Sucking straight from the bottle

[victorzamora]

I cringe every time this is mentioned.....and breathing off the inflator..........popcorn.


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Breathing off of the inflator is a piece of cake....seriously. Breathing from the BCD is gross, but if you time your buttons right you get almost 100% fresh scuba-tank air. I've even held the BCD above me (inflator at lowest point) to exacerbate that.

However, I did it as a gag and because someone bet that I couldn't. I do it now every once in a while for fun, or to prove to people that diving is easy when you practice the essentials.....easy to the point that you can start doing stupid stuff like inflator-breathing.

---------- Post added November 6th, 2014 at 10:49 AM ----------

The only scenario I can envision is a diver very low on air, lost within a wreck who is passed a full cylinder through an opening. Breathing directly off the tank he can gain time to switch his equipment over to the full tank.

Hahaha, what a douchebag that rescuer is! "Here, I went to get you a new tank so you could live......but I didn't put a reg on it because you don't deserve another reg. You have to bare-tank breathe, in an already-panicked state (presumably) and then fiddle with your own gear in the short time you have between breaths (because it's so hard to get a good one). Good luck."

 

[EFX]

If the cynlinder getting passed has a reg on it you still need to remove that reg to get your BCD on the tank. If you fumble to much switching equipment or need to relax first, tank breathing could help.

 

[victorzamora]

I was joking, actually.

Having said that, i realize you might be being serious, so here are the problems with that scenario:
You wouldn't put the tank on your BCD.... That would be crazy. Anyone in a wreck should be able to clip off a stage and treat that new tank as such.

Either way, there's certainly no need to remove a reg to put your BCD on it.....just slide it in from the top (opposite of normal).

---------- Post added November 6th, 2014 at 12:48 PM ----------

I'm currently learning sidemount, and one of the advantages is that you can do pretty much whatever you want with your tanks. Switching first stages underwater, handing off a tank, or even breath directly from the tank valve, sans first stage. The latter I had a hard time believing, so I tried it earlier tonight in my exercise pool. No regulator, harness or BCD, justmy trusty HP 119 and me. And I was amazed how easy it was. Once I had the gas flow rate right, it was a breeze breathing straight from it and swimming with it. Who needs regulators, anyway? I suck, and I may even be good at it! But seriously, can you imagine any scenario where you would actually have to use this method? Good to know it works, though.

Other thing to mention is that you should NEVER need to switch regs underwater, and certainly should never do so willingly. Unscrewing your first stage underwater can ruin it....short term AND long term.

In a GOOD sidemount class, you'll learn what to do when regs go bad and how pulling your regs off and bare tank breathing is simply a bad idea and handled much better with other techniques.

 

[Akimbo]

... Unscrewing your first stage underwater can ruin it....short term AND long term…

Just a technical point, there is no difference between regulators for fluid and gas, beyond material selections. A Scuba first and second stage work fine passing salt water through until enough time elapses for corrosion to take place. I agree that the need to swap regulators underwater is fantastically remote.

 

[victorzamora]

Just a technical point, there is no difference between regulators for fluid and gas, beyond material selections. A Scuba first and second stages work fine passing salt water through until enough time elapses for corrosion to take place. I agree that the need to swap regulators underwater is fantastically remote.

I know that regs will typically work fine when swapping. I've seen it done, and there's no reason for it not to work. My point was that it's NOT a good thing, and it's NOT something to be practiced regularly. It WILL ruin regs long-term unless serviced WELL after each episode.

For the "short term" ruins, I've seen regs ingest silt, sand, mud, and other debris that has clogged it up. Reg works fine, dude unscrews it to check/prove something, screws it back in after FOD ingestion, and the reg either sticks open, is sealed shut, or very shortly thereafter failed. My reg is a sealed, functioning unit. If something goes wrong, I'm not going to add to the list of things that's wrong with it by unscrewing it. Well maintained first stages simply don't fail shut, they fail open. In SM, feathering the valve is a piece of cake to accomplish and is MUCH better overall than taking your reg off and bare tank breathing. Bare tank breathing is a cool party trick, but seriously nothing more.

Also, if I'm trapped in a wreck gasping for breath and someone hands me a tank, I'm certainly not taking the time to switch over all of my equipment before making a "pretty" ascent. I'm taking a big-ass breath off of it and holding onto it [-]like[/-] since my life depended on it. Also, I wouldn't hand someone a naked tank and then expect them to bare tank breathe long enough to put their own regulator on it.....I'd be handing them a longhose along with it if other regs weren't around, or I'd be handing them a regged-up stage bottle. Come to think of it, I'd just hand them my long hose.....why screw with extra tanks at all?

 

[boulderjohn]

I see the possible scenarios when this skill might be needed are getting further and further from likelihood. How long before someone suggests that it might become necessary should Zeus release the Kraken whilst someone is diving in the area, leading to the poor fellow being caught up in the tentacles?

 

[kafkaland]

I see the possible scenarios when this skill might be needed are getting further and further from likelihood. How long before someone suggests that it might become necessary should Zeus release the Kraken whilst someone is diving in the area, leading to the poor fellow being caught up in the tentacles?

Point taken. It was still fun to try, though.

 

[victorzamora]

Point taken. It was still fun to try, though.

Tons of fun, and a great parlor trick. Heck, tbone and I swam around my pool for like 20 minutes breathing off the bare tank and out of my inflator while my wife played with sidemount....just for the heck of it.

 

[EFX]

Also, if I'm trapped in a wreck gasping for breath and someone hands me a tank, I'm certainly not taking the time to switch over all of my equipment before making a "pretty" ascent. I'm taking a big-ass breath off of it and holding onto it [-]like[/-] since my life depended on it. Also, I wouldn't hand someone a naked tank and then expect them to bare tank breathe long enough to put their own regulator on it.....I'd be handing them a longhose along with it if other regs weren't around, or I'd be handing them a regged-up stage bottle. Come to think of it, I'd just hand them my long hose.....why screw with extra tanks at all?

OK. Let me add to my scenario that it's you and a friend diving from a boat that has a non-diving captain. You each have extra tanks. There are no long hoses, stage bottles that can be clipped on, or extra regs. In other words a typical charter dive trip. There's enough time to get a spare tank to the diver but not enough to search the wreck to find your buddy and help him get out. Holding onto a tank with your original equipment will make you too negative and fiddling with your weights may be more of a hassle than switching your gear. That's the scenario I had in mind however remote it might be. Yeah, it's a cool party trick until the party has turned into a nightmare and the trick is on you. I don't think beginning divers should be trained to do it but it's nice to know it can be done.

 

[victorzamora]

OK. Let me add to my scenario that it's you and a friend diving from a boat that has a non-diving captain. You each have extra tanks. There are no long hoses, stage bottles that can be clipped on, or extra regs. In other words a typical charter dive trip. There's enough time to get a spare tank to the diver but not enough to search the wreck to find your buddy and help him get out. Holding onto a tank with your original equipment will make you too negative and fiddling with your weights may be more of a hassle than switching your gear. That's the scenario I had in mind however remote it might be. Yeah, it's a cool party trick until the party has turned into a nightmare and the trick is on you. I don't think beginning divers should be trained to do it but it's nice to know it can be done.

You're suggesting that on a dive charter there are only two divers (or nobody else has a reg) and there is no spare reg on board. That does NOT sound like a typical charter to me.

Also, you're suggesting that there is wreck penetration occurring with recreational-only divers (no longhose) diving with no safety bottles, and in an area where you can slide a 7" diameter tank but not a person or a reg? Seriously, at what point does Thor tell Zeus to release the Kraken?