Question My Wife's Rig is No Longer Balanced. How Do I Add More Ditchable Weight?

[johndiver999]

Does the undergarment float in the wash? This should not be that hard to understand/visualize?

 

[Ryan Neely]

One other thing to consider:

It’s obvious you’re worried about the additional lead you add pushing her over to an “unbalanced” configuration. What I don’t understand is: why isn’t that lead you plan on adding ditchable? I mean, if you were adding lead bolted to your back plate, or selecting unusually heavy scuba tanks (like stupid spun tanks) to add that ballast, yeah, you would have a problem. But you’re not: you’re adding it in additional lead weights.

Why not simply buy a good quality weight harness and call it a day?

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40 pounds of lead. All ditchable.


I swear I’m not going to go on my usual “make sure you actually need all that lead“ rant. And as picky as you’re being about this entire process, I assume you are being equally picky on the process of figuring out exactly how much weight you/she needs. But if by chance you are not, I just want to throw that out there: so, so many divers are diving with way, way more lead than they actually need. Doing a proper weight check with empty tanks at the surface is essential. If you can just barely sink in that configuration, you have enough lead. And make sure you do it at the end of a dive where you have moved your body around extensively, up and down through the water column. That gives you a chance to get all of the air squeezed out of your suit. If you do it at the beginning, your suit will have way too much air in it and you’ll never sink. Of course, that’s why many divers think they need more lead: they can’t sink in the beginning. But that’s a problem of getting the air out of their suit, not adding more lead. (OK, I’m stopping now: I promised this wouldn’t be a rant. )

Anyway, consider a good weight harness. It will probably solve all of your worries.

This was along the lines of what I was looking for. Yes, I do attempt to be meticulous about all of this, and finding a way to add ditchable weight while still remaining streamlined (or adding weight where she needs it to prevent pitch or roll) is of particular importance.

I had looked at the DUI harness, but I wasn't certain if it would function well under a webbing harness or if it is adjustable enough to moke the weight a bit higher on the torso without it hanging outside of the webbing parameter overly much. She definitely does not want to return to the same sagging and bulging configuration of our old Aqualung HD Pro BCD.

Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[tmassey]

I had looked at the DUI harness, but I wasn't certain if it would function well under a webbing harness or if it is adjustable enough to moke the weight a bit higher on the torso without it hanging outside of the webbing parameter overly much. She definitely does not want to return to the same sagging and bulging configuration of our old Aqualung HD Pro BCD.

I own a previous version of the classic, which is what I think I linked above. I really, really like it. When you have to carry a lot of weight, it helps to have something that’s hanging from both your shoulders and your hips, especially if you have to do any walking on the surface with it. The harness is quite configurable: you can have the weights anywhere you want up or down your torso.

There isn’t a problem with interference with your waist strap. They are really big pockets (but reasonably flat), and you will have to put them either above or below the waist strap. That’s going to be determined by how long your torso is, what kind of hips you have, where exactly your waist strap falls already, etc. But there’s plenty of configurability.

And the cool thing is, you don’t have to worry about it interfering. The pockets stick out a bit. You pull the yellow handles, and the pockets literally fall apart and the weight falls away. That gives you a lot of flexibility to where you put them: they’ll still function.

In addition, DUI makes like three different styles of this type of harness set up. I haven’t looked too closely at them, but some of them have four pockets, some of them have smaller pockets, some of them have different styles of harness, all kinds of different variation. Plus, there’s nothing magical about the DUI harness: there are other people who make similar harnesses which might give you even more flexibility and options.

A big harness like this isn’t going to completely obviate the need for trim weights in non-dumpable pockets. If you need to adjust your trim that’s what those trim pockets are for! But at that point, we’re talking about low single digits of lead. Not enough to put you into an unsafe condition, particularly if you’re dropping double digits of lead from your main harness.

Anyway, you seem to have a handle on everything. If you were looking for “blessing” to consider a harness, you now have it. In my opinion, if you need to carry double digits of lead, it’s the only way to do it.

Just make sure you actually need to carry that much lead… only then do you get the blessing.

 

[Ryan Neely]

I own a previous version of the classic, which is what I think I linked above. I really, really like it. When you have to carry a lot of weight, it helps to have something that’s hanging from both your shoulders and your hips, especially if you have to do any walking on the surface with it. The harness is quite configurable: you can have the weights anywhere you want up or down your torso.

There isn’t a problem with interference with your waist strap. They are really big pockets (but reasonably flat), and you will have to put them either above or below the waist strap. That’s going to be determined by how long your torso is, what kind of hips you have, where exactly your waist strap falls already, etc. But there’s plenty of configurability.

And the cool thing is, you don’t have to worry about it interfering. The pockets stick out a bit. You pull the yellow handles, and the pockets literally fall apart and the weight falls away. That gives you a lot of flexibility to where you put them: they’ll still function.

In addition, DUI makes like three different styles of this type of harness set up. I haven’t looked too closely at them, but some of them have four pockets, some of them have smaller pockets, some of them have different styles of harness, all kinds of different variation. Plus, there’s nothing magical about the DUI harness: there are other people who make similar harnesses which might give you even more flexibility and options.

A big harness like this isn’t going to completely obviate the need for trim weights in non-dumpable pockets. If you need to adjust your trim that’s what those trim pockets are for! But at that point, we’re talking about low single digits of lead. Not enough to put you into an unsafe condition, particularly if you’re dropping double digits of lead from your main harness.

Anyway, you seem to have a handle on everything. If you were looking for “blessing” to consider a harness, you now have it. In my opinion, if you need to carry double digits of lead, it’s the only way to do it.

Just make sure you actually need to carry that much lead… only then do you get the blessing.

I'm going to insist that we do a thorough weight check before going too insane with weight. A proper suit burp might be a part of the problem. Thanks!