Stout
Contributor
I ran across a story a couple of days ago where a diver was complaining that a rental regulator had failed underwater and lead to an out of air situation. The ( relatively ) inexperienced diver claimed that:
The pressure gauge needle was swinging wildly at depth, no mention of what it was doing at the surface.
It was very difficult to breath through the reg at depth. no mention of breathing difficulties during the descent.
The gauge dropped from 2000 PSI to 200 PSI very quickly
The representative of the company that responded to the claims in the story responded with what I'd consider platitudes and neither confirmed no denied the possibility that the regulator might have needed maintenance or repairs so there's no admission of guilt there, so to speak.
Now I'm no gear guy BUT.....
In OW we were taught that the way regulators are designed, they fail into freeflow, not shutting themselves off and.....I've seen this before where a diver starts off breathing normally only to run out of air at depth due to not having the air turned on properly, i.e. only turned on a quarter turn.
Based on this limited amount of information I have I'm tempted to go with an operator error explanation for this incident rather than blaming the gear. I suppose it's possible that the diver had both an empty tank to start with as well as a sticky gauge
Are my suspicions correct or am I somewhere out in left field with my interpretation of just what caused this out of air emergency ?
The pressure gauge needle was swinging wildly at depth, no mention of what it was doing at the surface.
It was very difficult to breath through the reg at depth. no mention of breathing difficulties during the descent.
The gauge dropped from 2000 PSI to 200 PSI very quickly
The representative of the company that responded to the claims in the story responded with what I'd consider platitudes and neither confirmed no denied the possibility that the regulator might have needed maintenance or repairs so there's no admission of guilt there, so to speak.
Now I'm no gear guy BUT.....
In OW we were taught that the way regulators are designed, they fail into freeflow, not shutting themselves off and.....I've seen this before where a diver starts off breathing normally only to run out of air at depth due to not having the air turned on properly, i.e. only turned on a quarter turn.
Based on this limited amount of information I have I'm tempted to go with an operator error explanation for this incident rather than blaming the gear. I suppose it's possible that the diver had both an empty tank to start with as well as a sticky gauge
Are my suspicions correct or am I somewhere out in left field with my interpretation of just what caused this out of air emergency ?