Bc without an air release valve on the shoulder.

I don't want to call it a dump valve because I'm not sure if thats what it is but, I have a old Sherwood bc and it has a pretty standard inflator hose and all that stuff but usually on the right shoulder( your right side if you were wearing it) there is a round valve with a pull string with a ball on it. If you pull the string it releases air, of course. This bc does not have that. Is that valve some safety feature that is important, or just another's way to release air.

Dump valve or 'OPV' (over-pressure valve) is the common term.

It's just another way to release air - most commonly used for a 'quick dump' when beginning descent from the surface. It's only useful in a head-up position (shouldn't be that common on your dives) and doesn't offer the 'fine-control' that you can achieve using your LPI.

Considering my new Halcyon BP/W doesn't have a right shoulder dump either, only the LPI and a rear bottom dump I'd say at least Halcyon sure doesn't think a right should dump is an important safety feature.

Same for my DRIS BP/W. Some of us believe that having the pull dump just encourages equipment failure by pulling on your inflator and introducing another failure point where the wing can fail to hold air.

I don't miss it.

PacificDiverNw:

I don't want to call it a dump valve because I'm not sure if thats what it is but, I have a old Sherwood bc and it has a pretty standard inflator hose and all that stuff but usually on the right shoulder( your right side if you were wearing it) there is a round valve with a pull string with a ball on it. If you pull the string it releases air, of course. This bc does not have that. Is that valve some safety feature that is important, or just another's way to release air.

Click to expand...

Picture would help. I am not familiar with all Sherwood BCs but many BCs have the pull cable inside the inflator hose. Steel cable (short enough you don't bust the inflator hose) connected at both ends. If the inflator hose attaches to the BC at a round looking thing with vent holes this might be what you have.

Most jacket BCs seem to be designed with the idea that 'more is better'. So there are extra dump valves, D rings, pockets, bells, whistles, vanity mirrors, cup holders, neon accents, zippers, clips, buttons, velcro, ipod docks, facebook apps, GPS systems, extra fries, AC adapters, comfy padding, Christmas tree ornaments, soap dispensers, towel racks, shag carpet, who knows what else.

Sorry about the rant. The right shoulder dump valve is sold as a 'safety feature' or as a convenience, but in truth it's absolutely not necessary and a possible failure point where the air could leak out of your BC. They usually don't mention that part in the shop. It's best to have two options, not more, for dumping air; the LP inflator and a dump valve on the lower portion of your BC, usually on the left hip.

The pull dump that's activated by yanking on the corrugated hose is a particularly stupid bit of engineering, although it's practically universal among jacket BCs. It doesn't make a lot of sense to design something in which the user is essentially try to pull off the weakest hose, especially considering that if it does come off, there is no longer any way to get air into the BC.

I have an old Seaquest [Ranger ???]back inflated doubles/singles bc w/o a shoulder 'dump' too [has integrated velcro weight pockets].....I think they were trying to appeal to both rec & tech markets....Never use it, but it's surprisingly well made........

Mine got snagged and pulled into the dump position a couple of times so I cut the cord so that it wouldn't happen again. Since I never use it, I looked for a some kind of cap to close it off, but couldn't ever find anything from Scubapro.

PacificDiverNw:

I don't want to call it a dump valve because I'm not sure if thats what it is

Click to expand...

It's a dump valve but it's also closed by a spring and it will open if the internal pressure of the BCD gets too high. That's called an "over pressure" release/valve (OPV)

It's not really a safety feature for the BCD for the underwater part of your dive because if the BCD got full enough that the OPV opened then you wouldn't be under water anymore What it does do, however, is make sure that you can't damage the BCD by holding the inflator open for so long that it causes the bladder to burst from the pressure. As long as your BCD has an OPV *somewhere* that's good enough. It doesn't need to be on the shoulder. In a lot of BCD's you see them built into the coupling where the inflator hose attaches.

The question remains why it's amost ubiquitous to see OPV's on the right shoulder these days. My best (cynical) guess is that some marketing genius said, "heeeeyyyy... I thought of something that we can market as a safety innovation" and they sold 3 more jackets that year than they did in the previous year which caused all the other manufacturers to jump on the monkey-see-monkey-do bandwagon for fear of looking like they didn't care about safety.

R..

Well, it's a tradeoff. You would like to have a way to release gas from the BC easily in a variety of attitudes -- head up, head down, left side up, left side down. But of course, each place you can vent gas is also a place where gas can leak out, or fail to vent. So there comes some kind of diminishing return.

Wings, such as those used by technical and cave divers, typically have only two places to vent gas -- lower left rear, and inflator hose. For a diver who can control his attitude in the water, this is sufficient. But for beginners, it may present a challenge to manage buoyancy with just those two exhausts. Extra dumps may add safety, in that divers who have lost control of their position in the water can still easily dump gas. When you have good control, you don't need as many places to vent, and you can dispense with the extras.