wetsuit buoyancy concern

[fnfalman]

First of all, farmer johns are a lot more buoyant than a 1-piece jump suit. You have more neoprene to sink.

Secondly, the outfit is brand new and therefore very floaty. After about twenty dives or so, it's not as buoyant when it's broken in and you can shed some weight.

Another way to add dive weight to the entire rig but less on the belt is to go with a steel backplate and an extra heavy steel tank.

 

[DiverDAD!]

Thanks for all the replies.

I'm pretty sure that the suit was fully wet when I tested it, I made an effort to get all the air out.

I have a DUI harness that I use, as well as a steel tank. Looking into a new BP/W instead or my current BC, which is about 1# positive.

But other than the BC, it's all weight I have to carry.

 

[Jorgy]

I still contend that the right DS with the right undergarments for the temps you are diving, it much much less buoyant than a 7 mil FJ..........

I know a DS is expensive, but all the folks I know who own one say it is amongst the best purchase they have made over the long run.........

Just my thoughts...............M

 

[spectrum]

DiverDAD!

Something is wrong here, especially with a steel cylinder.

You talk about what people think and what your test of the suit told you but what what is the result a legitimate buoyancy test with this stuff?

Pete

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

DiverDAD!..

I've dove wet, then dry, and now wet again. I have a pretty good grasp on wetsuits and weighting.
First off, you are using a s/s backplate, is that correct?
and you are not that big a guy at 185 lbs.
The whole secret to weighting with either a wetsuit or drysuit revolves around your final stop at 15 feet after your full length dive.
The ultimate weighting is when you can hold a perfect stop at 15 feet with no air in your wing and/or drysuit (if you are using one. In your case you're not) and control your buoyancy with your breathing alone.
Don't try to weight yourself so heavy that you sink feet first as soon as you dump the air out of your wing. Weight yourself so that after you dump all the air out of your cell you can still float on the surface. You might, at that point, need to flip over head first and kick down a ways to about 10 feet before you get enough pressure on yourself that you can break neutral. Your breathing has a lot to do with it too. Breath out and mostly empty your lungs as you're trying to get down from the surface. After all, you're not freediving so there's no reason the hold a full lung of air.
After you get a few good deep dives on that suit it should find it's place and you will know how to weight it.

Just to give you an idea:
I have 2 wetsuits. Both of them are custom made. Both of them are 2 piece john/jacket beavertail style with attached hoods, so both of them have doubled up material on the torso.
One of my suits is a 7mm (a fat 1/4", - so a little more than 1/2 on my torso),. With that suit I use a 4.4 lb s/s plate, a steel 120 tank and my weightbelt is set at 22 lbs. I am 6'-4" tall and weigh about 225 lbs. I can hold a perfect stop at 15 feet with this setup.

I have another suit which is 1/2" thick (12.5 mm.- almost 1'' of rubber on my torso!!!) I use this suit for temps below 45 degrees. With the same tank and plate, I use a 38 lb weightbelt and can hold a perfect stop at 15 feet at the end of the dive with the wing empty and fine tuning my buoyancy with breath control alone.

Get some good deep dives on the suit, break it in, weight yourself so you have all aircells empty at 15 feet and can sit there, then get back to us.

Good luck

Eric

 

[fnfalman]

The whole secret to weighting with either a wetsuit or drysuit revolves around your final stop at 15 feet after your full length dive.
The ultimate weighting is when you can hold a perfect stop at 15 feet with no air in your wing and/or drysuit (if you are using one. In your case you're not) and control your buoyancy with your breathing alone.
Don't try to weight yourself so heavy that you sink feet first as soon as you dump the air out of your wing. Weight yourself so that after you dump all the air out of your cell you can still float on the surface. You might, at that point, need to flip over head first and kick down a ways to about 10 feet before you get enough pressure on yourself that you can break neutral. Your breathing has a lot to do with it too. Breath out and mostly empty your lungs as you're trying to get down from the surface. After all, you're not freediving so there's no reason the hold a full lung of air.

Eric

I agree wholeheartedly. That's how my rig is currently performing. I'm a fat dude (5ft6 205-lbs) diving with a 7mm 1-piece suit. My dive weight is 16-lbs. The Faber M-series 100cuft tank is about -6.5lbs, add -2lbs for the valve, add -4lbs trim weight attached to my Dive Rite Transpac BC (neutrally buoyant), and -4lbs worth of soft weight in my quick detachable weight pouches (2lbs per pouch).

When I fully deflate my wing and empty my lung at the beginning of the dive, I barely sink under the surface and have to kick down past 10-ft or so. But afterward, establishing neutral buoyancy at any depth is effortless, as is my safety stop when my tank runs down to 500-psi or so.

My suit is currently nearly 2-years-old with about 75-dives in it. It was more floaty in the beginning and probably took me a good 20-30 dives to break it in. My dive buddy who is taller but has about the same weight and build as my body (another fat dude) has a suit made identical to mine (same design, same custom shop, same material). He started out with 18-lbs of weight and now he's down to 14-lbs with about close to 30-dives with this suit.

36-lbs sound a lot but I know a woman who is curvaceous (not fat but juicy in a good way), 5ft7, maybe 140-150lbs. She dives with a dry suit and her dive weight is 28-lbs. With about eight years and a couple thousand dives under her belt, I think that she knows what she's doing by now. However, that's just her dive weight and that is that. We have to take into account not just our equipment's buoyancy but our own body's buoyancy as well.