When a housing floods, what is the internal pressure?

[CompuDude]

Fortunately, my DAN insurance covers user error as well as housing failures, so they paid my flood claim no prob. Camera flooded. End of story. Just had to send them a paper from the repair shop saying it was not repairable.

I gotta say, the fruit fly incident makes a much better story than my not closing the latches right... ;-)

 

[alcina]

Yup, I've had a total flood. My rig was so heavy when full of water my crew thought I was hauling a body back!

No fruit fly story for me...I just got kicked in exactly the right place on the housing and boom. Flood-city.

DEPP, too, covers pretty much any stupid thing that happens.

 

[Charlie99]

As several people have noted, most floods aren't complete floods where pressure inside the housing equals the outside. For a partial flood you can estimate the internal pressure by estimating what fraction of the air volume remains. Of course, this means that you will have to be guessing how much of the volume taken up by the camera is free air volume. Having disassembled a Stylus 400 to fix some buttons, I'd estimate that is is only about 1/4 o 1/3 free air inside.

Obviously, if the housing half fills with water, then the internal pressure is now 33'/2ata. The 10' rating of weatherproof cameras would be reached with the housing somewhere around 1/6 full.

Anyway, that's my theory. I'll leave it up to others to perform the practical test. So far I've managed to avoid any flooding other than a couple drops weeping through a control button.

 

[liberato]

...when a housing floods, what will be the pressure inside the housing? Does it matter how big the "hole" is? (I would think so but....)

No, it will not matter how big the hole is as far as the pressure goes, just the rate at which it reaches equilibrium. Just as your high pressure hose gets its pressure info just fine through a pinhole.

 

[Warren_L]

I've had two floods, on two different housings.

The first happened about a year ago on my Ike clear housing for my Nikon D70. I was at my safety stop at 15 ft at the end of a relatively shallow dive and had nothing better to do, so I was flipping through some shots when I noticed some water droplets on the inside of my housing. Naturally, I thought it was condensation, but when I flipped the camera port side down, I noticed a significant amount the water pooling. I ascended and handed the camera maintaining the port side down position. Back on the boat, I opened it up, drained a couple of ounces of salt water out. Luckily, it wasn't enough water to reach any of the electronics (just touched the battery compartment cover of the camera) and the camera was fine. The culprit was a loose bulkhead connector for the sync cable. I contacted Ikelite about this and even they said that this wasn't something that needed to be checked. No doubt, the nut had loosened from all the time the camera has spent in rinse buckets with the motor rumbling, creating vibrations that eventually loosened it. Now I know to check.

The second occuremce was about a month ago on my Aquatica D200 housing. I had just gotten down to 30 ft and was setting unfolding the strobe arms and setting the camera up when I noticed some drops of water on the inside of the dome port. This time I knew what it was and ascended and aborted the dive. I drained the housing, and an ounce of water came out. Again, caught it early enough and no damage was done. Not sure what the cause of this was, other than user error. I had Aquatica pressure test the housing to over 300 ft and all was fine. Go figure.

 

[cudachaser]

If the housing's o-rings are in place properly the only leakage should be condensation

 

[Sharky1948]

If the housing's o-rings are in place properly the only leakage should be condensation

Just to nit pick...condensation is not leakage.

 

[Sharky1948]

I've had three floods:

1) Comlete flood to a Nikonos V. Interchanged an Ikelite and a Nikon o-ring. Stupid on my part because I questioned my decision and had spares available.

2) Partial flood of a DS50...battery cover not securely seated. User error.

3) Partial flood of a Nikon D70/Ikelite housing in the rinse tank. Latch not secure. User error.

Hmmmm....3 out of 3 were user errors. Time to get a new user!

 

[Charlie99]

Hmmmm....3 out of 3 were user errors. Time to get a new user!

Nah. It's just nature's (or your subconscious) way to tell you it's time to buy new gear.

 

[beautybelow]

My only flood was natures way of tellng me to start checking the port where the sync cord enters the housing. I never thought to check it from time to time and it came loose. Now I feel it before every dive. Yeah, if your camera starts feeling heavy during a dive its a bad sign for sure.