Dry suit diving: BCD vs suit for bouyancy

[NudeDiver]

I did my OW cert dives in a drysuit. Done quite a few drysuit dives. Recently took a drysuit cert class. I keep telling myself that I'm going to try using the DS instead of the BC for buoyancy, but it never seems to happen. I think the above comments about muscle memory are spot on. Besides that, it I agree with the comments about keeping a minimal amount of air in the suit - enough to prevent squeeze and not much more.

FWIW, my Bare manual says to use the suit for buoyancy too.

Good luck!
nd

 

[RonzoTheGreat]

i like to ONLY use my suit for comfort, and my bc for buoyancy. but that doesnt mean it is right or wrong.

reason:
here in the northeast it gets pretty chilly ... so when you throw on super hi-loft undergarments and heavy everything else ... try ascending with only being able to vent through your right arm ... you really have to anticipate each dump ... it takes time and movement sometimes, to get the air up through the thick materials all the way up to the left shoulder .. especially if you are trim and frogging ...

i just find it easier to use the drysuit to stay warm and dive the way i would anywhere else in the world ... with my bc to control buoyancy.

(however it is awesome to have the redundancy should my bc fail)

 

[Sas]

I use my BC for buoyancy. Only add air in my drysuit to reduce squeeze but even then I keep it pretty squeezed (don't know if that is the right term!) and hardly add any air. I find it easier to remain stable using the BC and also my BC vents faster than my drysuit so if for some reason I start ascending too quick BC allows me to halt this faster.

But yea, to each their own really!

 

[pterantula]

I haven't taken a drysuit course either, but I did buy the book just to be sure I had some bases covered... I ended up doing what one of my buddies did: found a suit on eBay and just experiemented (on a shallow, easy beach where I've logged over 50 dives, of course).

(This method doesn't work for everyone, but I'm an adventurous type, I guess.)

I use the BC for buoyancy, and the suit only has the bare minimum to alleviate squeeze; this just seemed (and seems) more logical to me: BC = buoyancy, drysuit = dryness. It's not a balloonsuit, and I don't intend to try to swim inside a balloon, especially since ascents could be very dangerous.

I think the muscle-memory idea is spot-on - when you're in the water, you need to be able to rely on your training. (And not being formally trained in a drysuit, this goes double!...)

Also: when dealing with students, I think you need to be demonstrating skills thay can easily imitate, and most students aren't normally wearing drysuits....

 

[String]

I chop and change. Single tank i generally find squeeze off also leave me nicely neutral. If im in a twinset its the wing, amount in my suit varies depending on how cold i am. Right now its freezing so i have more in the suit than in the summer to keep me warmer.

If a single tank diver is trying to manage a big bubble or feels like they're diving a balloon then they're massively overweighted to start with.

Still not convinced drysuit needs a specific training course though.

 

[ligersandtions]

I use my wing for buoyancy and my drysuit to keep me dry and warm. In order to be warm, I need at least some air in the suit, which coincidentally happens to be about the amount of air required to relieve the squeeze.

I have played around with using my drysuit for buoyancy but I found that my feet felt floaty and I felt a little out of control. Generally, I don't need to add a lot of air to my wing to be neutral, so the drysuit vs wing is almost a non-issue for me.

On my second drysuit dive, I put air in my wing when we were near 80 feet and as we ascended, I kept dumping the air from my suit, completely forgetting about the air in my wing. When we reached our safety stop, I was significantly lighter than I expected and couldn't get any more air to dump out of my drysuit....then it dawned on me....it was in my wing! So I do understand the argument that using both the drysuit and the wing can add to task loading....but that doesn't change the fact that I like to be in control of my body and not have floaty feet.

 

[J.R.]

Yep and Yep on the 2 above posts.

Experiment!

... one more "Yep" ...

 

[TSandM]

I began as I was taught, using the dry suit for buoyancy. The reason they teach this is that they believe that managing two different air bubbles is too much task-loading for the new diver. The problem is that new divers are also more likely to be overweighted, and therefore have a bubble in the dry suit that is difficult to manage and unstable. New divers are also not very good at anticipating buoyancy changes, and dry suits vent slower than BCs, so it's very easy for a novice to find herself too buoyant and unable to vent fast enough to stop an unwanted ascent (can I tell I was there?)

Around 60 dives or so, I gave up and went to the "20 foot squeeze", or putting only enough gas in the suit so that I could move around and not feel restricted. The wing was for everything else, and my buoyancy control improved tremendously.

Last year, I took a "techreational" class from a very fine instructor, who strongly encouraged us to use the suit as much as possible (including having us manage a dive with a disabled wing). I found out that, even with my double 85s, I could get almost enough gas into the suit to make myself neutral, and I could now manage this bubble much better than I could as a beginner. The big advantages of a bigger bubble in the suit were increased warmth (this was significant) AND the ease with which I could control my buoyancy while my hands were otherwise occupied. This has been great for running a reel or spooling up a bag.

So I think you can make arguments in both directions, and it will depend to a degree on the diver's underlying skills. Someone with control of their trim, and pretty good buoyancy control, may well find it easier and more comfortable to use the suit. Someone with less developed skills may find it safer to rely more heavily on the BC.

 

[J.R.]

The big advantages of a bigger bubble in the suit were increased warmth (this was significant) AND the ease with which I could control my buoyancy while my hands were otherwise occupied.

Ok... ya' just talked me into modifying my methodology (at least temporarily) for my upcoming ice diving class... I'm all about warmth...

 

[msg]

I found myself floaty when using my DS for buoyancy. I guess that could have been because of being a bit of a novice. However, I think that the BCD is more intuitive for the diver. TSandM brings about an interesting point of using it if the BCD/wing were to be disabled.
I found that my DS diving improved when I stopped using the DS for buoyancy, but that is my 2psi, for whatever it is worth.