Having observed quite a few freeflows here in the Great Lakes it seems to be the mid 40's and below that give many regulators issues.
What temps determine the need for a "cold water" regulator?
- Thread starter ganu76
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
Well... I don't like this kind of thinking at all.
In my opinion problems should be *avoided* whenever possible and only managed under water if all attempts to avoid it happening have failed.
What this post suggests is that if you just screw any old crap onto a double-valve then you're good to go.
Wrong!
What screwing any old crap onto a double valve will get you is twice as many problems under water that could have been avoided by using proper gear. In fact we had an accident a little while ago here that happened *precisely* because of this thinking. A diver used a double valve and screwed some old crap onto them. He even had a primary and 2 or three secondaries attached in various (odd) places. He went down to 40-odd metres with it, one of the regulators free-flowed and he couldn't get the valve turned off by himself.
Tank empty.... diver dead.
The moral of the story is the following:
1) just attaching more crap onto the tank doesn't solve problems, it creates them
2) redundancy is completely useless to you unless you know how to handle it under water
3) a false sense of security won't save your ass
R..
OldNSalty
Contributor
It sounds like what killed the diver was the diver-not really the gear....he couldn't turn off the valve himself? Maybe panicked and didn't think of that? Maybe he didn't even know to do that?...but I will agree-pick gear that is correct for the conditions you are diving...and pick a diver that is correct for the gear and the conditions.
GrumpyOldGuy
Contributor
My advice is someplace between aglility and Diver0001. They both have good points.
Manufactures often states 45F as the point where they suggest cold water kits, I think its a conservative number but a good starting point.
One key not brought out is freeze ups tend to happen when you share air because the volume of air running through the 1st stage doubles (or triples due to stress) and one freeze up can lead to a cascade of failures. So adding a second reg, even a warm water reg still has a big benefit as it eliminates this scenario. You still have the issue where one diver is breathing hard and his volume alone is enough to freeze but this is lower than 45F.
Diving with 2 independent regulators avoids the 2 divers on one reg and lowers the temp they I feel comfortable in. For me its 40F. I have dove them colder, but I was nervous don't plan on it.
Manufactures often states 45F as the point where they suggest cold water kits, I think its a conservative number but a good starting point.
One key not brought out is freeze ups tend to happen when you share air because the volume of air running through the 1st stage doubles (or triples due to stress) and one freeze up can lead to a cascade of failures. So adding a second reg, even a warm water reg still has a big benefit as it eliminates this scenario. You still have the issue where one diver is breathing hard and his volume alone is enough to freeze but this is lower than 45F.
Diving with 2 independent regulators avoids the 2 divers on one reg and lowers the temp they I feel comfortable in. For me its 40F. I have dove them colder, but I was nervous don't plan on it.
Well... yeah. But I think you have to dive in Europe to really get the gist of what Agility is really suggesting. The amount of 5-alarm crap that people slap together to dive with here is amazing. Absolutely amazing. The configuration of the diver I mentioned is in the attached picture.
When one of the 3 - count 'em - 3 secondaries he had started to free flow he probably wouldn't have even been able to figure out quickly where it was coming from let alone get his hand on either one of the valve-wheels, which are both obstructed by hoses and the general configuration as a whole.
And don't start by saying... yeah but no sane diver would use this .... because it happens over here *all* the time.
This is the reason I let him have both barrels because there is such a culture of "if-you-just-put-it-on-a-double-valve then you're safe" thinking and its all based on the completely ridiculous idea that a sense of false security will keep you safe.
Oh, and you can't see it from that photo but at least two of his secondaries are a mix-and-match pair hanging on an unbalanced "subgear" piston 1st stage. You probably don't have those in the states but if you did they would give them away in one of those packages of flippers/mask/snorkel you can buy at Walmart... they're THAT bad.
R..
---------- Post Merged at 05:01 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 04:57 PM ----------
Absolutely. But the foundation is STILL that your configuration has to be right before redundancy does you any good. I'd rather have a diver using a good-quality cold spec'd regulator on a standard single tank rig than to see them using the "slap whatever you have on a double valve and you're good to go" thing.
R..
OldNSalty
Contributor
Peter_C
Contributor
Anti-freeze protection and anti-freeze technology, does not say it has anti-freeze. Instead that would be good marketing.
Look at the schematic for yourself. Piston regs are pretty simple which is why they are reliable.
http://www.divesafety.net/files/MK20-MK25RepairGuide.pdf
For those saying 50 degrees and no colder, that is the top of our water temps as it never typically gets much higher than 52 degrees. The local dive shops sell tons of non cold water regs, including renting some very crappy regs, and temperature is rarely if ever the leading cause of free flows.
FWIW I always dive dual regs. I have a set of double HP100's that I am trained to use, and then for singles dive HP130's that have H valves on them which makes it easy to swap between singles and doubles since I don't need multiple sets of regs, nor do I need to switch hoses around. Plus it gives me some safety factor as I can shut a post down fairly quickly.
Actually, I don't speak German but I speak Dutch and it's good enough to piece together most of what they said in the accident report so I should correct some of my facts:
Apparently he did manage to turn off the primary reg but the tank was still empty. The body was found at 25m, not at 40 although the site he was diving was 40m deep. They speculated that he was unable to reach the surface because once the primary was turned off the power inflator became non-functional. The weight was still in the BCD so he didn't think to orally inflate his BCD *or* drop some of his weight. Dive time when the accident occurred was estimated at 7 minutes. There was no way to tell if a second free-flow occurred after he switched to the secondary or that he breathed whatever gas was left after the primary was turned off. In any event the tank was empty.
The accident report blames inadequate training and the equipment manufacturer for this accident.
We're kind of getting off topic now so I should shut up now, but where we started was with the question if someone diving in moderately cold water should buy a cold water spec'd regulator. I still believe, and this accident just illustrates the point, that avoiding problems is vastly superior to trying to manage an emergency under water.
R..
Apparently he did manage to turn off the primary reg but the tank was still empty. The body was found at 25m, not at 40 although the site he was diving was 40m deep. They speculated that he was unable to reach the surface because once the primary was turned off the power inflator became non-functional. The weight was still in the BCD so he didn't think to orally inflate his BCD *or* drop some of his weight. Dive time when the accident occurred was estimated at 7 minutes. There was no way to tell if a second free-flow occurred after he switched to the secondary or that he breathed whatever gas was left after the primary was turned off. In any event the tank was empty.
The accident report blames inadequate training and the equipment manufacturer for this accident.
We're kind of getting off topic now so I should shut up now, but where we started was with the question if someone diving in moderately cold water should buy a cold water spec'd regulator. I still believe, and this accident just illustrates the point, that avoiding problems is vastly superior to trying to manage an emergency under water.
R..
GrumpyOldGuy
Contributor
That is one scary rig for so many reasons! I would not dive that even in warm water. You are absolutely correct.
Personally I like a simple pony where I can manipulate the valve and the second bungied to the pony tank. Easy to understand, totally independent and more than adequate for OW dives.
Funny you metion Sub Gear. ScubaPro dealers are now selling them as their budget line if you will.
Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2
Similar threads
