What Happens when an Isolator Manifold Fails?

[Vegan Shark]

Manifold failures are incredibly rare, I know, but what are the consequences if it did happen? Would a freeflow occur from the manifold itself, resulting in gas loss from both tanks? Would you still be able to use your BC/drysuit inflate, and breathe off your regs during this free flow, so long as gas is remaining in the tanks?

On that note, if a first stage/tank o ring/burst disk fails, are you still able to use the BC/drysuit inflate/reg on that side while the gas escapes?

 

[PfcAJ]

Manifold failures are incredibly rare, I know, but what are the consequences if it did happen? Would a freeflow occur from the manifold itself, resulting in gas loss from both tanks? Would you still be able to use your BC/drysuit inflate, and breathe off your regs during this free flow, so long as gas is remaining in the tanks?

On that note, if a first stage/tank o ring/burst disk fails, are you still able to use the BC/drysuit inflate/reg on that side while the gas escapes?

If you can close the valve, it would then only leak from one tank. If there's pressure behind the regs, then yes they would work.

For the orings, it would depend on the magnitude of failure. Small leak vs large leak. Burst disk failure and the reg will work until pressure falls too low to drive the reg.

 

[Michael Guerrero]

The basic answer to your first question is yes, though a manifold has a lot of failure points.

For all of the scenarios, what PfcAJ said is right. You can use them as long as the pressure to drive them remains.

 

[Vegan Shark]

Thanks! I have a small irrational fear when diving heavy doubles, of not being able to get buoyant, and drowning. So it's nice to know that even if **** really hits the fan, BC/drysuit inflation will still work.

 

[PfcAJ]

#1 balanced rig. #2 keep your DS and wing inflation on separate posts.

 

[Vegan Shark]

Is a balanced ring (one you can swim up without the aid of a bc/ds) even possible with double 120s or 130s, though? Even if you can reach the surface, I can't imagine it being easy to stay on the surface when you're that negative

 

[eelnoraa]

With balance rig, you should be exactly neutral with empty tanks with no air in wing and minimal air in DS. And you should be able to float your head above water with your wing inflated and with full tank. Since we are NOT talking about wing failure here, once you get to surface, you can oral inflate your wing and stay there.

 

[Michael Guerrero]

And if you need to dump the rig at the surface you can do that. You'll potentially lose $1K or more of gear but for most of us that's a good deal compared to our lives. But maybe you don't want to spend that much.

 

[Vegan Shark]

Don't trust myself to ditch a rig during panic, especially since I'm sure the backup necklace would catch on my mask or something. But maybe I should practice, just for the peace of mind to know that even in a 1 in a billion scenario of a wing failure + drysuit flood + loss of gas, that I could ditch it all and still see the light of day.

 

[Max Speed]

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