Proper hose management when using pony bottles.

[eelnoraa]

It is a privilege getting advice from seasoned divers and I take that privilege very seriously. I do not want to come across as a student who does whatever he wants but I will tell you this: I can't just go out and start spending hundreds of dollars changing my setup and its not because I am pressed on cash but because I do not want to have 19,000 dollars worth of scuba gear in my house collecting dust.

We are NOT asking you to change your gears. We mostly ask you to get hose of the proper length. To clean up hose routing, that is a very reasonable thing to do. You aren't expecting thing to improve without makeing any changes, right?

Let's see how much money you need to spend to make a dramatic impovement
1. 22"-24" for your primary: $16 DGX
2. 16" corrogated hose: $15 DGX
3. 22"-24" LPI: $22 DGX
4. 24" HP hose: $30 DGX
5. bungee boot for your computer: ~$20 DSS x2, your main and your backup
6. bungee boot for your compass: ~$15 DSS
7. stage rigging kit: $38 DGX
8. 6" HP for pony spg: $25

Total $201, DGX will ship for free, add tax if applicable

What do you do with them?
a. replace your primary with the 22" LP. Again, you will never donate it, so short is OK. Use the current LP on your pony bottle, bungee that up.
b. replace your BC corrected hose with #2 above
c. since b, replace the LPI with #3 above.
d. pop the spg out of your console, put it on #4 above
e. pop computer out of both console, put both on bungee boots in #5, put them on your right wrist
f. pop the compass off your conole, put on bungee boot in #6, put on your left wrist
g. ditch the pony braket, use stage kit in #7
h. pop the spg off the console on your pony, put it on 6" HP hose in #8, bungee it down with the stage kit

Now sell these
1. spare air, $150?? based on a quick ebay search
2. pony bracket, $100?? based on quick ebay search
3. all replaced hoses: HP from main console, corrogated hose, LPI, pony LP, pony hp, say you get $20 out of these

You get $270 back. You come out positive and with much much cleaner and safer setup. I don't know what else you can ask for

 

[yarik83]

I love you guys.

My dive shop is moving to new building this month but as soon as they finish their move I will get right on top of recommended gear tweaks.

 

[bj139]

You need to manage a camera, so keeping your air around back it is out of the way. OK. If you are only sightseeing while diving slinging is preferable.

I have 3 cheap suggestions.

Get some 1/8" bungee cord (100ft for $10 on *bay) and make a necklace by tying a double fisherman's knot. Leave the loop formed and cinch it around the mouthpiece of the pony regulator. Wear this around your neck so your pony reg is always in your reach. Now you don't need to carry the spare air.

Get a button gauge for your pony for $20 to replace the pony HP hose. You only need it to check the air before diving. Now you don't have that unnecessary hose hanging off your side.

Either keep or remove your alternate reg on your main tank. I keep mine because I sometimes don't dive with a pony bottle.

Edit
Sorry, I reread the posts and saw you tried the button gauge. The only new information in my post beyond what others said above is the double fisherman's knot. The bungeed regulator does prevent the second stage from migrating around back to where you can not reach it when you need it. I think this is the best feature of the DIR configuration.

 

[-hh]

You need to manage a camera, so keeping your air around back it is out of the way. OK. If you are only sightseeing while diving slinging is preferable.

This is a trade-off that I ran into too...anything that's front-mounted can get in the way when doing UW photo, so minimizing stuff up front becomes a more important factor ... particularly for when working on macro subjects. A slung tank can also move around (read: "crash") quite a bit too. When I was using a pony, I've preferred to have it tank-mounted rather than slung primarily for this reason.

I have 3 cheap suggestions.

Get some 1/8" bungee cord (100ft for $10 on *bay) and make a necklace by tying a double fisherman's knot. Leave the loop formed and cinch it around the mouthpiece of the pony regulator. Wear this around your neck so your pony reg is always in your reach. Now you don't need to carry the spare air.

Get a button gauge for your pony for $20 to replace the pony HP hose. You only need it to check the air before diving. Now you don't have that unnecessary hose hanging off your side.

Either keep or remove your alternate reg on your main tank. I keep mine because I sometimes don't dive with a pony bottle.

Good points. A lot of clean-up can be done by removing what's probably unnecessary gear. If one is diving solo, then you don't need a second 2nd stage on your primary tank to donate to your non-existant buddy: just one on the primary and one on the pony. If one decides to delete the pony, moving a second stage over from one regulator to another is a <5 minute job ... just make sure to have an empty 35mm film container in your dry box to store spare LP port plugs

Similarly, redundant redundancy isn't needed here, so decide Pony -OR- Spare Air ... sell the Spare Air to a solo FL bug hunter just before the next mini season.

For instrumentation on the Pony ... I overlooked the part of the discussion regarding why not a button SPG on the pony, but philosophically, there's no good reason not to have "any" because the pony is only supposed to be there for contingencies for when the primary goes bad, and you're going to then promptly abort the dive. Having a button gage is recommended as a convenience: for your pre-dive check, you could just use your main regulator before each dive, but pressurizing up two regulators instead of one will eat through the air in the pony more quickly than just once per dive-day...you'll be wanting to top off the pony every ~10 dives. Having a button gage solves this problem and while sure, you could figure out ways to use existing gear to do the same thing, the challenge is the clutter ... as well as an additional rubber hose as a failure point. The real philosophical question here is if one does have instrumentation 'up front' for monitoring a pony and ~14 minutes into a dive, the pony freeflows and blows itself down ... are you really going to abort the dive? I suspect that most Rec divers will not do so, which means that having the information won't be acted on, which really means that you don't "need" the information during the dive.

Hope this helps,

-hh

 

[DevonDiver]

This is a trade-off that I ran into too...anything that's front-mounted can get in the way when doing UW photo, so minimizing stuff up front becomes a more important factor ... particularly for when working on macro subjects. A slung tank can also move around (read: "crash") quite a bit too. When I was using a pony, I've preferred to have it tank-mounted rather than slung primarily for this reason.

A front slung tank shouldn't be that intrusive - but there are cleaner options if prepared to experiment. It's possible to side-mount a pony - which'd put the tank parallel with your torso (valve below the armpit)... very clean, very unintrusive...all the benefits of a slung pony, none of the drawbacks of back-mounted.

It'd be a small DIY job to set-up, but once done... should work well. Combined with the other hose management suggestions made in the thread, would offer significant advantages over the current set-up.

 

[jonnythan]

I know sump divers who strap pony bottles to their thigh. I've always thought it was worth considering.

 

[DevonDiver]

I know sump divers who strap pony bottles to their thigh. I've always thought it was worth considering.

Hmmm... the 'evolution' of modern sidemount. UK Sump divers...those guys weren't doing much diving... more wriggling in mud though, so the consideration for comfortable fining and trim weren't high. When the practice crossed the Atlantic, divers in Florida took the concept and made it more tailored for diving, rather than sumps - hence, sidemount as we know it. I thought the SOP was to 'hang' the cylinder from a belt-mount, rather than actually strapped to thigh?

 

[Doppler]

Hmmm... the 'evolution' of modern sidemount. UK Sump divers...those guys weren't doing much diving... more wriggling in mud though, so the consideration for comfortable fining and trim weren't high. When the practice crossed the Atlantic, divers in Florida took the concept and made it more tailored for diving, rather than sumps - hence, sidemount as we know it. I thought the SOP was to 'hang' the cylinder from a belt-mount, rather than actually strapped to thigh?

A little historical perspective.

As an ex-Brit, ex-dry caver the method that was common "back in the day" for sumps was to use a slightly modified climbing harness, strap the bottle on anyway that worked and then WALK through the sump if possible...

 

[bj139]

An additional comment on the button gauge. I have found that most air waste due to checking pressure in the pony is because of expansion of the HP hose. Using the button gauge eliminates this hose, so topping of the pony is necessary only when you breathe from it not from excessive checking.

---------- Post Merged at 11:07 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:01 AM ----------

A front slung tank shouldn't be that intrusive - but there are cleaner options if prepared to experiment. It's possible to side-mount a pony - which'd put the tank parallel with your torso (valve below the armpit)... very clean, very unintrusive...all the benefits of a slung pony, none of the drawbacks of back-mounted.

It'd be a small DIY job to set-up, but once done... should work well. Combined with the other hose management suggestions made in the thread, would offer significant advantages over the current set-up.

How could this be simply done? Would a bungee at the front left d-ring with an additional d-ring installed on the lower left edge of the plate work?

 

[DevonDiver]

An additional comment on the button gauge. I have found that most air waste due to checking pressure in the pony is because of expansion of the HP hose. Using the button gauge eliminates this hose, so topping of the pony is necessary only when you breathe from it not from excessive checking.

I've owned 4 button gauges. 3 of them failed. The one that didn't fail was consigned to the trash... before it failed.

How could this be simply done? Would a bungee at the front left d-ring with an additional d-ring installed on the lower left edge of the plate work?

Bungee to a front chest d-ring. You'd need to improvise/adapt a method to secure said bungee at the back of the rig. You'd also need to confirm where you would clip the lower tank (camband) bolt-snap... either to an existing hip d-ring or sew something into place at the lower rear of the BCD.