Combined BC Control/Octo & Buddy Breathing

[diverrobs]

I was practicing in the pool with my dive buddy (I just got my equipment and have done a couple of dives with it) and we decided to try buddy breathing practice. My buddy signalled out of air, as I have an oceanic Air XS octo (on my BCD control), I gave him my primary and started to breath off the Air XS. I quickly realized that it is difficult to vent the BCD and breath off the octo at the sime time as the vent is the mouth peice. The first time we practiced, I took the octo out of my mouth to vent the BCD but found this cumbersome. So we practiced a couple more times and I found that if I breathed air out of the BCD bladder on the way up, it seemed to be taking about the right amount of air out of the BCD to prevent a fast ascent. In fact if anything I was taking to much air out of the bladder (I took a couple of breaths off the air xs reg).

Did I do this correctly, should I breath out of the BCD bladder or should I only breath tank air from the octo?

I know the Air XS octo is not ideal but I am planning to get a 19cf pony bottle and reg. as soon as I can afford it. The pony was my plan when I bought my equipment and to try and make my self more stream lined, I decided on the Air XS as opposed to a dedicated secondary. Being a rookie, I know I probably made the wrong decision and should have just got the dedicated secondary and not the Air XS and waited a little longer for the pony.

Thanks for your help!

 

[seaducer]

I don't know, I am sure it is just paranoia, but I wouldn't breath bladder air, you never know what nasties live in there...

Does your Air XS have a pull dump? If so I would vent that way while you are breathing off it...

 

[diverrobs]

Yep It has an air dump, I could do it that way but I always seem to dump too much.

 

[SlowRain]

The short answer is no. The inside of BC bladders are not clean places and in fact many manufacturing outfits are explicit about not breathing air out of the BC as under pressure who knows what you are pushing through your lungs out of there.

Now having said all that, I would do it if I was OOA and had no other recourse, but the key is don't get in that situation. I have an "inline" octo on my pool/recreational rig but I can disconnect the LP hose and manually inflate the BC if need be, but honestly I will probably just pull the thing, put a long hose on my primary and get an octo on a shorter hose and necklace it.

Seems hypocritical, but I am not a fan of inline or BC hose mounted octo's. In the interim, if you have a pull dump, just practice a bit and you should be okay.

 

[NadMat]

I use an airsource for my alternate and am able to dump air fine while breathing the airsource, just use the shoulder or back dump valves rather than dumping air out of mouthpiece. Just get plenty of practice with it and you should be fine.

 

[BlueC5Kitten]

Yep It has an air dump, I could do it that way but I always seem to dump too much.

Practiced this recently with my Air2, and found that brief pulls on the shoulder dump were quite effective in slowing ascent rate. Practice is always good and it is an effective means of bouyancy control!

Glad to hear you are working on it with fore-thought too!

 

[ONESPEED]

Simple solution, lose the alternate air source and replace it with a real octo. Problem solved.

 

[Arizona]

Diverrobs,

"The first time we practiced, I took the octo out of my mouth to vent the BCD but found this cumbersome."

Even if you get a pony, IMO this is a skill you should practice. It may be cumbersome, but you can do this while at a saftey stop and not engaged in giving your primary to get more comfortable with it. Remember to blow bubbles.

At least now you know to give the primary so you will have the control you may need. It may be worth mentioning when doing a buddy check or diving with someone new.

Using an alternate air source and buddy breathing are two different skills. Buddy breathing is sharing one reg between you and another. Two breaths and pass it on to your buddy for two breaths and then back to you...

I just bought a new Scuba Pro Knighthawk. I remember reading another post about not breathing air from the BCD bladder. In the BCD manual they caution you not to as seaducer mentions.

Arizona

 

[Randy43068]

I honestly can't imagine trying to use this POS during a real emergency. Sorry for calling it a POS, but it is one of those pieces of gear trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist while creating MANY issues of it's own.

No matter what kind of BC you dive, be it a BP/wing or stab jacket I firmly believe the long hose with backup on a necklace is the best way to have regulators placed.
There isn't one credible piece of evidence to suggest otherwise.

I was practicing in the pool with my dive buddy (I just got my equipment and have done a couple of dives with it) and we decided to try buddy breathing practice. My buddy signalled out of air, as I have an oceanic Air XS octo (on my BCD control), I gave him my primary and started to breath off the Air XS. I quickly realized that it is difficult to vent the BCD and breath off the octo at the sime time as the vent is the mouth peice. The first time we practiced, I took the octo out of my mouth to vent the BCD but found this cumbersome. So we practiced a couple more times and I found that if I breathed air out of the BCD bladder on the way up, it seemed to be taking about the right amount of air out of the BCD to prevent a fast ascent. In fact if anything I was taking to much air out of the bladder (I took a couple of breaths off the air xs reg).

Did I do this correctly, should I breath out of the BCD bladder or should I only breath tank air from the octo?

I know the Air XS octo is not ideal but I am planning to get a 19cf pony bottle and reg. as soon as I can afford it. The pony was my plan when I bought my equipment and to try and make my self more stream lined, I decided on the Air XS as opposed to a dedicated secondary. Being a rookie, I know I probably made the wrong decision and should have just got the dedicated secondary and not the Air XS and waited a little longer for the pony.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Rick Inman]

Simple solution, lose the alternate air source and replace it with a real octo. Problem solved.

I honestly can't imagine trying to use this POS during a real emergency. Sorry for calling it a POS, but it is one of those pieces of gear trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist while creating MANY issues of it's own.

No matter what kind of BC you dive, be it a BP/wing or stab jacket I firmly believe the long hose with backup on a necklace is the best way to have regulators placed.
There isn't one credible piece of evidence to suggest otherwise.

Nothing wrong with learning to dump from your rear dump to solve the breathing-from-your-dump-source problem. The thing is, whatever you do normally is what you will have muscle memory for, and resort to during an emergence. During a crisis is not the best time to be having to think past what you're accustom to doing. But if it's already an ingrained habit, your chances of working through the stressful experience go way up.

Which is why I agree with the above comments. With a long hose and bungeed backup, once you hand off the long hose and pop the real backup regulator into your mouth (some of those Air2 things are toys), it's back to business as usual. You wanna be up close right next to your buddy? No problem, you can do it. You want to get some distance. Easy to do. And as to dumping, it's business as usual.

Here's a true story. One day at 80' my buddy did and OOG drill on me. I donated my LH and off we went. As we were swimming along, I saw this strange cable gong off into the distance and started following it. After about 10 mins, my buddy started giving me the "cut" signal. Huh?? Cut what? I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he handed me the reg I had donated to him. How about that, I had actually forgotten that he was on my long hose. Because doing an air share with this set up is so comfortable that there isn't much thinking to it, and no new processes to deal with.

Breathing off some convoluted inflater/sub-quality reg contraption wouldn't be my best choice in a crisis.