I have recently been putting together a DIR compliant rig and a question came up, while I was bringing in my 1st and second stages for servicing, and frankly, I thought it was a good enough question that seems to escape a quick answer. In the event of a first stage failure on the right post, or any sort of failure that requires turning off the right valve ( or isolator ), which is where the wing inflator hose lives, am I not correct that the only option is to disconnect the dry suit inflator hose and attach to the wing inflator, leaving you without a quick secondary inflation device? I don't recall any mention in the materials I've read so far ( but have not taken DIR F yet ). The idea of an inflator hose failure ( or no air to the inflator hose ) didn't occur to me as a potential issue, but now that I consider it and have to think it through, with copious amounts of time to consider it, I'm a little unsure how quickly I would have thought of that in a real emergency, with little time to get it wrong. Is this just common sense, or is there a drill I haven't read yet?
wing inflator hose question
- Thread starter donbarile
- Start date
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detroit diver
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donbarile:
I am not a DIR instructor, but this would be my reasoning:
You've called the dive because you've shut down your right post. You're neutral at this point, so there would be no reason to add air to your wing, unless you need to drop down to get out (ie in a wreck, or in a cave). In either case, I would not want to risk losing potential emergency bouyancy by removing the hose from the drysuit. I'd use the manual inflation mouthpiece on the wing to adjust as needed. If this didn't work (for whatever reason), I'd use the drysuit for buoyancy until I got out of the situation, and then would vent the excess gas from my suit.
MHK,Brando, Scot, Dean, Marc etc-what would you suggest?
Think Jack's got it. Oral inflate. Shouldn't require much more gas than one or two breaths anyway, assuming you're reasonably stable and good bouyancy when the failure occurs.
MASS-Diver
Contributor
If you need to drop a bit - to untie or to an exit the area after shutting down a RP, I'd just add a little gas the drysuit. While the wing should be used for bouyancy under normal circumstances, I was never taught that it was a sin to use the suit for a little bit a bouyancy under these circumstances. I thought, the whole reason the DS hose is on the left post is so that it can be used for bouyancy in an emergency? If you are diving DIR and are weighted right, I don't see why a little bit of air into the DS in this situation is not OK.
Your drysuit is your redundant buoyancy device. You don't detach the hose from it and moved it to the wing. And since you will most likely be ascending after turning the dive... as has been pointed out... you don't need to be adding gas anyway.
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