Liability for repairing regulators

[Bigd2722]

Starting to get into repairing my regulators and am having a lot of friends and acquaintances ask if I will do theirs. How do you deal with liability? I am not affiliated with a shop.

thanx

 

[oly5050user]

get insurance

 

[tbone1004]

insurance or make sure you have a rock solid waiver they sign. give them the manuals and have them learn how to do it themselves, they'll be better off anyway

 

[The Chairman]

That's a tough question and it depends on the person. Many ask me, and I just send them to a shop. You have to be a VERY close friend for me to touch your reg and I teach the Hog repair class.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Starting to get into repairing my regulators and am having a lot of friends and acquaintances ask if I will do theirs. How do you deal with liability? I am not affiliated with a shop.

thanx

If you do the work in exchange for money (or anything else of value), then you are a business, and you need to think about all the things a business needs to think about, including liability and insurance. You may (or may not) be held to a higher standard if you are holding yourself out as a business than if you are just doing it occasionally for free for a friend. It depends on local law. Maybe a FL lawyer will chime in.

---------- Post added September 11th, 2014 at 09:54 AM ----------

insurance or make sure you have a rock solid waiver they sign. give them the manuals and have them learn how to do it themselves, they'll be better off anyway

Whether a waiver would work in this instance doesn't seem all that clear cut to me. You can't always waive liability against everything. In this instance, I have no idea whatsoever--just pointing out that waivers are not the end-all solution for everything.

 

[fire_diver]

Simple answer, don't repair or service any regs but your own. Waivers are useless and won't stop the family from suing you for every penny you have and will ever earn in the future. That's why dive shops have insurance and (if they are smart) are set up as at least an LLC.

 

[undrwater]

Don't do it as a business unless you are ready to be a business.

I've taken to inviting folks to watch me do mine so they can see if it's something they're interested in.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

insurance or [-]make sure you have a rock solid waiver they sign[/-] keep a loaded .45 close at hand to end your suffering.

FTFY. Would you replace the brakes on a friend's commercial truck if they just signed a great wavier? If so, by all means go work on their frigging regulator--but realize you're an idiot.

Otherwise, point them to a shop and/or do as tbone suggests and help them figure out how to fix it themselves.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

One more DIY'er answering the OP wont hurt

Quite surprisingly, I've had total strangers send me PM's asking if they could send me their regulator for servicing or a "fine-tuning". Apparently they had seen me post something in the Regulator section that sounded vaguely intelligent, and thought I might be "The Guy" to service their regulator. I imagine other ScubaBoard DIY'ers have had similar experiences.

I politely declined. I was capable of doing the work, and enjoy working on regulators as a hobby, but I think the potential liability issues cannot be ignored.

I think helping your friends learn to work on their own regulators would be the best way to go, for a whole bunch of reasons.

Best wishes.

 

[eelnoraa]

In most dive shop around me, they won't even service regulator that they are NOT officially trained/authorized to do. I can understand where they are coming from.