failure rate of Scuba equipment and BCD

[beanojones]

In the ocean everything fails eventually due to accelerated aging of sun and salt, and even without the ocean's corrosive effects, everything fails eventually, seomtimes just due to plain chance, or improperly R&D'd designed and a collision of manufacturing tolerances.

No part of my gear (and/or rental gear, and/or customer's own gear) has not suffered failure at some point, even to the point of total loss of function.

BCD bladder: pinholes, pinch flats, sewn seam bursts, sealed seam bursts, elbow leakage, total corrguated hose separation from elbow/ inflator, total corrugated hose separation in the middle of the hose, pinholes in the corrugated hose.

Inflator: sticking, rubber button ripping, dump button disengagement with the spring shooting the button out leaving just a hole in the area, nipple o-ring failure, nipple corrosion leading to the inablity of of the schrader valve in the hose to be pushed, nipple tolerance defects leading to a nipple/hose being tossed out, scratching of the chromed O-ring sealing surface on the nipple leading failure of the hose/nipple joint, general sand/grit inside the inflator leading to problems

Tank attachment point to BCD/ backplate: buckle failure (plastic snapping, metal fingers separating from cam buckle), webbing failure, backplate threading area eyehole failure, cam band slippage leading to a floating tank. Though the most common problem is the fact that most divers/DMs/Instrcutors do not know how to thread the webbing through the cam buckle to begin with, making even perfectly functioning equipment unable to hold a tank in place.

not BCD problems:

Tanks: Both Neck O-ring, and Face O-ring partial to total failure, Valve going out of round from transport hits, Valves chemically welding to tank, leading the knuckle ripping damage to Valve exterior, Failue to maintain seats leading to impossible to open/close tanks, Knob loss (a few times in the middle of air depletion exercises), rounding of the spindle making closing opening the tank impossible.

Regs: Everything from every hose to every individual part of first and second stage doing something.

Hoses: Most 'exciting': LP hose bursts, and Miflex knockoff crimping failures. The LP hose burst can be dealt with by garden hose pinching the hose down sometimes, the Miflex knockoff crimping failures have led to a loss of the entire HP hose and attached gauge. Hemispherical swivels have separately completely several times

Second stages : second stage lever failures of several kinds (sudden total function loss), mouthpiece separation from second stage, mouthpiece separation from self, entire inlet still attached to LP hosecoming out of second stage body due to housing cracks and/or locking swivel actually un-screwing the hose free over time.

First stage: Swivel separation, main body cracking, yoke/Din fitting separation from main body, etc.

Electronics/electrics: Every fails eventually, from simple battery death, to depth(pressure) sensor failure, to general programming errors cause out of bound exceptions, to exploding battery compartments.

SPG: swivel failures, nipple separation from SPG body due to housing cracks and/or locking swivel actually un-screwing the hose free over time, flooding, face scratches making it hard to read, spring failure over time, needle falling free inside the gauge, stickers in the gauge wandering around inside the gauge

(A prediction: someone will tell me I am blah, blah, blah, and they cannot believe I am blah, blah, bah. Am I even a dive instructor? Where do I come up with this ****? Then, a few years from now, when they see an actual similar situation, they will realize I was not just making this **** up. I guess I should just make this my signature.)

 

[yardpro]

sounds like you should inspect and replace worn gear more often.

remind me NOT to be your buddy....lol

 

[redacted]

sounds like you should inspect and replace worn gear more often.

remind me NOT to be your buddy....lol

Either that or she is one of those people who is forced to suffer through a excessive number of dives just to make a living. Life can be tough.

 

[Octopusprime]

The only BCD failure I have ever seen was a blown O ring on the BCD inflator hose not that it is a BCD issue more of a hose issue

 

[maj2]

I have only had one BCD issue that prevented my from diving, and the incident did not occur while diving.

It was while on an ice diving weekend last winter (winter of 2013/14), and the plastic connecting the inflator to the BCD broke prior to the first dive while I was gearing up. It was a 10+ year old BCD, and the failure was basically because the plastic became brittle due to being old and very cold. I got to do a lot of surface tending that weekend.

It was a bit of a blessing though. It was my first BCD, bought soon after certification and before I really knew what I would be doing in diving. Jacket style, with D-rings badly positioned to sling a pony-bottle, and other shortcomings that only became evident as I progressed. While disappointed to miss a couple of days of diving, I was not disappointed to lose that BCD and go shopping for a new one (the needed part was no longer available)...

 

[Stoo]

Never had a BC fail during a dive. Never ever heard of one either. For both myself and the wife the only items we have had fail during dive are computers. We have had 100% failure rate of all the Seiko computers we have owned (about 6 in total). My wife has had a drysuit inflator stick open causing her to go out of gas. Also a BC inflator fail pre-dive for the same reason, stuck open (Tusa BC - replaced with a ScubaPro one - never known of any problems with the ScubaPro item)

Pretty much my experience in 5000 dives. I've had BCDs with leaky bits, but nothing a cleaning/snug-up didn't fix on the spot.

Lots of Seiko computers... Dive-Right, Apeks etc... I've decided that they have a two year life, so I bought a Shearwater... So far, so good.

Also the odd freeze-up over the years, but I wouldn't call that a failure.

With a little regular attention, most of this stuff is bomb-proof.

Oh. I had a zipper blow out on a 3mm down-south suit... It's possible that the suit shrunk over the winter and the poor zipper just couldn't handle the increased load...

 

[rhwestfall]

one bladder on a BC (brand new - third day of diving) sprung a leak at the elbow weld.............. annoying, but not extremely life threatening. If it had torn out or a lot bigger, it might have made a bit of a twist to things...

 

[beanojones]

sounds like you should inspect and replace worn gear more often.

remind me NOT to be your buddy....lol

My gear has not been dry for years. 1000+ dives a year means my usage exposes long terms wear issues that just don't occur in the vast majority of gear usage. Tropics adds to that.

I have, at times, gotten free gear from manufacturers is because I can do more real world stress testing in a year than the manufacturer just cannot get elsewhere. But most manufacturers know that what I reveal about gear wear and tear will only matter over a time frame that is longer than the average product cycle for scuba gear. I wear more in half a year than most divers could do in a lifetime of diving. Cycles equals wear.

Example: I have killed a bunch of second stages from simple pivot wear of the lever plus corrosion. It's why I don't use SP second stages with air barrels anymore. But only tropical operators using chromed air barrel second stages in rental (and there are very, very few of those) see similar wear failures.

(It's why I am a Titanium honk. Titanium just does not age or wear. Stainless is pretty damn good, but Titanium air barrels are amazing. Not in first stages, though, since I have not found any piston designs to survive long enough in non-titnanium, and I do use Nitorx sometimes so I cannot go with Titanium.)

 

[Freewillow]

Faulty exhaust valve from my secondary that made me "swallow" water with air. Ennoying but nothing serious. Switched to the alternate source and resettled the valve in place. Th'ats it in 700+ dives

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

sounds like you should inspect and replace worn gear more often.

remind me NOT to be your buddy....lol

Sounds like you should dive more often. I daresay Beano does more dives in a typical week than you've done so far in your lifetime ... so I'd hold off on judging others till you get a bit more experience, if I were you.

I've had a few failures over the years ... primarily due to wear and tear on the gear. My current DSS Torus wing's finally in need of replacement, after about 1300 or so dives on it. Got a pinch flat, and although it's fixable I will be replacing it. Despite what some people will tell you, all gear will eventually wear out if you use it often enough ... and while I don't rack up the number of dives Beano does, I'm still averaging about 250 dives per year ... and I dive in harsher conditions than she does. I've had inflation hose failures that caused me to disconnect either the drysuit or BCD hose for the remainder of the dive. BCD hose failure is easier, since you have the option to manually inflate. With a drysuit hose failure, you really don't want to descend much once you've disconnected the hose since there's no way to put air in the suit. For most hose failures, I just replace the hose (I keep a complete spare set in my SAD kit ... and on local dives I usually have a spare reg in the car). I've had various types of leakage in the drysuit ... from seam leaks to zipper failures to just punching a hole in the suit. All drysuits eventually become wetsuits if you use them often enough ... and then you get 'em fixed. I've had reg free-flows ... rarely catastrophic enough to force me to surface right away, but usually they just "bubble" a bit when you breathe off of 'em. Most times it's due to IP creep ... at which point I'll drop off the reg for service and use another one till it gets fixed. Rarely has an equipment failure cost me a dive ... but that's because there's usually enough spare equipment handy to either fix the problem or replace the problem part during surface interval.

On the whole, diving equipment's amazingly robust ... considering the environment in which it gets used. By far the majority of issues divers face while diving are more in the category of "operator error" than they are due to equipment issues ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)