What would you do with slow inflator leak on a liveaboard trip?

[henryrendleman]

A couple weeks ago, I was on a live-aboard dive boat suffering for the greater good in the Bahammas. I was on Dive 5 and noticed my BC inflator valve had a slow leak in it. I disconnected it before I had any real horrible issues like rapid ascent. I checked with the DM to see if she thought it was fixable and she said nope. No rentals were available either.

The good news: The BC would stay inflated once inflated as needed.

Would you:

a) call the other dives, equipment is broken
b) leave it connected and hope for the best
c) disconnect it and inflate orally or connect when needed
d) ___________



I chose c. After practicing the connect disconnect many times, with gloves and eyes closed and felt comfortable with it I told the DM and with her consent jumped in the water. No problems with it the rest of the trip and Friday it will be serviced.

Note Learning Lesson, after reflecting on this, I should have noticed it at dive 3 because my BC inflated fully before I got in the water. They sit on a rack secured and hooked up the whole time. I had assumed it was the sun warming the black jacket, but in hindsight that assumption was wrong.

 

[Doc]

give it a good whack, try screwing it back in, or leave it attachified and

d) keep dumping as needed.

 

[farsidefan1]

I kinda like Docs whack it idea. If that fails I'd disconnect it. Make sure my weight is right on then I'd dive with out any air in my bc . (which is the way I always dive anyway. I add air on the boat before I enter the water just to see that it is working then I jump in and immediately empty it till I am back on the surface waiting for the boat. I honestly can't imagine trying to use the bc to "lift me" to the surface. That would be nuts. You have fins and if your weight is right you just swim up to the surface. If you have to wait for an hour to be found you can orally inflate on the surface and or use the snorkel that so many hate. I keep a snorkel in my pocket for the "just in case".

 

[raftingtigger]

Way back when we used to dive without a power inflator on our BC. If you are comfortable orally inflating go for it. I don't think I would mix techniques by connecting and disconnecting the LP hose. Nor would I leave it hooked up and dump as needed. Too much risk of it getting worse and precipitating an unplanned ascent.

 

[herman]

C. If you are properly weighted and are not wearing much wetsuit then there is no need for a BC to start with, the only real use is as a surface float and orally inflating it if you need it is not a problem. To put this in prespective, my travel BC has a removable bladder that I typically remove and dive without it unless the dive ops has objections, properly weighted I just don't need it.

 

[redacted]

I would have swapped it out for the spare inflator in my save-a-dive kit. But disconnecting is a good 2nd choice.

 

[Diogenesdemar]

It's been my experience that the BC inflator is far and away the most likely/common failure point on any BCD. When on liveaboards I now carry a spare. Although I've not yet needed it myself, I have on two occasions let others borrow it when they had failures.

Having said that, regular maintenance is the first line of defense against failure and Murphy's Law.

 

[TSandM]

Part of my save-a-dive kit is a Deep Sea Supply inflator wrench/tool. If mine began to autoinflate, I'd take it apart and clean it and replace the o-ring if I had a spare; otherwise, I'd just clean it as well as I could and see what happened when I reassembled it. (BTW, I have actually DONE this on trips, and stopped the leak.)

 

[geoff w]

We had the opposite problem diving in the Bahamas earlier this year. While washing dive gear in the shower after a day of diving, the pull dump on my wife's wing came apart, so I put all the pieces back together (or so I thought). The next day on the first dive, her wing wouldn't hold air and she had an unhappy dive, planning to sit out the rest of the day. I swapped wings with her and got rid of all the lead I was carrying, leaving only my stainless backplate for ballast. Granted, we weren't diving all that deep (only down to about 40 feet in the Abacos), but I had a great dive and no buoyancy problems. I fashioned a washer out of rescue tape for the remainder of our trip so I could actually float at the surface, but learned that in the tropics you can drop a lot of weight and actually get away without any wing if you're weighted properly for the dive (3 mm full suit, hood, glove, booties, 6 lb s/s backplate, diving Al 63s from the dive operator). Diving with no lead in the tropics is actually a lot nicer than what I normally do, and since the experience I've taken off more lead than before our vacation

By the way, the inflators on our wings are Atomic SS-1s (which replaced our old 1994-vintage Scubapro Air 2s last year), and we've never had any problems with them

 

[Searcaigh]

c - disconnect and orally inflate.

Never thought of carrying a spare inflator, I will add one to my kit at some point, are they available to buy separately, because I have never seen them on a shelf in a dive shop?