How many exposure suits does it take?

[2airishuman]

No saltwater in Minnesota which means that the lowest the water temperature can get is 32* -- and it does. I'm contemplating a range of local diving activities from wrecks in Lake Superior (35-40* at depth year around) on up to Lake Minnetonka where summer temps can hit 75*.

How many suits am I going to end up needing?

What alternatives are worth considering on the cold end of the scale? Is it worth trying a semi-dry suit in 7mm or 8mm or should I just save my money for a dry suit? What strategies for layering and combining suits are workable in practice?

Matters are complicated by the fact that I wear a size unusual enough that rental options are limited.

 

[macado]

You may not want to hear this answer but a drysuit is the best solution for where you're diving. A semi dry is not appropriate for water in mid-30s and will effectively limit your diving season. I'm not too familiar with Lake Minnetonka but if it's shallow and the water temperature is that high then a full 5mm would probably work for that. If you plan on diving in places like St Lawrence seaway in the summer then a 5mm would also work well for that too.

For the majority of the Great Lakes, I would not even contemplate diving a wetsuit in that water except in warmest of months (August-September) and even still, once you're below the thermocline the water is going to still be in the high 30s-low 40s.

The good thing about a drysuit is you can add or subtract layers appropriately for the water temperature you're going to be diving in. A good trilaminate suit can work from practically all water temperatures.

For me personally, I would choose a drysuit and perhaps a full 5mm wetsuit that I could use in 70-80 degree water. So my answer is 2 suits but like anything, everyone has their own personal cold tolerances and opinions.

When I started diving in New England, I begrudgingly "suffered" in a wetsuit for about 8 years and told myself I was fine diving in that way. (ok..maybe "Suffered" in not the right word but looking back it certainly felt that way!). I used to dive wet from late April to November; It wasn't so much the water that hurt me but the surface temperatures and wind.

A drysuit will basically allow you to dive year round with the rights undergarments. The key is layering. I tend to dive my drysuit year around; I honestly just prefer it over wetsuit diving up here unless I'm diving shallow and lobstering or shore diving in late July/August/September. I don't exactly have a specific threshold but for dives deeper than 60ft where they'll be good thermocline or I'm planning on doing a longer deeper dive with a 70 minute+ runtime, I'll almost always be in a drysuit.

 

[krawlings]

Two words DRY SUITE !!!
A dry suite will help you cover a large range of thermal changes in your diving through the entire year and depths you could hit . You will then need to adjust your thermal layers to account for the temps you will encounter on the particular dive . a lot of ranges can be account for just by layering your thermal under garments and base layers

 

[Searcaigh]

Dry Suit

 

[Littlerayray]

Spend the money on a drysuit many people where I live dive dry all year round

 

[tbone1004]

drysuit will cover all of that. Will be a bit warm in 75 water if the surface temps are hot, but it's manageable, we do it in Florida in cave country year round, granted the water is between 68 and 72, but it gets a bit hot down there. If the 75F water is too much, then you can do that in a 3mm steamer that you can get pretty cheap and use it for travel, but a good drysuit will handle all of that.

My answer is two, but that's because I prefer diving wet whenever possible, so I'd dive wet in the summer, but you could do it with one. Another alternative is to use something like the Pinnacle Inferno as one layer of your drysuit undergarment, and also as the wet layer in 75f water, but if there are any thermoclines, you want to go straight to the drysuit.

 

[John Beach]

I new to the whole drysuit. I have been diving with a 7/5 for about 7 years. I took a plunge and bought a TLS350 and finished my class yesterday.
let me tell you I'm probably never diving wet again. I was so toasty

 

[CptTightPants21]

Dry suit is the way to go as it allows undergarment layering that will accommodate all of the temp ranges.

If you know you are going to be doing wrecks then I would recommend something tougher than just a basic trilam suit, like a DUI CF200 or Santi E.Lite.

A drysuit doesn't have to break the bank (unless you are 100% in need of custom suit). A lightly used DUI can be found pretty readily in the 600-800 range with some great deals going lower.

I know from previous posts that you don't have the experience or the friends yet to to really be able to judge getting a used drysuit, so my recommendation is to either get a full 7mm farmer John set up or maybe a single suit 7mm with a 5mm hooded vest combo.

I dove a 15 year old Henderson Gold Core 7mm farmer john for my first 100+ dives before moving into a CF200 and it was fine for water temps in the high 30s to low 70s. If the water was on the warmer end, I would probably leave off the hood which greatly affects body temp and the "overheating" feeling. Although to be honest, the 7mm farmer john was great for me, I never really felt "cold" and I never overheated--I have overheated in a drysuit way more than I ever did in my wetsuit. The wetsuit is still used as a backup to the drysuit, but once you go dry you never really go back, especially in cold water.

I am biased towards just doing the 7mm farmer john package, but both the vest combo and farmer john have pluses and negatives in terms of ease of donning, ability to adapt to changing circumstances, etc.

Take a look at Henderson wetsuits, a 7mm farmer john can be had for about 300, throw in another 120 for boots, gloves, and hood and you are ready to go.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I started diving in South Dakota in 1985, including liberal amounts of ice diving and extrensive diving in deep alpine lakes where the temps below 100' are pretty much always around 35-40 degrees. My first technical diving experiences were in the Great Lakes, including Lake Superior where the bottom temps below 100' are once again sub 40 degree, and I've spent the last 10 years doing wreck dives along the astern seaboard and cave diving in N FL and MX, with some scattered spots of pretty fish diving in Bermuda, south Florida and the gulf of Mexico.

Here's my take on it.

A dry suit is nice, and nothing beats a well made dry suit with heavy under garments in sub 40 degree water. Except maybe a dry suit with electrically heated undergarments.

However, on the other side of the coin, there are fewer things more unpleasant to put on during a rough boat ride in 6 ft seas on a hot summer day. Similarly, a dry suit isn't much fun on 95 degree day with 90% humidity. It's also largely self defeating as by the time you actually get in the water your undergarments are soaked in sweat and are less effective anyway. if they are not yet soaked, the humid air in them will soon condense on the inside of the suit when the shell is cooled by the water.

And, you pay for diving dry not just in higher acquisition costs but also with greater drag in the water. Trilams are the worst in that regard, as the material doesn't stretch so you get folds and wrinkles that add drag. For warmth you need enough gas to loft the insulating undergarment, so you've got more of a bubble to manage and/or you trade warmth for less gas in the suit during the dive.

I'm still a fan of a well made and properly fitting 7mm neoprene dry suit in extremely cold water. Given that the "shell" is insulating, you don't have the condensation issue, so with a light wicking and insulating under garment, you're toasty even in 35 degree water. They also swim very much like a wet suit. On the negative side, they are like giant swamp coolers between dives as the nylon outer fabric dries, so you need to either take them off, or cover them with a boat coat during the surface interval in cold weather.

In the middle, you have shell suits that are made from stretchy materials to allow the necessary freedom of movement without extra material, or you have a shell with a stretchy outer cover like the White's Fusion. They swim much like a wet suit and will accommodate a wide range of undergarments without increasing drag or restricting range of motion. But they are work to put on.

The ability for a suit like a Fusion to accommodate different undergarments offers the advantage of multi-season flexibility. Lots of dry suit divers will preach the virtues of their one and only dry suit, but the fact is that a trilam dry suit that fits well in warm water with lightweight underwear will be too tight when you put on heavy cold water underwear, and/or you'll be sacrificing full range of motion. The opposite is also true as a dry suit that fits well with cold water underwear, will be too lose and have excess wrinkles and drag with a light weight undergarment.

So a dry suit isn't the answer to everything, unless perhaps it is a Fusion, and those take patience to put on.

Instead, you need two dry suits, or a dry suit and a wet suit.

In terms of wet suits, if you've got the cold water covered with a dry suit, a 5mm one piece wet suit should cover everything else. They are easy to swim, they keep the wet suit compression and resulting swing weight on the dive to a minimum and work well in temps from 70 to 85 degrees.

 

[tbone1004]

7mm farmer johns are never a good decision. No offense to the above post, but that is far too much neoprene for any real depth. It loses far too much buoyancy to the point that you actually need ditchable weight if you encounter a wing failure since you will likely not be able to kick it up off of the bottom. If you need to be in anything more than a 5mm with a hooded vest, it is far safer, smarter, and more comfortable to go straight to a drysuit.