Finally Certified! :)

[Diver0001]

j...snip...
just put on what i was told and was wearing 50 pounds on my weight belt

Holy cow!! You sure you rememberd that right, Michael? 50 pounds of weight would be like strapping a mini-bus to your butt.

Make sure you do a buoyancy check on a regular basis over the next 20 dives or so.

What did they teach you about doing buoyancy checks?

R..

 

[Michael_Lambert]

They did not check buoyancy checks.. They just told us 10% of our weight..

What is a Buoyency check and how do i do it?

 

[mars2u]

They did not check buoyancy checks.. They just told us 10% of our weight..

What is a Buoyency check and how do i do it?

When I was a Divemaster I had the opportunity to watch many different instructors do buoyancy checks and each did it a little bit different. First, I would suggest trying this out in a pool since it's an enclosed environment.
1) Take the 10% of your weight and put your weightbelt on...expell all the air out of your lungs.
2) Try to be perfectly still and not skull with your arms or legs.
3) The water should come up halfway up your mask and stay there. If not add or remove weights as necessary untill you do the desired effect.

Now add a "few" more pounds...say 3-5.
The intent here is that you are not dropping like a rock. It defeats the purpose and in turn will hurt your diving. What you'll find is that you will be able to dive easier (by not dragging all that weight around), and you'll be able to conserve more air allowing you to dive longer.

As a side note...you probably remember in class that salt-water is "heavier". Once you go out diving in salt water you'll need to add a few pounds to compensate for the saltwater.

I've seen some Instructors use a tank that has 500 psi when checking buoyancy. This can be difficult to do unless you have a tank with 500 psi laying around, but what it accomplishes is that it ensures you are buoyant at the end of your dive when you're doing a safety stop.

I had a friend of mine that tended to dive overweighted and we were able to fix his problem quickly by ensuring his buoyancy was correct as described above. The thing you notice is that overweighted divers tend to dive with their head at a 45 degree angle instead of horizontal...thus trying to compensate for being overweighted.

Lastly, LOG the amount of weight in your logbook INCLUDING the type of wetsuit you were wearing. If you decide to go with a shortie, farmer-john, dive-skin...etc., it'll be a good reminder of what your optimal weight is.
I've found that the more I've dived, the less amount of weight I've needed as I've gotten more experienced.

Just my .02, others might have additional suggestions.

 

[CD_in_Chitown]

Congrats on the certification, you now know all the immediate dangers associated with breathing compressed air under pressure and have some pretty good theory on diving practices. Learning to dive is a longer endeavor, but it sure is fun. As you've undoubtedly seen already in your reading here there is so much more to it than the simple skills required for the OW cert. (Not to minimize the importance of these the true fundamentals ~ Never hold your breath, don't breathe through your nose especially with your mask off, be prepared at anytime for your mask to be off!)

I've seen some Instructors use a tank that has 500 psi when checking buoyancy. This can be difficult to do unless you have a tank with 500 psi laying around, but what it accomplishes is that it ensures you are buoyant at the end of your dive when you're doing a safety stop.

The importance of this weightcheck relates to the buoyancy swing of the tank as the amount of air decreases, being perfectly weighted at the beginning of a dive with a full tank can be as much as 5# light with an empty tank (not that you'd ever dive to an empty tank level so let's say about 4# with 500 psi).

For a new diver IME the natural anxiety of descending into the underwater world requires some extra pounds. Once the comfort level begins they become aware of things that assist or hinder the descent, like not breathing out fully to begin and that you can raise your arms out of the water to help sink yourself.

As your buoyancy improves Michael you'll shed weight, you won't want to be carrying it on land and it will make you work harder and use more air under water. You'll gain confidence with experience and begin to find that spot where you can hover neutrally. Then you can better guage the weight you're carrying, at that time bear in mind that the weight of your tank changes during the dive. Talk to your mentors at the shop(s) or post up here for the specifics and you can factor that in as you reduce your ballast. For now get a few more dives under your belt and try to integrate some of that weight into the BC it'll be much more comfortable. And its a little safer IMHO to have the ability to not drop/lose all your weight at once, you will ascend very rapidly if you drop 50# of lead.

 

[Mishelle]

CONGRATS! That is so exciting!

 

[scubamickey]

They did not check buoyancy checks.. They just told us 10% of our weight..

What is a Buoyency check and how do i do it?

Something is not making sense here. First off, the bouyancy check is covered early on in the book. Are you saying you didn't even discuss this in class or did you just forget?
Second, if they told you to go by the 10% rule and you had 50lbs of weight strapped to you then that means you weigh 500lbs.

You sure it wasn't 25lbs?

I guess this is odd to me because I was certified in Jamaica and as lax as they are, the first thing they did was have me do a buoyancy check. Makes me wonder what else your instructor didn't teach you.

Congratulations and welcome to the club! Have fun diving.

 

[gandhiReBreather]

Its The Beginning Of A New Adiction Get Ready To Spend Some Serious Dough

 

[Michael_Lambert]

There was alot in the 6 chapters of the book that was covered, and covered very breifly!.. So now that i go back and read through it the check was in there.. how ever no.. in the classes we did not go over it or preform in in the pool or open water,

As for the weights. i Weigh 350 pounds, our first dive they asked me how much i weigh and told me that i would need 50 pounds 10% of my body weight and because we where diving with 7mm two peice suits that it would be like diving with a 14mm suit and i needed to compensated for that..

After day one, like i said in the first post another dive shop owner lent me his personal BC which i was able to put 32 pounds into it.. and then i only strapped on 10 pounds on the weight belt as with the 50 pounds i sunk pretty good.. so with the 42 pounds on i was able to decend with some assitance from my arms to get me started..

Right now i am looking at picking up a SeaQuest Raider ( 32 pounds intergrated releasable weight / 10 pounds in the trims ) So with this i think i should be able to dive with no weight belt at all , All the weight will be in the BC and i can release the weight 50% at a time.

 

[Diver0001]

There was alot in the 6 chapters of the book that was covered, and covered very breifly!.. So now that i go back and read through it the check was in there.. how ever no.. in the classes we did not go over it or preform in in the pool or open water,

OK, for your own benefit do put some effort into learning the technique and make sure you get your weights sorted out. I have a hard time believing that the buoyancy check isn't in the SSI course. It might not be in the book but it should be in the course.

I'm thinking that an instructor who would make himself guilty of massively overweighting students isn't probably going to value the buoyancy check enough to bother with it.... Frankly, it sounds to me like your instructor was lazy and thought "let's just strap an anchor to jumbo-brother to make double sure that he gets under water.... who cares that it isn't right ...."

You got ripped off, Michael.

but alright.... It's not the end of the world. At least you found this website and there are people here who will help you get it sorted out. But do yourself a favour and find a new instructor for your next course.

Right now i am looking at picking up a SeaQuest Raider ( 32 pounds intergrated releasable weight / 10 pounds in the trims ) So with this i think i should be able to dive with no weight belt at all , All the weight will be in the BC and i can release the weight 50% at a time.

Be careful with those weight integrated BCD's. If you overload the pockets some of them have the tendency to fall out. It might be better to keep a weightbelt with some of the weight on it. There are weightbelts on the market that use a suspender "harness" system so it stays put.

R..

 

[DI_Guy]

Just to make Michael feel better, I have to say that I had 40 lbs of lead on me when I did my OW checkouts. I am 200 lbs and I was wearing a "7 mm farmer john" with a "7 mm vest" on top of it.
I tend to be a floater and they could not believe what it took to keep me down. After 70 dives now, I have shed the weight ( down to 28 lbs ) and at that, I am a tad too heavy. ( could probably drop to 24 lbs with my 7 mm full wet suit, 10 lbs in my BCD and 14 lbs on my belt. ) I prefer the releaseable 10 lbs on the BCD in case I ever had to dump weights in an emergency, I won't sky rocket to the surface like a cork.

Micheal, as time goes on, you'll shed some weight off your belt too, rest assured.

Keep up the good work.