Hose routing with one tank and dry suit

[Patoux01]

Pretty damn sure I can inflate my stealth perfectly using oral inflation... You just have to be a tiny bit smart when routing it.

As for redundancy, I do hope you guys realize we're talking single tank here, so redundancy is a bit... out of the scope?

For adding the hose, that implies having one more miflex hose ($$$) of the right length. Standard inflator hose was a real pain when i tried, it somehow tried to get the tank to twist. I had routed it downwards and then going back up with the corrugated hose.

I was just suggesting the way I'd have done it.


Very curious about someone wanting to do mouth inflation as a main way to inflate... Any example and proof that you cannot reach precision with an inflator? Because that sounds very bull****ty to me...

 

[tbone1004]

in backmount I orally inflate almost exclusively out of habit because that's how I learned. In my nomad I prefer to use power because it's easier. It is easier to get precision buoyancy orally because you get rough buoyancy with the inflator and then you inhale to the point that it's perfect, and exhale the "overage" into the wing until you are at a normal breath level, then theoretically you're perfect. Problem with this method is it only works if you don't change depth, and even if you stay at one perfect depth the whole dive you still change buoyancy due to the tank ballast change, so fine tuning buoyancy with an oral inflator in real diving conditions is truly pointless, on OC you can counteract a couple of pounds of negative ballast with your lungs. It becomes more of a concern in CCR where you actually need perfect buoyancy and have to use the power inflator. So the "Most Notable" is truly bs because it is a useless gimmic to say that the redundant bladder is for fine tuning buoyancy. You are then having two bladders fighting each other for space inside the wing, and have to dump both of them when you are ascending, so it becomes a bit of a pita. Backup bladders are for backup, if you want to orally inflate to get precision buoyancy or whatever just use the regular inflator.

back to the OP, apparently Miflex hoses are much more expensive in OZ than they are here, but point becomes you have to have at least one hose running up, if not two, so it'll look ugly on the ground, but be just fine in the water.

 

[mddolson]

Interesting question, never though about it, before, my transpac singles, & sidemounts.
If you use a 7 ft long, it would work from either side, but inflator hose to your BC would likely dictate which side you end up on.
Suits tend to be centered, so no difference.My dry suit is on left, (Viking HD)
Long hose around the back of the neck (aka dir).
Breath thru long hose & donate it as needed., Short hose , I would bungie/necklace.
Tank on left keeps the right side clean so there's less confusion if your buddy needs to share air.

Mike D

 

[Patoux01]

Actually, wouldn't it help to know what rig he's diving with?
Not using a 5th port (if available) with a stealth for instance is being stupid.
I'd say SH up, LH down, one inflator down, one inflator out of 5th port. But that's for a stealth or anything that has the inflator in the same orientation as the stealth.

Why have 2 hoses running up? You'd always have one hose going up (short hose), but there's no need for a second one...

 

[Razorista]

@tbone1004
It does not become a useless gimmick because some or most do not need or use it.
A redundant wing with two power-infaltors would not be very useful or comfortable, one of the reasons redundant wings are rarely seen in sidemount systems.

The MSR Bag or MSR Bag style inflator has some advantages, as you (inadvertently) pointed out yourself.

I know several photographers and of several photographers using oral inflation techniques (in the Razor, Stealth and even Backmount systems) to hover without body movements and also avoid the startling noise a power inflator produces when pressed or produced by the air burping out of a pull dump.
Those are also special cases with reasons to prefer single tank configurations on shallow dives.

I personally like the extreme maneuverability offered by single tank configurations, also the hose routing can be very streamlined when in the water and not mounting the second inflator makes it look less 'ugly on the ground'.
An ideal example for using this is when working under water in shallow depth with little room to spare or heavy things to move in and out of the water.
Most of those dives are nothing but maneuvering on constant depth for me and therefore often require only a single inflation of the wing or none at all.

On the Razor the solution is quite clever, as you have two completely different means of influencing buoyancy, with one clearly being the secondary.
For drysuit diving there is also the option of swapping the inflator from side to side easily.
Another feature is that the coin-dump tends to let the air out very easily slowing accents automatically.
Also helps with keeping the wing slack to avoid bulging up and making it easy to empty at the same time.
Do not get me wrong, it holds the 45lbs maximum inflation just fine, but not as strongly as a normal inflator and pull-dump combination.

The other clever part of it is that the backup wing dump-valve and the mouthpiece cannot withstand the power inflators pressure.
So when you need maximum lift fast you just press the inflator-button and let it push the air out of the backup wing automatically when they interfere.
Pressing the inflator and opening the coin dump at the same time empties the backup wing and lets you switch to the main wing seamlessly.

To make a long story short:
There are reasons to not use a wing inflator on the first stage at all.
Even with a turreted 1st-stage it leads to a less ugly setup.

 

[decompression]

If only there was some kind of manifold...........


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Razorista]

If only there was some kind of manifold...........

It is not possible to get an advantage out of the available manifold ideas you are thinking of.

For double tanks there are some arguments making an manifold interesting.
Sadly they cannot work as they have to be low-pressure-manifolds making it unavoidable to close the tank valves instead of switching regulators.
That necessity destroys any argument regarding advantages.
For some that tradeoff is unacceptable.

But for single tank diving there is no argument in the first place...:
There are no regulator switches and overall you are as DIR as you could ever be with a single tank configuration.
Much more so than backmount btw, as at least you are wearing your stage on the left side ;-)

---------- Post added September 13th, 2014 at 03:32 AM ----------

Actually, wouldn't it help to know what rig he's diving with?

Acctually it does not matter at all in this special case (drysuit and single tank, with available 5th-port), as the 5th port is ideal for drysuit connection anyway.
Single tank any little help with tank position is a bonus and a short inflator can be a very big help in controlling rotation.
More importantly shorter hoses naturally route without ugly loops more easily.
Even an over-the-shoulder running wing-inflator does not matter - the inflator can be any length and is necessarily connected to the turret, routed up or down as required by the individual setup.

 

[briefer]

I am using a hog d1 with fifth port and a Xdeep stealth

 

[Razorista]

I am using a hog d1 with fifth port and a Xdeep stealth

Than you just have to his config (and probably are already doing so for doubles) and move all the hoses from the right tank to the left.
http://www.protecsidemount.com/images/stealth-sidemount-diving-mexico.jpg
Using the 5th-port for the drysuit seem natural to me especially in that config.

But as I said for the situation you are facing the BCD used does not seem to matter at all.