Valve Shutdown Drill

[Macan]

This is a video of my student learning how to do the valve shutdown drill in open water conditions. Not perfect with room for improvements - he is new to Tech Diving and is still learning. He completed the skill in 45 seconds. I hope this video helps other divers entering the technical diving world. If you find this helpful, subscribe to my YouTube channel and get notified when I post training skills performed by students in open water setting.

 

[p_kos]

I’ve never seen that sequence during a v-drill. Makes zero sense and builds wrong muscle memory. You either start with isolator shut down or both right post and iso shut down. Taking time to switch regs and clip long hose off while you’re losing gas is ridiculous. Definitely not a “how to do a v-drill” video. Looks more like a skill variation game that has no resemblance to a real life scenario. That said, the student is actually very skilled.

 

[GF99/99]

I’ve never seen that sequence during a v-drill. Makes zero sense and builds wrong muscle memory. You either start with isolator shut down or both right post and iso shut down. Taking time to switch regs and clip long hose off while you’re losing gas is ridiculous. Definitely not a “how to do a v-drill” video. Looks more like a skill variation game that has no resemblance to a real life scenario. That said, the student is actually very skilled.

I would agree, student did a great job at what was taught. But in my opinion what was taught to him is not a very efficient way to save gas in a real life scenario. The whole point of having a valve on the manifold is so each tank can be isolated. In the event that you have a failure on either side the first thing you do is isolate the tanks this way you save as much gas as you can on the good side, now you have time to figure out what side has the failure and shut that side down and switch to the good side second stage and abort the dive.

 

[PfcAJ]

I would agree, student did a great job at what was taught. But in my opinion what was taught to him is not a very efficient way to save gas in a real life scenario. The whole point of having a valve on the manifold is so each tank can be isolated. In the event that you have a failure on either side the first thing you do is isolate the tanks this way you save as much gas as you can on the good side, now you have time to figure out what side has the failure and shut that side down and switch to the good side second stage and abort the dive.

Disagree with this.

You can (usually) tell which side a leak is on. Shut that down. When in doubt, shut down the most cycled regulator (right post). That's likely the source of your problems, as tank neck orings and burst disks very rarely fail in a catastrophic way. This keeps the *most* gas for the *most likely* failure options. If the leak doesn't stop when you shut down the suspected post, then its time to shut down that isolator and begin trouble shooting.

In any case, time is wasted in the above drill by clipping off the long hose and switching *first*. You can stay on the long hose and breathe it down, then switch with one hand. This has a few benefits: You can signal your buddy (vv important if you're losing gas), and second, you can hold the guideline because if there's a violent leak, vis is likely to deteriorate rather quickly.