What's your trigger for changing O-rings? Time? Number of dives? Viz inspection?
Where has DIN been required?
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Belzelbub
Contributor
I probably change them more frequently than needed, but do it annually. When it gets cold (relative term as I live in FL) in January, we are often hit with cold fronts. That usually means small craft advisories whenever I am not working, so there's a bit of a lull in my diving.
I use that time to take my regs in for inspection and/or service. I swap the o-rings out then. I also change my transmitter batteries at the same time. Again, probably more frequently than needed, but it's easy to remember and o-rings are cheap.
This can be a positive if you are a self reliant type who is careful not to lose your o-ring and you carry spares. You only need one o-ring for your regulator and none for your tanks.
If you are on a dive boat and need a tank o-ring replaced it is almost guaranteed they will have plenty of spares. If you lose the o-ring out of your DIN regulator you are much more likely to be out of luck.
Everyone on scubaboard dives DIN. And yet, somehow, 99% of the regs I see in Florida (outside of cave diving) are yoke. Yoke is clearly the "norm" (descriptively) for recreational diving, at least in the US.
ScubaBoard is a very different part of the scuba community, for better or for worse. That was first made clear to me about 15 years ago or so when we had two threads running simultaneously. One was a typical "What BCD is best" thread, and well over half of the people responding said the backplate and wing combination was what the diver wanted. The other was in the "Business of Diving" section, in which a scuba retailer revealed industry statistics indicating that BP/Ws constituted less than 1% of BCD sales in the USA. When I was the technical diving instructor for a dive shop, the owner refused to have any BP/Ws in inventory because he was sure no one would buy one. If my tech students wanted one, they could order one. Since that would take months and since they could get it from someone like DRIS in a couple of days, no one bought from his shop, so he felt his decision was vindicated.
Belzelbub
Contributor
And, that diver should be out of luck. If they can't be bothered to carry a small pack of some useful o-rings, then I won't really feel too sorry for them. My o-ring pack takes up so little space and o-rings are so cheap that to not have at least one spare is pretty silly.
Yeah, that's true. I don't really understand it. As @Divin'Papaw so eloquently put it, DIN is more better.
But, it is true. Pretty much all on-hand inventory of regs at non-cave country dive shops will be yoke. My youngest daughter just started volunteering at an aquarium. They use all yoke gear. I had to grab my long unused DIN to Yoke adapter to show/remind her how to use it. Her reg has been DIN from her OW class on.
The dive shops I visit in South Florida are pretty much devoid of BP/Ws and DIN. I used to use a dive shop that in South Florida that was both a full service retail shop and a dive boat operator. They were the go to operator for tech dives. They had a big banner in the shop declaring they were a GUE instructor development center. When a friend lost a fin while getting on a boat and had to replace it, we had to go somewhere else because they did not sell any fins that were anywhere close to tech in design. They had a Halcyon BP/W on display, but you would have to order one if you wanted to buy. They had two Halcyon BP/Ws in their rental gear, which my friends used when they visited. They did offer DIN tanks. Other than that, their sales inventory was fully aimed at the recreational/yoke market.No, that just means 99% of the divers you see in Florida are not on ScubaBoard.
Joking aside, yoke is the "norm" for recreational diving in the US and Caribbean. That doesn't mean it's the best.
+1 ... any diver who is diving a DIN reg and does not have DIN o-rings readily available in their bag or save-a-dive-kit SHOULD be "out of luck" in that instance. Shame, shame, shame on them!
Pompano Dive Center
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