Cold water valves

[goldenwingk]

What type of valves would u suggest for cold/ice water diving??
what are some options and does it really matter what valve u use??

 

[spectrum]

I have not heard of it as a topic. It was not covered in my ice diving course.

Pete

 

[goldenwingk]

I have not heard of it as a topic. It was not covered in my ice diving course.

Pete

so does this mean i can buy the cheapest valve on the market and it will work just fine in cold/ice diving?

 

[vicdiver656]

I don't think it really matters. I would buy a 200 or 300 BAR valve from Scubatoys.com.

 

[spectrum]

so does this mean i can buy the cheapest valve on the market and it will work just fine in cold/ice diving?

If it's good enough for you then yes it's good enough. During a dive the valve is static. That being said there are some gnarly looking valves coming io the market with poorly finished castings that I would rather not own for any form of diving.

To be clear, we are talking about cylinder shut-off valves in this forum, not demand valves (regulators).

 

[DA Aquamaster]

The adibatic cooling load is placed on the first stage and partially on the valve - depnds where the air begins to expand (in the first stage) and anything closely attached to it.

I have never considered it directly before, but a valve with a larger surface area would transfer more heat. In that regard I suspect a DIN first stage with much more mating surface in contact with a valve woudl tranfer more heat from the valve and from the surrounding water.

Would the connection or valve make any difference? Probably not as long as everything else is suotable for cold water, but in a marginal situation, it might.

 

[SparticleBrane]

The only thing I might consider would be a valve with a rubberized handle. That way, at lower temperatures it's less likely to crack and break if you smack your valve on something. Personally I'm a big fan of Thermo valves.

 

[cummings66]

I kind of look at it as a situation where you don't want an O ring to blow and that means the best valve will be a DIN version. I prefer soft rubber knobs as well for many other reasons.

 

[Luis H]

The only thing I might consider would be a valve with a rubberized handle. That way, at lower temperatures it's less likely to crack and break if you smack your valve on something. Personally I'm a big fan of Thermo valves.

It is good to think about that, but IMO, if the outside air temperature is that cold…I don’t think that I am going diving. It is time to go play on top of the frozen water…as in alpine skiing.

Considering that my drysuit valves and most of the other diver’s regulators second stages are all plastic…the knobs on the tank seem as a minor concern.

I have seen most plastics do OK down to about 20F and even 10F. It is below 0 F where I have seen even some nylon cloth (on mountaineering back packs) gets stiff as a sheet of rigid plastic. At these kinds of temperatures the moment you come out of the water, anything wet will freeze. It would be best to have a heated shelter right over the ice opening.

I was working on the deck of a ship in Bath, Maine one very cold January day, when one of my co-workers dropped his hard hat on the steel deck and the plastic hard hat shattered into pieces. I was not impressed with what is supposed to be an OSHA approved safety piece of equipment. We never did bother to check what temperature those hard hats were rated for…I would guess that it is specified, but I don’t know.

 

[cummings66]

I've had the water freeze on my drysuit many times, typically I will get into a car to thaw out and then since my drysuit is a membrane suit it will pretty much dry up and not freeze up again. However, I'm always concerned about the regulator freezing in the process of swapping cylinders. Keep things in the water keeps them from freezing though. The valve, IMO that's probably one of the few things that you really don't have many worries over. Drysuits can crack, regs freeze internally, masks fracture, zippers rip out, there are a lot of things that can go wrong.