extremely careful about putting it on or off yourself. It can be done (I'm capable of it) but its unwise and you increase the risk of damaging the zipper.

That's a good start..... BTW I have a suit that doesn't fit me quite right in the "Aquatrader" section if someone needs one.... winter is a great time to dive dry.