Vent on drysuit wrist?

[industrious95]

I just picked up a used DUI TLS350 (I've been using mine over 15 years) to carry as a backup on boat trips. This suit has some kind of vent on the wrist, I'm guessing it's a manual vent, but I've never seen one before.

Can anyone verify what this is? On the inside, it's an open tube above the seal, so whatever air is in the arm will be in the plastic tubing as well. To me, it just looks like something else to fail and I'm thinking about removing it, but I'd like to hear what someone who has it thinks about it.

Thanks.

 

[tbone1004]

looks like an oral inflation tube for emergencies. I.e. cave diving and your inflator fails and you have to descent to get the exit. Never seen one before, but that appears to be what it is.

 

[industrious95]

Thanks, I just checked it out and you're right, it's an inflator valve. You have to unscrew the base to move the ring down to inflate it, but since it's on your wrist, it would be difficult, at best, to do one handed while wearing thick neoprene gloves. I don't know the virtue of leaving it screwed down, or "armed" at all times. It fits into a pocket sewn above the wrist seal, and takes a bit of bending to make it accessible.

I can't think of an emergency where you'd want to put air into your suit, though. If I was beginning a dive and the inflator valve didn't work, I'd head back to the surface to resolve the issue, not blow into a straw underwater. At depth, if your inflator valve failed, it's not an emergency situation. You've already put air into the suit to adjust bouyancy.

If the suit flooded, you're much better inflating your BC then wasting time trying to blow air into your sleeve through that tiny port.

If your vent didn't work, it would be far easier to lift a seal away from your neck or wrist than to fool with that little tube.

Seems like a solution in search of a problem, unless it's for a specific purpose that I don't know of.

 

[tbone1004]

if your inflator fails on a dive in a cave it can absolutely be an emergency condition. Many caves have nonlinear depth profiles. Peanut tunnel in Peacock, have to go up to 15 ish feet from 60, then back down to 40. If you are coming back from a long dive with decent amount of deco racked up, without a way to inflate the suit, you have to flood it to prevent from being squeezed to the point of injury *doesn't take all that much btw*, and even though the caves are relatively warm at 72f, if you're on a 30 minute deco you can get quite cold which is bad for offgassing. Any sort of open water diving obviously this doesn't matter which is why you don't see them, but if you have an inflator fail mid dive for a cave it can get real bad real fast. If I have a post fail, the working inflator automatically goes over to the drysuit since it can't be inflated.

Now, I don't have an oral inflator on my drysuit, in that situation I would inflate via wrist seal same as inflating a lift bag, but that's the justification behind the inflator on the wrist.