Y-Valves

[rjack321]

You guys are really hung up on these Y valves.

They are not found much anymore because people have wisely moved on. In 2010, most people are using doubles or alternatively a pony when redundancy is required. H and Y valves don't provide any additional gas and they still have some key vulnerabilities. More gas, not just another regulator, is good.

 

[ktomlinson]

You guys are really hung up on these Y valves.

They are not found much anymore because people have wisely moved on. In 2010, most people are using doubles or alternatively a pony when redundancy is required. H and Y valves don't provide any additional gas and they still have some key vulnerabilities. More gas, not just another regulator, is good.

I'm not set on Y valves, but do wonder why they are no longer widely available in the USA, they seem to still be available in Europe. Your logic that doubles/ponies are more widely used now doesn't hold up though as H valves are still available in the USA, and functionally they are equivalent to a Y valve (they just look less streamlined, and are not symmetric). I will probably continue diving a K valve until I do/if I do move to doubles.

 

[rjack321]

You are mixing up "available" with commonly used. H-valves are made by companies like Thermo with a diverse North American product line. And they are modular so you can make and sell lots of normal valves and valves which can also be used in singles & doubles with the same tooling. Y valves were really only made by Beuchat. And Beuchat has never had a big North American presence.

So when dual outlet valves on a single tank fell out of favor, Thermo kept importing stuff and could make a few H parts to kludge onto their normal valves without much trouble. (and H valves do look kludgy) Beuchat made the business decision to stop their already very limited production of Y valves in imperial threads. Probably because their product line in North America was already very small and the decline in single tank dual outlet use made it uneconomical to continue to support the imperial tooling and stocking valves which cannot be adapted to anything else.

I'm not sure why you are looking for a technical reason when its a function of business profitability for the lone Y-valve manufacturer deciding that making Y-valves specific for North America was not sufficiently lucrative to justify the efforts.

(The shift is for among other reasons because cave agencies are allowing/training people in doubles from the get-go rather than doing cavern in a single & cave in doubles).

 

[ktomlinson]

Rjack, thank you for explaining why h valves survived but y valves didn't, what you posted made a lot of sense. I'm not really looking for a technical reason the y valve went away, I was just curious if there was one.
The reason that I started looking for y valves is because I just took a cavern course. I plan on diving caverns for the foreseeable future and may never go past cavern. (my wife is my buddy and she doesn't think she wants to move past cavern). If we don't go past cavern I don't want to carry around doubles until I'm close to doing a deco class, which will be a while. At this point, after a rescue class I am done with training for a while and plan on just diving.
As it is now we hit turn pressure about the time we would be leaving anyhow, and don't always push to turn pressure before exiting. I have extra gas and an extra regulator (on my buddy) but I just figured that by switching to y valves now we would have our own redundant regulators and have the extra regulators we need when we go to doubles.

 

[h90]

You guys are really hung up on these Y valves.

They are not found much anymore because people have wisely moved on. In 2010, most people are using doubles or alternatively a pony when redundancy is required. H and Y valves don't provide any additional gas and they still have some key vulnerabilities. More gas, not just another regulator, is good.

I read that in some lakes in Europe you are required to have 2 first stages, for some simple recreational dives. (Not first hand experience, I just read it)
So you need a Y or H vavle and you don't want to use doubles.

 

[rjack321]

I read that in some lakes in Europe you are required to have 2 first stages, for some simple recreational dives. (Not first hand experience, I just read it)
So you need a Y or H vavle and you don't want to use doubles.

That may be true, I don't know about site specific EU diving rules. As far as I know its not a rule at any North American quarries etc. places that have restricted access, gates, private ownership etc.

 

[rjack321]

Rjack, thank you for explaining why h valves survived but y valves didn't, what you posted made a lot of sense. I'm not really looking for a technical reason the y valve went away, I was just curious if there was one.
The reason that I started looking for y valves is because I just took a cavern course. I plan on diving caverns for the foreseeable future and may never go past cavern. (my wife is my buddy and she doesn't think she wants to move past cavern). If we don't go past cavern I don't want to carry around doubles until I'm close to doing a deco class, which will be a while. At this point, after a rescue class I am done with training for a while and plan on just diving.
As it is now we hit turn pressure about the time we would be leaving anyhow, and don't always push to turn pressure before exiting. I have extra gas and an extra regulator (on my buddy) but I just figured that by switching to y valves now we would have our own redundant regulators and have the extra regulators we need when we go to doubles.

I agree the Y valves are nicer than the Hs in this application. Try Ebay??

Doubles really aren't as big a deal as you might imagine, you need 2 regs already. Besides a cavern is just a cave which hasn't been silted out yet...