need help because i use too much before everybody else

[Teamcasa]

In re the kicking at the safety stop -- having to kick to avoid sinking does not necessarily mean you are overweighted. It means you are negative, just as having to kick at any depth in order to avoid sinking means that you are negative.

Most people try to weight themselves so they are neutral at 15 fsw with 500 psi in the tank. I don't, because I want to be able to control the subsequent 15 feet of ascent, so I add a couple of pounds. Therefore, if I had no gas in my BC or drysuit at 15 feet, I'd sink. So I add a little gas, and voila! I'm neutral, and not finning. This is the skill you need to master.

If you have access to somewhere where you can do some simple, shallow diving, burn up a couple of tanks playing with this. Get yourself into maybe fifteen feet of water. Try to hover five feet off the bottom. See how quiet in the water you can be. Try exhaling, and see if you sink. Try inhaling and breathing with your lungs full, and notice that you rise. Go up five feet and stop, and hover there (you'll have to adjust your BC!) Just play with various spots in the water column, with being neutral and then deliberately going positive or negative, and then reestablishing neutral at a different depth. It may not go smoothly at first, and you may have some splats into the bottom, or some corking (which is why you do this shallow!) but time spent playing with this will pay off handsomely in more relaxed, more enjoyable dives.

A good, formal weight check at the beginning of this session will help a lot, too.

Exactly, just remember that the hovering position is horizontal.

 

[MSilvia]

Lots of good advice here so far, and if you believe you are overweighted, correcting that should make a HUGE difference... you waste a lot of gas on the extra effort it takes to stay in position if you aren't neutral, and you're likely to waste a lot of gas (in the BC) staying neutral if you're overweighted.

That said, I have one other solution to offer if, for some freakish reason, none of the excellent advice you've been offered makes a significant difference. You could always get a bigger tank than everyone else.

 

[octopuppy]

You just beat me to it. When my husband first started diving he BLEW through air. But with proper weighting figured out, breathing exercises via snorkeling and a larger tank - he's much better and back to standard tank.

 

[gbray]

Everything you are going through is perfectly normal. All of us who are here willing to share our advise and experience with you have gone through very similar experiences. Yours was perhaps a little deeper than mine but I recall being on a couple of guided dives and needing to share air with the DM until we got to the safety stop. I can now make an al80 last 90 minutes at 40 or so feet in cold water. The most important thing is to remember not too much too soon. There is plenty of time to do it all but only if you return safely from each and every dive. Just because you have a card that says AOW and are diving with others who are supposed to be good doesn't guarantee your safety. Only you can do that.

This is an excellent forum with loads of experienced people offering good advise. If any of it seems a little harsh try not to take offense as they are truly interested in your safety.It has been a great resource for me. Welcome to the diving community and to the board.

 

[phil8diver]

Lots of great advice here. Just relax, relax, relax. Once you achieve this, your breathing will be normalized. Take 3 deep breaths before hitting the water, it will relax you.

 

[trident00]

I am personally working on my air consumption, so this is how I found this thread. It does sound like all the advice given here was very sincere and heartfelt with your well being in mind. I dive with some close friends that spear fish. They sometimes get caught up in the spearing and I have to be extra cautious that we head up before anyone runs low. I believe we all have a responsibility to monitor ourselfs, but I go further and monitor my buddies as well. I had a close call with this group a while back and it put the fear of God in me. I know why it happened, and have taken measures to make sure it doesn't happen ever again. Basically my paired up buddy was too intent on spearing to understand that I needed to go up. I ended up going up and spending the remainder of my tank at 15fsw until my air was all but gone. I didnt make a full stop, but was fine and on the boat with an empty tank and a big lesson learned. I am sure you understand at this point that runinng out of air and having to make an emergency ascent too rapidly can cause death. As has been mentioned, take your time and enjoy your diving. Talk to everyone whos diving and get a game plan worked out. Discuss at what remaining tank pressure your gonna start your ascent. Stick to your plan. You and your husband take care of each other. I wish my wife dove. You are very lucky to be able to share your recreational time together. As for shallow diving, not only is it a better place to get your comfort level, but If you have a beautiful shallow reef, you can stay down longer, the lighting is better.
I wish you all the best.
Cheers,
Walt

 

[aloha scuba mom]

wow, I'm so impressed with all of the advise i have gotten from all of you and from all corners of the world. I appreciate all of it and i look forward to trying several of them out to put it all together. I really truly enjoy scuba so much, i'm not giving up. So thank you so much for extended you help to a newbee, Mahalo

 

[carrielsal]

wow, I'm so impressed with all of the advise i have gotten from all of you and from all corners of the world. I appreciate all of it and i look forward to trying several of them out to put it all together. I really truly enjoy scuba so much, i'm not giving up. So thank you so much for extended you help to a newbee, Mahalo

Never give up. I am taking tech classes and transitioned to doubles a few weeks ago. I was just starting to get comfortable with them, until I took a drysuit class on Sunday so here I go again trying to figure out weighting and trying to straighten out my trim.
As you gain experience, start taking other classes and maybe make gear changes you will be repeating many of the skills you are learning now. It's part of being a diver growing in experience.

Carrie

 

[onefastpony]

Aloha John
I was with her and I let her us my air at the end of our safety stop she was not out but very low 100-150 we were only doing a max depth of 55' when we started up she had, what seemed to be enough air. But she has been having to kick a lot just to hold her safety stop, i'm thinking that was most if not all the problem. The DM had her remove 6 lbs on the boat, it seemed better but at the next safety stop he said she was a little lite? I don't know if she was still kicking or if she had air in her BC? I will work with her on our next dive. Yes we are very much newbes and are always learning and doing training in our pool, which we had just done an emergency out of air situation on Friday. In noway I wound I want to put her or myself in any danger, she is my wife and dive partner. We have been trying to figure out what is the actual problem so we can learn from our mistakes but be safe also. She was weighted down with 22 lbs of lead, as was added to by our AOW instructor on the PPB dive. He also had me at 16 lbs which I knew we were both way over weighted, we both have 3mm full wetsuits on. We were both very unhappy with our PPB dive it seemed like the instructor just was no help with her, we even had talked to him before we went out about the issues she was having, using a lot of air and not trimmed out good.
I have been working on lowering my weight, i'm at 12 now, and have been talking to her about hers. I want her to feel and be aware of the over weight issue so she can fix it and know what she is fixing. We talked to the DM, about doing the full PPB class with him rather then at the other LDS, which has been a great place for us and maybe the instructor was just having a bad day.
I want to thank everyone for all the feedback you have been giving we need it, we all learn from our mistakes and will grow to be better divers.
Randy

Just curious, are you AOW or just OW, because you reference doing AOW. If you were taking an AOW course you definetly should have known your weight without relying to heavily on the instructor. I just got back from diving in Jamaica using 14 pounds max depth 71' with nothing but a swim trunks. I would play hell sinking with only 14 and a 3mm suit.

 

[Scuba_HI]

Just curious, are you AOW or just OW, because you reference doing AOW. If you were taking an AOW course you definetly should have known your weight without relying to heavily on the instructor. I just got back from diving in Jamaica using 14 pounds max depth 71' with nothing but a swim trunks. I would play hell sinking with only 14 and a 3mm suit.

Ok at the end of our OW class I had 16 lbs and my wife had 20 lbs. In our AOW class the first dive was PPB and the instructor added 4 lbs to my wife before we went in, which put her at 24 lbs not 22 lbs as I stated on my earlier post. She was really fighting her buoyancy and trim on the PPB dive. As in having to adjust her BC a lot, then he had us cross our legs and hover, she was rolling over upside down which looked pretty funny but was no help at all, he just watched her giving no help, then we swam around. When we went up to the boat he told her she needs to work on it.

This weekend when she ran so low on air the DM, from another LDS removed 8 lbs of weight and said she has way to much weight. Sorry about the numbers being wrong I just read her log book and found the correct numbers. We do keep track of all our dives so we can refer back to them as needed.