Venting or Equalizing Dry Gloves?

[smorneau]

I just installed a viking ring system dry gloves on my drysuit keeping the wris seals intact. Using the gloves this way, how do you vent or equalize the air that gets trapped in the gloves between the wrist seals and the gloves? I have read about someone using surgical tubing, but do not understand how this is done. Has anyone done this.

Do you just cut a small piece of tubing and put it between your wrist and the wrist seals into the gloves?

Thanks

 

[np251]

Yep, that's exactly how it works. Don't make it too long though, couple inches is plenty. Bear in mind though, if its too thick, it'll let water under the seal if the glove leaks. I actually used to leave the thumb loop from the underwear sit under the seal for the same purpose. Once, when the glove flooded, all I had to do was stretch my arm out and the loop would slip out from under the seal, preventing an arm flood.

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[TSandM]

You can use anything that will break the contact between skin and seal -- surgical tubing, bungie, the thumb loop on the undergarment. The advantage of tubing or bungie is that, if you do flood a glove, you can pop the glove off and pull the tubing. The one time I tried this with my thumb loop, I DID flood a glove, and had the devil's own time trying to shove the thumb loop back under the seal (I can't just stretch my arm and have it pull back).

 

[Doc Harry]

You can use anything that will break the contact between skin and seal -- surgical tubing, bungie, the thumb loop on the undergarment. The advantage of tubing or bungie is that, if you do flood a glove, you can pop the glove off and pull the tubing. The one time I tried this with my thumb loop, I DID flood a glove, and had the devil's own time trying to shove the thumb loop back under the seal (I can't just stretch my arm and have it pull back).

I keep a small margin of my wicking undergarment sticking out from under the seal. This allows the glove to equalize easily. But from your experience it sounds like I should cease this practice and go with something that I can easily pull, like a tube.

 

[Camerone]

Not at all. Leaving the undies tucked under the wrist seal is effective, and as was mentioned, stretching your arm out fully should allow the undies to "retract" back into the arm portion of the suit. You don't need to pull a huge cuff through; just a little bit of the elastic on the thump loop works fine, or a bit of the cuff...

People worry way too much about flooded gloves to the point of almost paranoia, and it's simply not warranted. A flooded glove means a cold hand, but if you keep your hand positioned correctly, you're not going to catastrophically flood a suit from it. I got to the point where it was more of an annoyance to tuck a string/hose/undie into the seal that I gave up and removed the inner wrist seal. You don't need them.

 

[TSandM]

Camerone, the "extend arm and it retracts" idea only works if the sleeve of your undergarment is short, compared with your arms. Mine NEVER are, since diving undergarments are not designed for hobbits. And I absolutely disagree with you about it not being important to have an inner seal. Some dives can't be aborted quickly -- we have, for example, a shore diving site where you can easily be 30 minutes from dry land, and yeah, you can surface, but you're going to have a long, cold swim to shore. I had a glove leak (not a huge flood, just a substantial leak) once, where I hadn't taken good care to make sure both wrist seals were smooth (being in a hurry, and have a bit of your attitude toward leaks). It was a research dive I had agreed to do. The project was paying for my charter so I could help them collect data, and if I didn't dive, I would be letting them down. So when I got in the water and realized the glove was wet, I thought it was no big deal. At the end of the dive, when the water sloshed in my boot and I was starting to shiver, I had changed my mind. A cold, wet hand, even in water in the mid-40's, is uncomfortable and annoying. A sopping wet undergarment is a much bigger risk in seriously cold water.

People are free to make their own risk assessments in diving, but I've BEEN hypothermic, and it left quite an impression on me. I don't want to experience that again.

 

[swamp diver]

I used to use the hollow coffee stir sticks which you can get on the way to the dive site at the coffee shop. The flat ones with two hollow tubes, no thicker than a small flexor tendon, do the job nicely.

As of late I've started to use a variation on leaving a piece of clothing under the seal. Instead of the thumb loop or underwear sleeve under the seal which can be hard to retract I put on my fleece glove liner and pull the wrist seal on over that. If the glove floods one just pops the glove off and pulls out the liner from under the seal.

 

[Camerone]

Lynn - I've done 45 minutes of deco in a flooded suit off of Alki, and it sucked. And yeah, I was definitely hypothermic at the end, but it wasn't from a flooded glove. I managed to tear a zipper tooth on the dive and had no choice but to suffer the whole way out...there's no blowing off that much of a deco obligation. I also dive caves and other overhead environments, so I fully get the "it may take time to get out of the water" issue... that said, I still believe people blow the flooded glove thing out of proportion.

I've flooded my share of gloves - one memorable one was a dive on the Possession Point ferry. Keeping the arm below you works pretty well to stem the intrusion of water...and I'd call the dive at that point. I'd have called the dive (or popped out at least) at the start to figure out why my hand was wet before I undertook the rest of that dive.

 

[TSandM]

Well, I agree with you that a wet hand isn't a big deal, and I've never truncated a dive because I had a leaking glove. But the one time I also had a leaking seal, I regretted the whole thing. I did not call that dive at the beginning, because I didn't realize the seal was as messed up as it was. I really was amazed at how much water I had in the suit after a half hour or so -- the glove didn't have a huge hole in it, and didn't pop off -- the o-ring just hadn't sealed and I had a constant seep. That seep meant water poured out of my boots when I got back on the boat, and I was very cold. I have good enough undergarments that I wasn't hypothermic on that one (that was five years earlier) but it sure taught me that I didn't want to lose my wrist seals. Like everything else, it's a risk assessment!

 

[Peter_C]

I use my thumb loop and HAVE had success pulling it back when I cut a glove breaking fishing line, when a fisherman caught me.