Useless Statistic of the Day

[landlocked]

7/5 mil one piece started with 28 or 30 lbs down to 18 with no hood or gloves.


With 3 mil shorty went from 14 to 10 lbs.

If I am finning real hard or other strenuos stuff I need a couple of pounds more. I also use about 4 lbs more for river diving.

 

[WreckWriter]

lisacats once bubbled...
I dive wet. I started out needing 43 lbs. with aluminum 80's. I got comfortable enough over time and got down to 33 lbs. I still must have been overweighted though, because now that I have switched to a steel 71.4, I only need 21 lbs. One of the many things keeping me from seriously thinking about a drysuit is not wanting to add weight back on!

Cheers,
Lisa

ONLY 21 lbs?? With a steel tank?? That's a lot of weight......

 

[TCDiver1]

ElectricZombie once bubbled...

Seems like most Instructors overweight their students considerably. I have yet to determine why.

I have found it is sometimes necessary, to overweight a student to get them down. Very few students are 100% comfortable when they first don a scuba unit and are usually breathing much harder, therefore, are generally more buoyant than when they are 100% comfortable.

As confined water progresses almost all students have comfortably shed 50% or more of the weight they started with. The rare student doesn't need the added weight but in my experience that student is the exception not the rule.

For those of you out there that are instructors, that have never experienced this, i'm all ears. I'd love to learn how you avoid this problem so i can start using it.

For those who aren't instructors, i'm like diverbuoy, as i would rather error on the side of caution and overweight the student until they are comfortable dropping the weight. Since we are responsible for your lives while teaching you, the last thing i want to worry about is an uncontrolled buoyant ascent. I for one take that responsibilty rather seriously. From my perspective it is quite amazing to see the change in comfort level that takes place in most OW students from CW one to OW dive four or more. Air consumption goes down, weight gets shed, new diver gets more comfortable with each dive. By the time most of our students get to OW dive 2 or 3 they have shed most if not all of the overweight that was required.

 

[Lawman]

:flusher:
Take off weight? Hah! I put more on! When you wear an XXL
7mil wetsuit it takes plenty of lead to get you under water. I wear
36 lbs and the Coast Guard still threatened to sink me as a hazard to navigation if I didn't get under faster! These tootie fruitees on the board who claim to go under with just a few pounds are just posturing! This is diving and it's done underwater. I dive wrecks so don't cover much area..when that tank empties I still want to be on the bottom.

OK, let me have it you instructors!!

 

[lisacats]

I'm a big girl and dive with a full 7 ml suit, so I probably need more weight than your average barbie...

 

[DennisW]

I am sure that there are people that need the 10% of their body weight to get down. I am also sure there are people who need more and those who need less. To start out with 10% and then add or take away is ludicrous. If you search the threads you can find several methods to get weighted properly. Some use a nearly empty tank, some don't. Use what ever method is easier for you.

If I used 10% I would have started out with 18 lbs. I use 8 lbs when I don't use my wet suit and I use 10 lbs when I wear it. My complete wet suit is a 3 mil farmer john and shorty combination. I have been known to use a pound more when I had to give my 2 pound weight to my wife and use my 3 pound weight instead.

If I worked at it again, I could probably lose some of the weight, but I'm comfortable with what I have.