Why would a reg become difficult to breathe from?

[Divin'Papaw]

Button gauge on your pony or also a transmitter?

PPS Transmitter

 

[MrChen]

Did you mean to type 2nd stage?

-Z

Lol yes.

 

[MrChen]

It is not clear if the OP switched to the secondary air source, and if this was working or not...

I did not switch. Turning the valve on the primary second stage immediately resolved the issue.

 

[MrChen]

There are countless possibilities but without the reg in hand all you’ll get is speculation.

best way to minimize the chance of this happening again is to bring a complete second regulator with you, yours that you maintain and use in rotation with your first one to stay aware of its condition.

if this were a spider or chunk of other random material you should have some sort of respiratory infection by now, or not.

Fortunately, I do not have any infections

 

[MrChen]

This is how I mitigate this risk. I have a complete 2nd reg set with me.

I also have zero HP hoses on any of my regs … primary, backup, & pony. Just a transmitter directly attached to the 1st stage. If a hose is going to blow, it’s typically the HP hose.

You 100% rely on your air integration as a pressure gauge? I've never had one completely fail, but as you were witness to on one of our dives together, I did have a transmitter blow the overpressure valve.

If your air integration failed, do you just surface, assuming you've got enough air? I know you carry a pony, do you always dive with your pony (minus shallow dives like BHB where it doesn't make sense)?

 

[MrChen]

The high pressure hose was only 10 months old, I bought it from DGX. I've purchased most of my hoses from DGX and in 10 years, have only had 2 fail. The first time was my primary reg hose on a shallow dive in Bonaire. It wasn't catastrophic, just a bubble stream through the braiding. Everyone went deeper and I stayed in about 10ft depth with my camera.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

You 100% rely on your air integration as a pressure gauge? I've never had one completely fail, but as you were witness to on one of our dives together, I did have a transmitter blow the overpressure valve.

If your air integration failed, do you just surface, assuming you've got enough air? I know you carry a pony, do you always dive with your pony (minus shallow dives like BHB where it doesn't make sense)?

There are multiple threads discussing this exact topic. Don’t want to start a tangent on that topic here. You can go look at those threads on questioning whether AI divers use a redundant SPG or not. Some do, some don’t.

To answer your questions, yes, I just rely on my transmitter only for pressure.

Remember, your transmitter failed on the surface, which is typically where issues occur. At pressurization. You knew there was an issue before you ever started your dive.

If my transmitter would fail during a dive, I wouldn’t end the dive immediately. It’s not like I’m all of a sudden out of gas. I would have a pretty good sense of how much gas I had left and I would also have a pretty good sense of how much longer I can dive. I would probably end that dive earlier than I typically would, but I wouldn’t necessarily surface immediately.

As to my reasoning, as well as the reasoning of others that do or don’t use a redundant SPG when diving with AI, I’d refer to you to those several other threads. ADDITION: adding links to those threads for easy access. As you see, this has been discussed ALOT.

• The curious case of AI. Do you use a back up SPG while using AI?
• Shearwater Owners with AI, do you dive with a SPG?
• Spg, AI, both
• SPG with AI computer?

As to your question about my pony, yes, I use it 100% of the time outside of very shallow dives, like at BHB.

 

[boulderjohn]

If your air integration failed, do you just surface, assuming you've got enough air?

In current PADI OW instruction, during the pool dives, students are supposed to be asked for their air pressure without warning several times during the class, and they are supposed to respond with reasonable accuracy without looking at their gauges. How can they do that? Because they are supposed to have looked at their air pressure on their own recently enough to be able to make a good guess.

So if you realize your AI failed and do not know if you have enough air to reach the surface on an NDL dive, then you are not performing up to the level of an OW student during the opening confined water training dives.

 

[Angelo Farina]

I did not switch. Turning the valve on the primary second stage immediately resolved the issue.

This indicates a local problem inside the affected second stage.
Which means that the secondary reg was operating normally, making it possible to continue the dive.
However, given the situation, I had probably thumbed the dive, too!

 

[MrChen]

Remember, your transmitter failed on the surface, which is typically where issues occur. At pressurization. You knew there was an issue before you ever started your dive.

Actually, it started bubbling in the middle of the first dive. Remember you took GoPro video of it during our safety stop? We were trying to troubleshoot it during the surface interval. I thought it might be a pinched hose o-ring, but then you figured out it was leaking from the transmitter. The issue got worse as we messed with it. I was fortunate enough that it didn't stop working during the dive even though it was blowing bubbles.