failure rate of Scuba equipment and BCD

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Remy B.

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Location
Rotterdam
# of dives
200 - 499
This questions are for the 500+ dives experts

In your own dive experience, how many times did you had failure of your Scuba or BCD.

How many dives did you had with that equipment that failed.

For the BCD failures can you mention if it was the filling valve stick open, or loss of air

Thanks for your time.
 
Never had a BC fail during a dive. Never ever heard of one either. For both myself and the wife the only items we have had fail during dive are computers. We have had 100% failure rate of all the Seiko computers we have owned (about 6 in total). My wife has had a drysuit inflator stick open causing her to go out of gas. Also a BC inflator fail pre-dive for the same reason, stuck open (Tusa BC - replaced with a ScubaPro one - never known of any problems with the ScubaPro item)
 
Equipment failure depends alot on how well you care for and service your equipment. I have had a set of regs fail on me during a dive due to the tech not ensuring he had put everything back together correctly. I have had one Suunto D4 fail on me twice due to bad transponders but this was out of my control there were internal circuitry issues. I have had a few hoses that blew out on me two were the older flexi hoses before they were recalled, and a few were just old with alot of use. Other than that just a few o-rings letting loose.

No idea how many dives the regs had but they failed on the second dive after service.
Dive Comp had over 600 when the issues happened
The hoses god only knows how many dives were on those but also from other divers using them as a rental unit

I stopped logging a long time ago but most has seen over 3,000 dives and a few pieces even more and I have not had any issues other than the above mentioned. Its all about tender love and care with proper post dive care and storage.
 
In 500+ dives:
One blown o-ring at depth (25m).
One dive aborted immediately after shore entry due to free-flowing 2nd stage caused by 1st stage IP creep.
One slightly complicated dive due to leaking shoulder dump valve - caused by pieces of shell stuck into the rubber of the valve - simple to fix after the dive.
Dive lights - various issues, but never caused abort as I always have at least one backup.
One dive aborted due to water entering camera housing.
 
Thanks Chrisch, my mistake, my question does not include drysuit, but if you think it is good to mention for other viewers and be valuable for them go ahead.
 
I have never had a BC fail (knock on wood). I have witnessed I-3 inflator failures. But these were rental gear and the post-dive cleaning might not have bee up to par.
 
The question is not so much related to diving equipment, torch, camera or other.

I forgot to mention that it will be recreational diving, related to the more common live taking equipmeny failures, in my perspective de SCUBA and the BCD
 
Jacket type BCD: Shoulder dump valve leaking. Benign dive with hard bottom at 15m, so I used my DS for buoyancy. Unscrewed the valve after the dive, located a loose plastic foil thingy inside, removed it and assembled the valve. Worked fine since that. Still don't know what that plastic foil thingy was, where it came from and whether or not it was supposed to be in there somewhere, though...

Regular buddy's jacket type BCD: Shoulder dump valve leaking. Wall dive with no bottom at rec depths, so I called the dive even though he had redundant buoyancy. Unscrewed the valve, cleaned it for sand and grit, checked the spring, greased the gasket lightly with silicone grease and assembled the valve. Worked fine after that, but we made sure that the next dive was with a hard bottom underneath us.

Never had any issues with my drysuits, except minor leaks between the seals and my skin when I wasn't paying enough attention to the fit while donning. A bit cold-ish to have water trickling in during the dive, but not enough to cause any concern.

Have had quite a few incidents of free-flowing 2nd stages during winter diving, but none of those were underwater. Sounds dramatic, but it isn't. Turn the mouthpiece down and/or stuff your thumb into it, and it'll stop free-flowing at least nine times out of ten.

EDIT:
This questions are for the 500+ dives experts
Why only for them?
 
Last edited:
Remy are you the guy that is trying to market the self inflating bcd? Haven't we been down this thread before?
 
Remy are you the guy that is trying to market the self inflating bcd? Haven't we been down this thread before?

Nope - the "DiveGuard" is someone else.

---------- Post added October 16th, 2014 at 08:42 AM ----------

In your own dive experience, how many times did you had failure of your Scuba or BCD.

Closing in on 1,000 logged dives myself. Have worked with hundreds of students. Have been on liveaboard trips with hundreds of other divers. Have crewed boat charters with thousands of other divers.

Have never seen a BCD failure. Never even seen my buddy - who seems to develop a problem with at least one piece of gear on every trip we take - have a BCD failure.

Closest I have ever come, I suppose, is having seen one or two people discover a stuck dump-valve during a pre-dive check.

I advise all students to FULLY INFLATE their BCD until the OPV releases, and then leave it fully inflated for a bit, during every predive check. This will allow you to ensure that the OPV's work... and that the BCD actually holds air. How many people do you see testing their BCD by putting a few tiny puffs of air into it from the LPI and saying "BCD... check" if they even DO a pre-dive check?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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