Using your wetsuit in place of your drysuit undergarments

[lindenbruce]

Hello all,
Okay, a few years back I was on a live aboard down around the Channel Island's of So-Cal. Several guys were wearing their wetsuits as undergarments for their dry suits. They were doing it under the guise if they had a failure of the dry suit causing it to flood they would still have the bouyancy of their wetsuits to help return to the surface. They didn't seem to have any issue diving with this arrangement. Any ideas folks? B

 

[fisheater]

Silly.

(1). A flooded drysuit is heavier then cr@p when boarding a vessel or exiting at shore, but is neutrally buoyant in the water, as its filled with - you guessed it - water.

(2). Neoprene is cr@ppy undergarment choice. Its weight to warmth ratio is haywire. It's restrictive. It can't wick any moisture from your skin.


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[oldflounder]

I use a layer of underarmor type material, then a layer of 2 piece Lavacore, cheap insulated skipants and a loose knit sweater/shirt w/what I call a waffle knit. Is less restricting than a snowmobile type suit and would give an extra 10-15 minutes before hypothermia sets in in case of a full suit flood. Have to add a little extra air for warmth though.

A flooded drysuit with a wetsuit is no more heavy than a flooded drysuit with a snowmobile type suit underneath. Besides, only enough water enters to replace the air in the undergarments and no more if you have suit squeeze and keep the zipper closed when you surface. A wetsuit is full of air when you first enter the water. At the end of the dive it is saturated and several pounds heavier. Try weighing it before and after a dive some time. So how well it would act as a buoyancy device would depend upon how long it is in the water.

 

[TSandM]

Since you have a BC in addition to your wetsuit, I'm not sure why you would want an undergarment that provided buoyancy. There are two major drawbacks to a wetsuit as a dry suit undergarment. One is that neoprene does not breathe, and so all the sweat you generate while diving is trapped inside the wetsuit, making it sticky. The other is that the closed cell neoprene in the wetsuit doesn't get equalized when you put air in the suit, so despite the dry suit inflation, you will lose insulating ability as you go deeper.

 

[spectrum]

If you flood a laminate suit with a significant garment you will become heavy as heck. True, the water is neutral but the loss of loft, even with minimal injected air will reduce buoyancy considerably. We all know how much weight we add to sink a drysuit and that's all pretty much based on near surface, minimal loft conditions.

Wearng a wetsuit is a bad from due to the reasons mentioned.

 

[oldflounder]

.... There are two major drawbacks to a wetsuit as a dry suit undergarment. One is that neoprene does not breathe, and so all the sweat you generate while diving is trapped inside the wetsuit, making it sticky. The other is that the closed cell neoprene in the wetsuit doesn't get equalized when you put air in the suit, so despite the dry suit inflation, you will lose insulating ability as you go deeper.

I think you would also loose buoyancy characteristic as you go deeper with the wetsuit as the bubbles trapped inside the rubber during manufacture shrink up and even the rubber material itself is made thinner. Also I don't think a dry wetsuit provides the thermal protection of a typical drysuit undergarment. The magic of a wetsuit is that it holds a thin layer of warm water against the skin and keeps the colder outside water at bay. The undergarment partially uses trapped air in the fabric fibers as well as what you pump into the suit. I like the new thick dive skins like those made of polyolefin and the Lavacore line that give warmth when dry and added thermal protection if they get wet. Lavacore has a layer of fleece against the skin and a thinsulate type material in the middle. The outer layer is water/wind repellent for awhile. When dry, they wick the sweat/condensation away and when wet they provide a layer of warm water against the skin in case of drysuit flood giving you a few more minutes to get to safety before your limbs become useless.

if you are dead set on using a wetsuit under the drysuit consider getting a surfer suit that has more air in it and greater buoyancy characteristic than a scuba wetsuit.

 

[TSandM]

Well, even though the wetsuit compresses, you can inject air into the dry suit to make up for the lost buoyancy.

Although it is a common misconception, the water in a wetsuit does not serve as an insulator. ALL water that comes in contact with the skin removes heat; the essence of a good wetsuits is that water flow through the suit is minimal and very slow, so that the body is not constantly having to heat a NEW volume of water.

You will lose some buoyancy with a fully flooded dry suit, but not all of the loft of your undergarment. It takes a long time to soak the complex insulating materials used in good UGs completely. And good UGs continue to insulate when wet -- in fact, if the water is not too cold, one may not even notice being wet until out of the water. This is one of the reasons it's worth paying for the good stuff

 

[oldflounder]

Although it is a common misconception, the water in a wetsuit does not serve as an insulator.

It's not a misconception around here.

Maybe we don't define insulator the same way. Google results are: a material that prevents or reduces the passage of heat; does not easily allow heat to pass through; high resistance to heat flow. Does it also mean it reduces the passage of cold or is it strictly pertaining to heat??? Maybe an antonym of insulator - neutralizer - is a better term. The water in the wetsuit neutralizes the cold water outside.

Heat is lost 22 times faster in water than in air they say. That lost heat goes into warming the wetsuit material next to the skin. When you first go in that heat loss is much higher than a few minutes later once the suit has warmed a little. After that you are constantly losing heat but at a much lower rate. There is very little water flow at all in a wetsuit that is tucked tightly in at the ankles, wrists and neck. There is probably flow from the top surface to the inner surface.

I have been ice water diving every weekend this winter. A couple weeks ago I tore out my drysuit zipper for the second time and this time I can't fix it. I went back to diving wet last week with a new 7mm I just purchased. As a test of the new suit I went in without putting any warm water inside this time. Air 24* --- water 33*. I went in neck deep and just felt the pain of the water coming in through the seams and material. I waited it out a minute and the pain went away. My buddy and I did a 30 minute dive when he called it because he was getting cold in his drysuit. When I got out and unzipped my body was steaming.

If that wetsuit didn't insulate and hold my body heat inside to protect me from the painful 33* water for 30 minutes then I guess we can say a wetsuit has magical properties.

I am sorry if I am starting to sound like a wise ass again. As you can guess I have insomnia and am starting to get punchy.

 

[Spg01]

I imagine it would make it tricky to hook up your pee valve

 

[superspeed]

One of the main reasons I love my drysuit is not having to ever put on a wetsuit, wearing a wetsuit would really hurt that aspect of it.