Question about “balanced rigs” and having all ballast unditchable

[MichaelMc]

To be clear, I don't have a problem with a diver opting for ditchable weight up to the weight of the gas, but if you want to advocate ditchable weight as a main solution with uncontrolled ascents as the solution mode, then accident reports are stacked against it (accidental loss, panicking divers not ditching weight, AGE, DCS, etc.)

Again, please do open up e,g, DANs 2016 Annual Dive Report, press CTRL+S and type in "weight belt".

I'm not advocating ditch at depth, I do not think most here are. I'm advocating keep me on the surface ditching. I like it available in small increments, modest x2 integrated, (edit) plus belt but not an excessive one. That ventures past your gas weight ditchable, but ditch and rocket is not my game plan.

I will look at the DAN report. I did read the BSAC report from last year in full. What stood out was several repetitions of 'got them close or to the surface, lost grip, they sank away, never seen again'.

And that you had no problem with ditchable up to gas weight is something I very much missed in your discussion up to this point.

 

[johndiver999]

Why can't we both find room to agree here?
@Dan_P , you've told us we should be balanced, and I agree...when I'm diving in a 2mm. How nice to just be close to neutral all the time! Minus 6 at the beginning and 0 at the end. Minimal air required in bcd; easy to swim up.

A few posts back, you told us we shouldn't be diving more than a 5mm if we wanted to be balanced. It's drysuit time beyond that. Well, not everyone plunks down $1k to $3k for a drysuit, and there are a LOT of Nor Cal divers in 7/8's diving perfectly safely with ditchable weight. In fact, per capita, if bet there are as many buoyancy accidents with new drysuit divers as there are weight pocket accidents with new bcd divers. I might be wrong. My point is, wetsuit or drysuit, you need to use your equipment properly. And too much ditchable weight with an insecure system is wrong. But that doesn't make ditchable weight wrong and balanced right, when your only affordable solution is a wetsuit.

And in the post just above, you've told us that in the event of a wing problem at the beginning of a dive, we should be satisfied holding 3kg of negative buoyancy until the boat comes. That or sit on the bottom until we've used up enough air. I guess that means no 100CF tanks are allowed without redundant buoyancy.

A balanced rig is a great practice, but is not the most practical solution to every dive scenario. I wish you could at least grant us that.

Finally, your comment about runaway ascents suggests that perhaps you are not as well versed in "unbalanced" diving as you could be. Take a guy like me wearing a garden variety 7mm wetsuit and a steel 100 with a nice streamlined wing on a 5# steel BP. But oops! My wing fails at the beginning of a dive, when I'm 19# negative due to wetsuit compression at 100 ft. My buddy is someplace else.
I concede it: I'm "unbalanced". But let's assume I'm saving up for my doubles rig and drysuit, and just haven't gotten there yet. Bad on me.
Sure, I could blow my smb while kicking like mad on a wall dive and see if I could keep from descending much further during the time it takes me to deploy it. And I could hang on that 19# or more lift, kicking until I got shallow enough for wetsuit expansion to help me out.

But...really?

Dump 8 lb. Boom! I'm only 11# negative, and can kick that up with moderate effort, and as my wetsuit expands, it gets easier and easier.
But there's NO runaway ascent!
With wetsuit expansion, I become neutrally buoyant at 23 ft with a full tank. I hang there and collect my wits.
When I'm ready, it's an easy ascent from 23 ft you the surface, where I arrive 6# positive. That means with a full exhale on the way up, I'm rising with only 2# positive buoyancy, and have plenty of time to look out for all those speedboats. And floating there at +6#, I'm not having to hold up those 3 kilos waiting for the boat. I'll trade that for your $1000 drysuit.

How about we agree that for some situations, having ditchable weight works just fine! And next month, I'll be balanced right there with you in Bonaire.

Makes sense to me, you drop enough lead to make a controlled ascent with no BC and can stay on the surface afterwards. that IS the definition of "balanced" in my book.

 

[Dan]

There is a reason why they invented life jacket. Having ditchable weight is like having a life jacket available at your disposal during an emergency situation.

 

[CT-Rich]

Look at the accident reports - people aren't dying from using a balanced rig + proper weighting method.
Conversely, try opening up an annual report, say DAN's 2016 one, press CTRL+S and type in "weight belt".

Actually 90% of divers are being found dead with their weights. That would imply that many divers are ditching their weights don’t die. I actually read most of the most recent DAN report and their was no discussion of Balanced rigs. What percentage of divers are actually part of this cohort?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

What percentage of divers are actually part of this cohort?

Very few. Scubaboard and it’s values does not represent the vast majority of divers world wide.

 

[Dan_P]

And that you had no problem with ditchable up to gas weight is something I very much missed in your discussion up to this point.

That's on me, then.
I don't have an issue with a small amount of ditchable weight (up to gas weight), it's about whether the rig is balanced. Optionally ditching weight up to the gas weight is covered in all curriculi known to me on the subject.

And it's not about whether there is weight on a belt. I use a weight belt when I need the weight (only underneath my crotch strap so it can't accidentally drop).

Nor is it about Jackets vs. BP/W. There are dives that can be done just fine on a Jacket-style BCD, no problem.
(is it the best option out there? I would flat-out argue "no", but that doesn't mean unsafe).

It's about whether a rig is balanced, about proper weighting and about emergency protocol.

A balanced rig is a great practice, but is not the most practical solution to every dive scenario. I wish you could at least grant us that.

I think we should cover ground on what a balanced rig is.
A jacket-style BC with a 2mm wetsuit as mentioned in an example above, could be a balanced rig.
So could doubles on BP/W with a drysuit.

It's about being able to get home without relying on an uncontrolled ascend. I would argue that's best practice and most practical in about all scuba dive scenarios, off the top of my head.

I'll reiterate that this doesn't mean that a dive can't be done safely in a jacket-style BC, a wetsuit or with - some - weight ditchable. If I wasn't clear on that prior, amends here

A few posts back, you told us we shouldn't be diving more than a 5mm if we wanted to be balanced. It's drysuit time beyond that. Well, not everyone plunks down $1k to $3k for a drysuit, and there are a LOT of Nor Cal divers in 7/8's diving perfectly safely with ditchable weight. In fact, per capita, I'd bet there are as many buoyancy accidents with new drysuit divers as there are weight pocket accidents with new bcd divers. I might be wrong. My point is, wetsuit or drysuit, you need to use your equipment properly. And too much ditchable weight with an insecure system is wrong. But that doesn't make ditchable weight wrong and balanced right, when your only affordable solution is a wetsuit.

I dive 5mm and 7mm often, and balanced.
But a good rule of thumb is that thick neoprene suits aren't suitable for balanced rigs beyond a depth of approx. 18m. There are times and places where a wetsuit as a tool is perfectly fine - and, indeed superior.

And absolutely, not every diver wants to invest in a dry-suit straight away. That's perfectly fine.
But if diving a thick wetsuit on a dive (to great depth) means that the diver needs to rely on an uncontrolled ascent or a single piece of equipment, then I think that's a suboptimal and - in my opinion - unneccessarily risky, approach.

As a consequence, for instance, I don't offer advanced-level courses in my relatively tempered backyard in a wetsuit.
Divers who don't want to invest in a drysuit, but still join an advanced-level course of mine, can rent or borrow a drysuit.
I explain why, of course. Acceptance has never, not once, been an issue.

Actually 90% of divers are being found dead with their weights. That would imply that many divers are ditching their weights don’t die. I actually read most of the most recent DAN report and their was no discussion of Balanced rigs. What percentage of divers are actually part of this cohort?

I'd say that would imply that divers who rely on ditching their weight belt, are probably overrepresented in the statistics.
Besides, that's just drowning. There are plenty, too many, cases of arterial gas embolisms, too.

It's a good question though, regarding numbers on how many use a Balanced Rig-approach, and I think it'd be interesting to know how many adhere to Proper Weighting, too. I don't have that number, and don't know if anyone does.

I think that Balanced Rig as a term and concept is propably relatively widely misunderstood, or unknown - that's the closest I can get to answering your question though, I'm afraid.

 

[boulderjohn]

Actually 90% of divers are being found dead with their weights. That would imply that many divers are ditching their weights don’t die. I actually read most of the most recent DAN report and their was no discussion of Balanced rigs. What percentage of divers are actually part of this cohort?

Very few. Scubaboard and it’s values does not represent the vast majority of divers world wide.

It is indeed a small portion of the total dive population.

It really started with tech diving, because with all the gas that must be carried, the diver frequently has almost no choice but to be overweighted with no ditchable weight and the knowledge that if you did lose critical ditchable weight, you could be in real trouble because of a deco obligation. As for me personally, I occasionally dive with double AL 80s and a drysuit, and I do indeed have some ditchable weight. I usually dive with heavy steel doubles, though, in which case I am doing everything I can to shed weight--the last thing I need is to add lead. The phrase "balanced rig" was coined by one group, but the principles of proper weighting exists in all tech agencies, regardless of what they may call it.

In this thread, the focus has been on single tank recreational diving. If you look at my posts in this thread, you will see that I am not so much advocating a lack of ditchable weight as I am pointing out that many and perhaps most of the people extolling the virtues of ditchable weight are talking about being overweighted, often ridiculously so. As I have pointed out several times in this thread, if you are perfectly weighted, you only need to be able to ditch the equivalent weight of the air you might use on the dive. If you are perfectly weighted and end the dive on the surface with an empty tank, you should not be able to descend again. If your tank is near empty during a safety stop, you should have a hard time holding that stop with your BCD perfectly empty--your body will be heading to the surface, and you will be fighting to stay down.

As for me, while diving with a single tank, I actually like to have a few extra pounds for several reasons. I know darn well that with those few extra pounds and almost no air in the BCD while wearing a 3mm suit, I can get to the surface with very little effort, so I don't worry so much about the location of those few pounds. So I am not so much advocating not having ditchable weight as I am saying that for most properly weighted divers, it isn't all that important.

 

[Chavodel8en]

A few posts back, you told us we shouldn't be diving more than a 5mm if we wanted to be balanced. It's drysuit time beyond that. Well, not everyone plunks down $1k to $3k for a drysuit, and there are a LOT of Nor Cal divers in 7/8's diving perfectly safely with ditchable weight. In fact, per capita, I'd bet there are as many buoyancy accidents with new drysuit divers as there are weight pocket accidents with new bcd divers. I might be wrong. My point is, wetsuit or drysuit, you need to use your equipment properly. And too much ditchable weight with an insecure system is wrong. But that doesn't make ditchable weight wrong and balanced right, when your only affordable solution is a wetsuit.

And in the post just above, you've told us that in the event of a wing problem at the beginning of a dive, we should be satisfied holding 3kg of negative buoyancy until the boat comes. That or sit on the bottom until we've used up enough air. I guess that means no 100CF tanks are allowed without redundant buoyancy.

A balanced rig is a great practice, but is not the most practical solution to every dive scenario. I wish you could at least grant us that.
.

This right here. We can debate ideal scuba gear in perfect situations, blah blah blah, but in the real world: I have a 8/7 mm wetsuit and Im diving Monterey/Carmel (and half the folks I see are in wetsuits). At depth, it would be VERY DIFFICULT to swim up if I had a bladder failure. So I'll use some ditchable weight, thank you very much. Im not going to stop diving bc I cant live up to some ideal of a balanced rig w/ no ditchable weight.

I will however, accept any donations for a drysuit, in order to advance the cause of balanced rig diving everywhere.

 

[AJ]

Im not going to stop diving bc I cant live up to some ideal of a balanced rig w/ no ditchable weight.

No one is asking you to. Balanced rig has nothing to do with ditchable weight or not. It has to do with balance between buoyancy and weight. So keep on diving like you do, no problem at all.

It would however become a problem if took extra weight with you just to be able to ditch it. Being overweighted just to be able to ditch weight is ridiculous.

 

[CT-Rich]

I'd say that would imply that divers who rely on ditching their weight belt, are probably overrepresented in the statistics.
Besides, that's just drowning. There are plenty, too many, cases of arterial gas embolisms, too.

It's a good question though, regarding numbers on how many use a Balanced Rig-approach, and I think it'd be interesting to know how many adhere to Proper Weighting, too. I don't have that number, and don't know if anyone does.

I think that Balanced Rig as a term and concept is propably relatively widely misunderstood, or unknown - that's the closest I can get to answering your question though, I'm afraid.

Of course ditchable weights are over represented, for the last 70 years it has been SOP for almost all recreational diving. There are exceptions, cave and some types of technical diving the tanks themselves become the ditchable weights.

According to the 2016 DAN report there were three (3) AGE/ lung over expansion deaths out of ~160 deaths and not a single case of being run over by a boat. The BSAC report was similar. Most of the deaths were drownings or drownings related to medical emergencies. Most of the deaths occurred mid-dive or post-dive on the surface.

When I was trained (which was quite a while ago), the emphasis was that weights should really only be dumped on the surface or in extreme cases at depth. I have met and heard of plenty of divers making ascents from depth with the old blow and go strategy. No ascent alarms from a computer or bailout bottles. If you need to dump 8 of 24 lbs to swim uff the bottom, you are not going to be a rocket ship.

A diver on the surface is far more likely to benefit from ditched weights because the are going to have to work much hard to keep their head out of the water if they are only 3 lbs positive versus 18 lbs positive and if they are going be waiting for on hour for rescue, that is going to make a huge difference. BSAC reported quite a few dive accidents involving lost divers, the DAN report really only covered fatalities.

The concept of “balanced” is what we used to call “properly weighted”. It goes back quite a long time.... Mike Nelson wore ditchable weights.