What Temperature for H Valves and redundant first stage?

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Omb

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Location
Utah
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ok...almost geared up enough to dive around here in Germany. Got the Exodry Drysuits and like them a lot. Same goes for the backplate and wing setup. I’m now deciding on tanks and valves. Seems like the general consensus is that H valves are only really good for recreational cold water diving....which describes my local plans.

My question is, what water temperature should I be using the H valves at? Seem like I read somewhere that 10C was the cutoff for “cold water”.
 
Hello fellow german. :wink: Yes <=10C is considered as "cold water".
Which would be every local lake, at depth.
 
I dove in 1C water with just my normal set up and had no issues. If you get an environmentally sealed first stage you should be fine without an H valve.
 
In Germany you are typically always diving "cold water". Even in the summer the bottom of our lakes stay cold.
I would advise everyone who is diving regularly in german lakes to use 2 first stages. In a few lakes it is even required by the dive op to dive with 2 seperate first stages that can be closed by yourself in the water. Hemmor or Messinghausen for example.

Also i would not use an H-Valve. I find it dificult to reach under water and it is a nightmare to have nice hose routing. I would always choose a T-Valve on a mono setup. Something like Polaris T Ventil-
 
I dove in 1C water with just my normal set up and had no issues. If you get an environmentally sealed first stage you should be fine without an H valve.

I only had 2 Free flows in 300 cold water dives. One was at the start of a dive and with a D12 so easy to fix.
The other was in a strong current with a lot of boat trafic. I was realy happy i had a H valve and my buddy was fast with closing it (H valves are realy hard to manipulate alone, pilotmaverick is right about the T one)

Its not because it doesn’t happen Often it wil never happen. In europe its very common to have 2 first stages even without diving doubles.
 
I usually use H-valves in cold water. I am pretty confident a single Apeks first stage is fine for one diver but may not be for two divers especially if one is panicked. It also makes it easy to switch from a single tank to doubles as the regs are set up exactly the same.
 
If your regulator is CE-certified for cold water use, it should be good down to 0°C. H-valves area great idea (I use one) for carrying a second complete reg. but something of an anathema to those outside of mainland Europe.
 
Thanks all. I went with the H valve. Didn’t know about the T valve until already ordered. I’ll see how it goes. Looks like I need another 1st stage reg. I’m using Scubapro mk17 EVO regulators so should be covered.

Thanks!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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