Think I'm over weighted

I'm pretty new to diving (no dives since my OW checkout dives, which were 2 weeks ago).

In the pool, I was wearing 4 lbs of weight (no wetsuit or anything, just a swimsuit), and was sinking (15 ft)

For the checkout dives, with a drysuit and drysuit underwear, I was wearing 34 lbs the first day (and was a bit floaty), and 38 lbs the second day (and was pretty much sinking).

I feel like I'm wearing too much weight. How do people usually find their "perfect weight"? Trial and error? Or is there a better way?

HockeyPuck once bubbled...
I'm pretty new to diving (no dives since my OW checkout dives, which were 2 weeks ago).

In the pool, I was wearing 4 lbs of weight (no wetsuit or anything, just a swimsuit), and was sinking (15 ft)

For the checkout dives, with a drysuit and drysuit underwear, I was wearing 34 lbs the first day (and was a bit floaty), and 38 lbs the second day (and was pretty much sinking).

I feel like I'm wearing too much weight. How do people usually find their "perfect weight"? Trial and error? Or is there a better way?

Click to expand...

Gear up and head to a pool. Empty the tank to about 750 psi and place about 20 pounds on your belt. If you can get yourself to sink, take some off. If you can't, add weight 2 pounds at a time til you can. Then you're all set.

If you don't do this, drop weight by 2 pounds off your belt each time you head out and dive. At the end of the dive, surface and empty your BC and see if you sink. If you do, take off 2 pounds for the next dive.

I bet you'll find that you'll need way less than 30 pounds.

BTW, I'm in the Albany area. If you find yourself wanting a buddy for a dive relatively close to here (Dutch Springs, Lake George, anything I don't know about between Syracuse and Troy), let me know.

You are at a pretty good shop if they are putting you into a drysuit for an open water class!

The first thing I do is getting all the air out of the drysuit. You need to make sure the dump valve is working right, and that you are working it right as well.

The second trick is getting all the air out of the B/C. Lifting your dump hose high and holding down the deflator button for a long time should do the trick.

The third thing is getting all the air out of your lungs. Exhaling completely, slowly, should start your descent.

A divemaster or an instructor should be able to help you set your weighting at the beginning of a dive. Then you need to adjust it yourself slightly by trial and error based on the end of the dive. You may want to take Jonnythan up on his offer. Or go to a dive store and use their pool, and get someone to help you there. I agree with Jonnythan's 2 lb increment corrections.

If you do all of that properly, and you begin to sink slowly at the beginning of your dive, then you should be close to proper weighting. If you do not sink at all, well, obviously you need more weight. If you sink really fast, they you are probably overweighted.

There is about a 25% difference between fresh water and seawater. For seawater you obviously need more.

You will not really know until the end of your dive, when you have 500 psi left in your tank, and you are hanging at 15 ft on the anchor line or kneeling in the sand underwater, if your weighting is perfect. If it is perfect, you will just slightly rise when you inhale, and just barely sink when you exhale, with your B/C totally empty, and your drysuit just comfortable, with no squeeze.

Once you get it right, you should write it into your logbook also noting the type of tank you were using. Your weighting will vary with different types of tanks. You will need more weight with aluminum tanks than with steel tanks.

If you switch between aluminum and steel, there will be a big swing of 6 to 8 lbs difference in weighting. That is the only way I can figure you would have such a big difference already. Maybe the dive store gave you a different size or type of tank on the subsequent dive?

HockeyPuck once bubbled...
I'm pretty new to diving (no dives since my OW checkout dives, which were 2 weeks ago).

In the pool, I was wearing 4 lbs of weight (no wetsuit or anything, just a swimsuit), and was sinking (15 ft)

For the checkout dives, with a drysuit and drysuit underwear, I was wearing 34 lbs the first day (and was a bit floaty), and 38 lbs the second day (and was pretty much sinking).

I feel like I'm wearing too much weight. How do people usually find their "perfect weight"? Trial and error? Or is there a better way?

Click to expand...

Hi,

What is your length and weight and what kind of a drysuit/undergarment were you wearing?

Also, when under water can you swim and hover horizontally or do your feet sink when you stop swimming?

And finally, what kind of a BCD and tank were you using?

R..

There are all manner of factors to consider - salt water or fresh, wet suit or dry suit, steel tank or aluminium tank etc etc. Point is that you need to be weighted right for the end of the dive i.e. as Jonnythan says when you're down to between 500 and 750 psi, and the tank has more buoyancy. So you'll be overweighted slightly at the start of the dive but you won't have the problem of being underweighted at the end of the dive. If you have to make a safety stop at the end of the dive there is nothing more irritating than being underweighted and struggling to stay down.

Use the various tables to give yourself a start point and then practice to find what works for you. As you get more experience I expect that you will find you need less weight.

regards

Voila: some tables to show you what a tank does for your bouyancy depending on such factors as tank material, cubic space, and psi/bar remaining:

http://www.mdaguam.com/tankspecs.htm

A bit more information

• Diving AL80's both days
• I'm 6'0", 225
• It was an Andy's drysuit
• Drysuit undergarment was a full body thing that felt kinda like the snowsuits we used to wear as little kids ... not quite as heavy as a snowsuit though
• At the end of our first day of diving, the DiveCon told everyone in our group to wear 4 more lbs for the 2nd day.
• Freshwater
• Jacket style BC

The first day, wearing 34 lbs, the water was a bit choppy, and I had difficulty getting under the water. Once I was under the water, I was generally able to stay down, although I did have to hold onto the platform, otherwise I would have floated off it. We didn't get down to 500psi either day ... we came up at about 1500 (we had done all the required skills and had gone for a bit of an underwater tour)

jonnythan - thanks for the offer. I'm looking to get some skills down a bit better (experience dives) with people I know before I go out with someone from the boards (so as to not make too much of a fool out of myself), but maybe in the spring/early summer we can hook up for a dive.

When people say slowly sink, they really mean slowly. When properly weighted, you go through the first 5 or 10 feet at about 6"/second. Of course, once you get a little deeper as any residual air in you BC or drysuit compresses (or your wetsuit does), you can sink signficantly faster. They key to being able to descend while properly weighted is being relaxed and concentrate on your breathing - a big exhale followed by slow and shallow inhales untill you get past the first 5 or 10 feet.

Going out to the local sites, I see so many divers hit that BC dump and they're gone and that means that when they hit the bottom, they are going to have to inflate their BC's and screw with them during the entire dive. If you're properly weighted, you just add a touch of air at the begining of the dive and vent it every now and then as you breath down your tank.

Also, people who are properly weighted have no problems in the 5' to 20' regime where as the overweighted who have to dive with their BC's inflated usually end up at the surface because of the rapid volume change.

Once you get properly weighted, it's a completly different type of diving.

HockeyPuck once bubbled...
A bit more information

• Diving AL80's both days
• I'm 6'0", 225
• It was an Andy's drysuit
• Drysuit undergarment was a full body thing that felt kinda like the snowsuits we used to wear as little kids ... not quite as heavy as a snowsuit though
• At the end of our first day of diving, the DiveCon told everyone in our group to wear 4 more lbs for the 2nd day.
• Freshwater
• Jacket style BC

Click to expand...

Your weighting may not be that far off - especially since your a new diver and you haven't got your breathing patterns established yet.

Your build physically has some input to your weighting as well - muscle vs. fat.

Follow the tips given above for pretty accurate weighting, and as you gain more experience, relax more in the water, you'll likely be able to drop even more.....

SS

HockeyPuck once bubbled...
A bit more information

• Diving AL80's both days
• I'm 6'0", 225
• It was an Andy's drysuit
• Drysuit undergarment was a full body thing that felt kinda like the snowsuits we used to wear as little kids ... not quite as heavy as a snowsuit though
• At the end of our first day of diving, the DiveCon told everyone in our group to wear 4 more lbs for the 2nd day.
• Freshwater
• Jacket style BC

The first day, wearing 34 lbs, the water was a bit choppy, and I had difficulty getting under the water. Once I was under the water, I was generally able to stay down, although I did have to hold onto the platform, otherwise I would have floated off it. We didn't get down to 500psi either day ... we came up at about 1500 (we had done all the required skills and had gone for a bit of an underwater tour)

jonnythan - thanks for the offer. I'm looking to get some skills down a bit better (experience dives) with people I know before I go out with someone from the boards (so as to not make too much of a fool out of myself), but maybe in the spring/early summer we can hook up for a dive.

Click to expand...

Well..... My gut feeling is that you'll probably find in the end that you need somewhere around 25 lbs in fresh water with that gear. I'm a little smaller than you and I think I'd need about 17 with your stuff on. I've also been diving dry for a while so that makes a big difference. In any case 34 doesn't sound too out of whack to start with. 38 sounds a bit high. I'd say you need to see of you can vent the suit any better on the way down and make sure your BCD is empty. Also, make sure you aren't holding your lungs full. That can make another 4 or 5 lbs difference.

For the rest I concur with what the others have already said. Do a good buoyancy check and get it down to what ever level works now and then throw off a pound now and again and keep doing buoyancy checks every 5 dives or so for a while.

R..