Regulator care

[herman]

some regulators have a harder life than others, dive centre hire gear for example is often in terrible condition. Tec divers regs flooded from shut down drills, or a staged cylinder leaking down.
done properly, shutdown drills do not flood a reg, they stay pressurized. Why would you continue a dive that required stage bottles if it was leaking? Even then, the bottle pressure will have to drop to below ambient pressures before water will enter the reg....and in both cases, you must press a purge button to allow water in.

manufacturers take this into consideration when recommending service intervals, i think its more a public liability thing/ being confident to stand behind their products than making money from servicing.
field experience by divers says otherwise. There appears to be no need to service regs in anywhere near close to normal diving conditions as long as the regs are not abused. I will agree it may be partly to cover their legal behinds from the lawyers of dumbasses that abuse their equipment then want to blame the manuf but you can bet it the cost of service was on them, the interval would be a lot longer.

if your regs never flood, get washed well after every dive then sure you may get longer time between servicing but i know how hard i treat my gear and so i keep it short.
then simply treat them better. It's less expensive and easy to do.

then there is those doing extreme deep dives (250-300m+), this can destroy some hp seats in very few dives and thats why manufacturers recommend a max depth to their regs.
extreme depths are not going to do damage to a hp seat but it's unlikely that many divers dive to 820 to 984 feet, even dives to 250-300 feet are not that common and any diver who does needs to do his own service.

at the end of the day it depends on the diving you do but if manufacturer recommendations are followed and service is done by not only a qualified but a skilled tech then you can be 99% sure a reg will not fail, you can't do this following your own schedule or using cowboy techs.
Imho....
the type diving is irrelevant, it's the care the end user takes with his gear. Finding a qualified tech is not as easy as it sounds. I am a " factory qualified tech" of a major dive manufacturer. In an official service seminar, i spent less than 4 hrs in a class room where we dissembled 1 first stage by hand, looked at the parts and put it back together. We did not tighten anything or even set the ip. We opened 1 first stage and no seconds. I was by far the most knowledgeable person in the room based on some of the very basic questions that were ask by others, let alone the confused looks on their faces when they got the answer. We all walked out of the room certified techs on the entire product line, those people may well be out there servicing regs today.
While we will agree a reg properly serviced by a good tech....not simply someone who has set in a seminar but one who actually understands the operation of a reg...will be very unlikely to fail shortly after service, fact is there are plenty of stories here on sb that indicate just the opposite is happening. There is a disconnect somewhere. In contrast, those of us who have chosen to study and become competent techs find that our regs do not need service anywhere near that of recommended by any manuf. The problem is not with the frequency of the service but rather finding a good tech as opposed to part swappers. I prefer to be the tech myself then i know it's done right and to service regs based on actual experience rather than manuf recommendations that are more concerned with profit and/or liability than the actual need for service...

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[redacted]

What? Are you suggesting my methods are a bit rough....

Seriously, if you want to give them a more thorough clean soak them in warm water for an hour and then give them a rinse. With the Aqualung providing the dust cap is firmly in place you should be fine soaking the first and second stage. For further reading on the matter: http://www.aqualung.com/pdfs/AqualungRgltrOM.pdf.

Rough, no. Just not long enough to remove salt water from some of the nooks and crannies that get filled a t depth. A rinse may keep the outside looking good and of course you are protecting the insides that should never see water in normal use. But there are there are threaded connections and voids that fill with saltwater that require longer soaks to draw out (or disassembly). The swivel connection on the HP hose is a good example where salt buildup will eventually damage the sealing o-rings. The rinsers who have their regs service annually are paying a fairly high price to get those type of connections cleaned.

Then there is those doing extreme deep dives (250-300m+), this can destroy some HP seats in very few dives and thats why manufacturers recommend a max depth to their regs.

Interesting!!! So how are "some" HP seats effected by depth? Which seat might those be?

 

[abnfrog]

Still stalking me eh Steve. How sad.

you flatter yourself ....your not that important ....

 

[JimmyboyAAA]

I would again like to thank everybody for their help. I printed out the regulator care sticky and like the idea of a checklist I can use. I bought an IP gauge, rented a tank today and found that my IP is normal and steady and the cracking pressure seems correct. I feel so much better about going to Cozumel in January with a regulator that I have more personal knowledge of and more understanding as well. Thanks!!