Was I over weighted?

[dfx]

You indicate your wetsuit thickness and what type of cylinder you had, but what about your body weight?

A formula I learned from my OW instructor many years ago give a diver a good starting place:

body weight X 5%
add 1 lb for every mm of thermal protection on the torso
add 4 lbs for an al80 tank (other tanks will either add or subtract from the calculation)

It's a simple formula but it puts a diver in the ballpark for how much weight they should carry.

Novice divers tend to need to add a pound or two. Advanced divers tend to shed a pound or two.

Is that supposed to be for salt or fresh water?

 

[corvettejoe]

If you can keep taking off weight and still dive just fine... keep doing so until you find you need to add more on.
I think I started with 12 when I first started diving. I would log each time I took some off in my dive logs so I could figure this out better later on.

Now I just need 4lbs minimum with an AL80, 6 preferred for when the tank starts getting floaty.
I use a 6lb steel backplate, so having to use no extra weight is nice.

As others mentioned, a great way to try this is in the shallow areas, or in a pool, etc. You only need enough to keep you JUST barely sinking with no air in your BC and a near empty AL80. Take a normal breath and you should rise off the bottom slightly. Exhale all the way for a moment and you should sink again. If you maintain normal breathing, you should be able to remain off the bottom without going up or down. Then you know you are weighted correctly.

If course further testing is needed if you change gear (for instance, I don't use any weight when I dive steel tanks, they ARE the weight)
Changing wetsuit thickness, no wetsuit, using a drysuit, etc all will require doing this process again. Just keep notes on what you use each time you change configurations.

You indicate your wetsuit thickness and what type of cylinder you had, but what about your body weight?

A formula I learned from my OW instructor many years ago give a diver a good starting place:

body weight X 5%
add 1 lb for every mm of thermal protection on the torso
add 4 lbs for an al80 tank (other tanks will either add or subtract from the calculation)

It's a simple formula but it puts a diver in the ballpark for how much weight they should carry.

Novice divers tend to need to add a pound or two. Advanced divers tend to shed a pound or two.

It still has a lot to do with a lot of other things too. Buoyancy of all your gear and your body makeup plays the largest part.
Are you dense muscle or floaty fat? Diving a backplate that weighs anything? heavy rubber or light plastic fins? What else are you carrying?
Is your AL80 positive/negative in the water, how is it when it starts to empty? etc...

According to that calculation above, I need about 15lbs.
I only need 4.

 

[Dr Neil]

Is that supposed to be for salt or fresh water?

You can use 4% when calculating for salt water. For the math challenged it's easier to calculate 5% of your body weight. Also, the difference between 4% and 5% is usually less than 1 lb.

The formula I posted is designed primarily for novice divers with a standard set-up (no metal backplates, al 80 cylinder, etc.) I use it as a teaching tool.

I too dive with much less weight than what is calculated when I am diving with my own gear. However, when I'm in the pool using the same rental gear as the students, I use the amount of weight calculated by the formula. I rarely have a student either under-weighted or over-weighted.

 

[CT Sean]

Salt requires more weight, not less and it requires about 3% of total dry weight (meaning you plus all your gear) added to be neutral compared to fresh.