How to make diving affordable?

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GlowWorm

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Location
Charleston, SC
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I want to go dive as often as I can, but my LDS charges about $240 for each of their dives. I don't have the money to spend on that since I'll have to rent all my gear. Even so, I can't afford to spend 200 bucks every time I want to dive! How do I go diving without breaking my bank?
 
Buying your own gear can help take the sting out of the price in the long term, although it isn't cheap initially. Shore diving is usually very cheap or free. Hooking up with a local dive club or university club can be good too.
 
You can dive cheaply. One of my friends dives in a whole bunch of second hand / scrounged gear, and only rents cylinders. Even his weights he made himself out of some lead he managed to find somewhere and melted into tuna cans 1KG weights. Most of his diving is shore diving, so it costs him only car fuel and $20 a dive for the tanks.
 
First off, diving is not a cheap sport, so when we talk about doing it cheaply, we are really just talking about damage limitation. I cannot imagine any human being dives more cheaply than me (I have access to a friend's boat - all I pay for is fuel - I have my own gear and all I pay for is airfills), and I would estimate that my cost is about $25. I think of it as a very expensive movie ticket.

Second, I have never been to SC, but $240 a dive sounds like a lot of money for Central Manhattan, much less the Bible belt. Shop around.

Third, in the long run, diving with friends is going to be much more cost effective than paying a LDS to take you out. However, this only works if you can access dive sites from shore. Once you throw a boat into the equation, it is usually cheaper to pay your LDS rather than run (or share the cost of) a boat. For the uninitiated, BOAT actually stands for Bring On Another Thousand. Sometimes it is possible to steer a middle course by getting a group of people together to charter a boat for the day/weekend.

Fourth, the type of diving will affect the cost. Air is cheaper than nitrox. Nitrox is cheaper than trimix. Singles are cheaper than doubles. Everything is cheaper than rebreathers. The simpler you keep your diving, generally, the cheaper it will be.

Fifth, I doubt you are the first person in SC to have this problem. Get involved with your local diving community. There will be plenty of guys active on the ground whom I sure will be happy to share cost savings tips.

But remember, it is all relative. Can't get around the fact that it is basically an expensive sport.
 
Note: diving on the cheap is called snorkeling

I am not being serious, of course. As Ferris suggested renting gear can be expensive, and there is a lot of very good used gear available every day, if you read the SB classifieds and watch ebay, etc.

Most areas have clubs, which can sure cut down the cost of going it alone.

all good advice. I even purchased re serviced, and warranted used rental from the lds where my kids trained. that was more costly than I could have found gear on the internet or in the classifieds, but the bonus was that the gear was not only backed by the lds, it was exactly what my kids certified on.
 
It's just hard to get started, I don't know anybody else who dives except for my boyfriend (but he got certified the same time as I did, which was last weekend, so he is in the same boat as me). Maybe I can convince the girl at the dive shop to take me out :]
 
Note: diving on the cheap is called snorkeling

To the aficionados it is known as freediving.



You can dive inexpensivly, but it is hard to dive cheap. If you are committed to diving, you will find a way, I always did.




Bob
---------------------------------
I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.
 
i got my own gear and compressor and couple of tanks, initial investment was high,(Coltri MCH6, coltri dive gear and Catalina tanks) but dives are free, i dunno about the rule position at your end, here there are lot of crystal clear rivers, caves, boats available for cheap if one needs to go off sunderbans, cheap ? for free (boats hiring charges are like 20 $, thats it) no questions asked by the state authorities.

Is it illegal to get your own gear and dive at wherever you want to or shore dive ? (Of course safety & certification taken care)
 
Cheap diving can be done quite easily.
During the worst of the recession I was starting to wonder, if I lost all my gear tomorrow how would I replace it to get to just blow bubbles.
The way I would do it would be to get a used cheap wetsuit, booties, gloves, hood, all the neoprene. I'd look on Craigslist or look for rediculous sales at dive shops or online.
Fins, same thing, and I wouldn't be picky.
Reg, I would look at the most basic setup I could possibly find used and rebuild it myself. For example, I have been given for free many old used regs that the owners though were obsolete or were replaced with somethging that was considered more updated and better. Two that come to mind were a Aqualung Conshelf VI and the other a Scubapro MK3/108, and come to think of it there were also two other Scubapro MK5/109's that I got for free, plus a slew of many others.
All these regs can be rebuilt to work like new if you know where to get parts, know the right people, and learn to work on the stuff, which is about as easy as changing a watch battery or a tire.
SB is a great place to get to know those people BTW.
For tanks I also have been given many old steel 72's because they were considered no good anymore for some reason. I dive with them and they work great, and they were free!
A mask I would get the best that fits the best, regardless. A good mask is very important, but I would still look or the best deal.
For BC, personally I would go without one, but for the sake of others I would probably get the cheapest used one I could find that works. If I found a wing cheap enough I would fabricate a plate out of a stop sign and go to the dive shop and buy enough webbing and a belt buckle to put together something that I could strap a tank on my back and call it a day.
For weights, I love the suggestion of pouring lead into tuna cans, that's excellent!

I figured out once that if I had to replace everything just to get a dive in I could do it for between a few hundred bucks to a grand tops, for everything.
And then I would shore dive.
 
It's just hard to get started, I don't know anybody else who dives except for my boyfriend (but he got certified the same time as I did, which was last weekend, so he is in the same boat as me). Maybe I can convince the girl at the dive shop to take me out :]

Is boat the operative word here? If so go find some shore diving. In general full gear can be rented for $75 or so per day. Before long you will want to start accumulating your own. Used is an option especially if someone can mentor you in sorting out what's available.

Pete
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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