Wings and integrated weight BC's - Are they dangerous?

[Ardy]

I think that people tend to forget that the Earth is a big place and we aren't all live in the same locations. Diving with a wetsuit is different than diving with a drysuit. Diving with a 3-mil wetsuit is different than diving with a 7-mil wetsuit. Diving with bathing suit is different than diving with 1.5-mil wetsuit. Diving with double and a pony bottle is different than diving single.

We all need to get your gears adjusted and weighed properly first. After that, things get a lot easier for both the diver and rescuer.

Bloody good point. Going from cold water to warm isnt an issue in my book. Going from the tropics to very cold water takes a lot of thinking about and is a much harder dive.

Still I dont think Tasmania and NZ compare to some of you lunatics diving in Canada or Alaska.

 

[Ardy]

I have a particular hatred towards weight integrated BC's precisely for this reason.
If someone dives off my boat and has one of those I make them haul it up over the side!

I had one of the first weight integrated BC's when they first came out. I hated it. The wing was too big because it had to be able to float the weights and the tank at the surface. The result was a big piece of overpriced crap with lots of drag.

It was then I decided to make my own back pack and I've never looked back.

Couple of things here ZKY:

When you consider that a BC is only a bag of air, I think that we have been very limited in our thinking in terms of drag. I started diving with a metal back pack, 6lbs of weight(I think), no BC and a 5mm wetsuit. It was the very comfortable diving in terms of drag. I dived with an old, well known diver who writes diving directories in Aussie a few years ago and he doesnt use BC's, hates them. I would ditch mine if I could find a method of getting lift that I occasionally use and a liveaboard who would take me. I have often thought that a wetsuit with air pockets in it would be preferable to me.

Any chance of a picture of your home made back pack?

 

[Blackwood]

Love this and will take this advice. At the moment if I take my gear off, the gear can be made neutral but I am over weighted. Will sort this out.

thanks Ardy.

Note, of course, that your gear will get lighter as the dive progresses (expired air), whereas you will not.

So you can't have that perfect balance throughout the whole dive.

 

[rstofer]

Totally agree. The way that I was trained was "the third rule" 1/3 WI in the BC, 1/3 on a weight belt and the last 1/3 non dump able in the BC. If you have all your weight on a belt or in your BC (dumpable) what happens when you have to God forbid ditch your weight in an emergency.......If you carry say 30lbs and you dump it all you are going to breach the surface when you get there like a dolphin jumping out of the water. If you are following the 1/3 rule you can dump either your belt or one of the two weight pockets on your BC or both as needed to maintain a more controlled and safe accent.


Just my $.02

Your rule of thirds might be quite practical. In fact, I have a similar setup for my grandson. His problem is that the WI BC is too heavy to handle. So, we split the weights between the BC and a harness with about 4# in the trim pockets.

The diver, wearing his non-integrated weights, should float at the surface without a BC and BC should float without the diver. But, there is also the matter of rescue to consider.

As soon as the rescuer has you (the victim) on the surface, they will dump your weights to establish positive buoyancy. So, the part that is readily ditchable should be sufficient to provide this condition. The higher you float, the better.

It's nice when it is visually apparent how to ditch the weights. On the DUI Weight and Trim harness, it is OBVIOUS! Great big yellow pull rings! Other systems may not be as rescuer friendly. Remember, your rescuer may not be your buddy and the instant they go to dump the weights may be the very first time they have seen your gear!

At some point during the 'tow and blow' the rescuer will probably remove your BC. On the off chance you recover, it would be nice if your gear wasn't at the bottom of the ocean. This isn't a concern to you (the victim) at the moment and is never a concern for the rescuer but it is something to think about when you decide where to carry your ballast.

I'm pretty comfortable with just about all of the ballast in a harness for the case of a BP/W. For the WI BC, I think I would go with somewhere around 50% in the BC and the remainder in a harness. But I certainly wouldn't put all 26# of ballast in a BC that, with a -10.5# tank and -5# in miscellaneous would require about 42# of lift unless I knew that my BC was good for it.

I haven't followed along on the lift capacities of BCs. My very old SeaQuest ADVi was only good for about 38#. But it wasn't weight-integrated either.

Richard

 

[Nemrod]

I tried a wing style BC about 15 years ago as it was supposed to be superior due to being able to control your buoyancy better. I decided to stick with the normal BC as I didn't have a big problem with the standard and didn't want to end up face down in the water unconscious in an emergency.

When I bought my latest BC about 5 years ago there was a discussion with my dive shop re integrated weights. The guy in the dive shop thought integrated weights were more comfortable but what would you do if you had to take your gear off underwater. So I kept a separate weight belt and glad I did.

Am I getting too careful in my old age or do other divers consider these things dangerous?

What do you consider the most dangerous piece of equipment in use today?

A BC is not a life jacket, it will potentially float you face down. No BC I am aware of is USCG rated to float an unconscious person with a free airway.

I don't care for weight integrated but see no problem with it for warm water diving. I bought my wife one new poodle jacket without weight integration for colder water and heavier suits and one with weight integration for warm water swimsuit rash guard diving

The most dangerous thing I see regularly, a PadI DM/Instructor that thinks they have the only way to the golden path. BTW, circa 1984 I was told by a PadI operator slash DM/Instructor/expert that back inflates were dangerous and were banned and that I could not use my Sea Tec wing. LOL, guess they was wrong again.

N

 

[Reg Braithwaite]

BC should float without the diver.

Could someone help a n00b like me understand this? If we are talking about a BC with a full tank attached and its bladder empty, shouldn't it sink? How could it possibly float? And I understand an AL80 can be buoyant when empty, but won't steel tanks also be negative even when empty?

Obviously if the BC is inflated I would expect it to float full tanks and then some. But shouldn't an empty BC sink?????

 

[Gombessa]

Could someone help a n00b like me understand this? If we are talking about a BC with a full tank attached and its bladder empty, shouldn't it sink? How could it possibly float? And I understand an AL80 can be buoyant when empty, but won't steel tanks also be negative even when empty?

Obviously if the BC is inflated I would expect it to float full tanks and then some. But shouldn't an empty BC sink?????

Seems like you're asking two things, Reg.

First, will a BC with a full tank attached to it sink? If it's empty, yeah, it will. With an AL tank, you're talking -4lb, and another couple of pounds for the regs, cam bands, miscellaneous, etc. If it's weight-integrated too, it'll be a real rock. All of this is counteracted only by the maybe 2-4lb positive buoyancy of a typical jacket BC, which is hardly ever enough.

With a bp/w, there is no real inherent buoyancy because of the lack of padding/extra material. You've got a 2-6lb metal plate, maybe an STA, a small wing, and some hardware on the harness. That's for the most part pure negative. So add a full tank and regs to that and it'll sink like a stone if deflated.

What people are saying is that a BC's air cell, when fully inflated, should float the rig without a diver when the tank is full. That way, you don't lose your rig to Neptune if you don/doff on the surface or your rig falls off the boat, etc. If the BC is weight integrated (or you have those ACB harness weights on a bp/w), the wing may need to have more lift in order to keep the rig afloat with those extra 10-12lb of lead that would otherwise be on a weight belt.

As to the BC alone, an empty jacket BC (with no tank, regs, etc.) tends to float. Again, typically it's 2-4lb positively buoyant. An empty bp/w of course sinks. It's anywhere from 2-12lb (or more) negative.

 

[Reg Braithwaite]

...First, will a BC with a full tank attached to it sink? If it's empty, yeah, it will.... What people are saying is that a BC should float a rig without a diver when the tank is full AND the bc is fully inflated. It's pretty much a given that it'll sink if the air cell is empty...

Oh good, my brain was boggling at the thought of a BC being so inherently buoyant that it could float all by itself. You wouldn't be able to submerge without a weight belt of some kind just to sink the rig!

I wouldn't want anyone to copy my example, but for tropical diving I dive a six pound steel BP with four pounds of non-removable weight threaded onto the harness. It absolutely sinks when the wing is empty

I wear a 3 mm wet suit, and in my wet suit I am buoyant at the surface even when I expel all of the air from my lungs. I do not wear a weight belt. If my wing fails at depth I can swim it up and I have practiced swimming in a pool with no wet suit (to simulate the loss of buoyancy).

Last night I did a weight check by breathing an AL80 right down to empty. I was still a little negative at the surface. Next week I will experiment with using even less weight.

But it sounds like I conform to the rule of thumb being suggested here, that I am buoyant on my own and that my rig is buoyant when the air cell is inflated. There is the question of what a rescuer is to do when they search for droppable weight and don't find any, I presume they will decide that I already dropped it prior to becoming a victim.

 

[Gombessa]

I wouldn't want anyone to copy my example, but for tropical diving I dive a six pound steel BP with four pounds of non-removable weight threaded onto the harness. It absolutely sinks when the wing is empty

A lot of people dive this way. I'm a cold water wimp, so I often double up on 3mm wetsuits or use a 5mm even in 80 degree water. With that, I wear a 6lb steel backplate and 6lb STA, and no weight belt. It's fabulous (except when changing tanks).

 

[squ1d]

I love my integrated weight system.