Single vs Double Bladder Wings - Pro's and Con's ?

[rjack321]

I love the way some on here advocate using the wrong tanks for the job just to achieve some nebulous goal of "a balanced rig". How about using the right tools, which include adequately sized tanks and a redundant buoyancy system? My thousand + wreck penetration dives using steel tanks and double bladder tell me that this is the right setup for me, not necessarily everyone else.

Do what ya want chief. Those giant OMS dual bladder bungied 100lb wings are often available cheap nowadays.

 

[Degenerate]

Its complex, a false sense of security, and you don't need it? In cold water you have a drysuit. In warm water dive al80s or other cylinders that don't require stupid amounts of lift. 7L steels would qualify as light enough with little enough swing weight that you can kick up in case of a wing failure.

7L 300 bar doubles are really heavy and do in no way qualify as light, I recently swapped mine for some 12L 232 bar doubles and the difference in weight between them was just a few kilos.
Mine weighed 32kg if I remember correctly, they're basically back mounted anchors.
I fully agree with the rest of your post.

 

[rjack321]

7L 300 bar doubles are really heavy and do in no way qualify as light, I recently swapped mine for some 12L 232 bar doubles and the difference in weight between them was just a few kilos.
Mine weighed 32kg if I remember correctly, they're basically back mounted anchors.
I fully agree with the rest of your post.

32kgs dry land weight is light - as doubles go.

 

[Degenerate]

32kgs dry land weight is light - as doubles go.

I know, my point was that they are very negative in the water.

 

[ams511]

Reading the pro and cons with double bladder, have not got me to change my mind. What am I doing wrong?

As a newbie you don't know what you don't know.

From what I remember, here in the US the double bladder concept was championed by the Northeast wreck diving community. The early wings did not have an internal bladder and some divers took to wearing two, while others tried to make a protective covering for the wing, and others did both. So it made sense for a company to make a shell containing 2 bladders. Here in the US, OMS was the main company making these wings with huge lift and dual bladders, because they were close to the NE wreck divers. However, other manufacturers also jumped on the bandwagon.

The reasoning from the wreck diving community was that in a rusting wreck with dangling wires and broken pipes there was a substantial risk of cutting the wing and/or the dry suit too. So in that situation it made sense. These guys were diving heavy tanks and were using steels for stages and deco gas, so they were quite negative throughout the dive.

The balanced rig concept came out of the Florida cave diver community. A cave is a bit different because their are no sharp cables to cut wings, the bottles can dropped because there is no current to blow the diver away from his gas. Caves are a more stable environment that the open ocean. Also the GUE/WKPP promoted standardization and simplicity because of lessons learned the hard way. As you can imagine there were quite a bit of arguments between these groups.

Jumbo dual bladder wings fell out of favor in the mid-2000s. I assume because there are better solutions out there. If diving deep wrecks, a rebreather is arguably a safer option than diving big doubles on air. Wings are now stronger and made with better materials. So dual bladders are no longer as popular. You can still find them, Dive Rite makes them but not with high lift.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

I tried once and HATED it. The second inflator hose was annoying. It would clutter the chest area unnecessarily restricting access to that D-ring. If the goal is to create the most stream lined rig, this was not the way to go about it. A drysuit would perform the same function with so much more ease and operation of the suit in total crisis would not deviate one bit from what you have been doing on every single dive. It was a solution looking for a problem to call its own.

 

[Diving Dubai]

I tried once and HATED it. The second inflator hose was annoying. It would clutter the chest area unnecessarily restricting access to that D-ring. If the goal is to create the most stream lined rig, this was not the way to go about it.

I appreciate yoru point of view, especially given the conditions you dive in, however I would contest the remark about streamlining. I mean once you're dragging some doubles and some deco cylinders, a second inflater is not going to give you any additional measurable drag?

For me also a drysuit is not practicable for more than 3 months of the year. Air temps on the surface make it unbearable (even wetsuits are put on after a dunk in cold water first. Water temps - even deep +40m /130' will be 36C/98F for 2 months of the year. Hence double bladders can have their place.

Given that X-deep decided that the Stealth Tec 2 which is a highly regarded and popular rig would benefit from being a redundant bladder system - there must be a demand and a rational for this kind of system.

As always of course there are many ways to skin a cat dependant upon other variables.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

I appreciate yoru point of view, especially given the conditions you dive in, however I would contest the remark about streamlining. I mean once you're dragging some doubles and some deco cylinders, a second inflater is not going to give you any additional measurable drag?

For me also a drysuit is not practicable for more than 3 months of the year. Air temps on the surface make it unbearable (even wetsuits are put on after a dunk in cold water first. Water temps - even deep +40m /130' will be 36C/98F for 2 months of the year. Hence double bladders can have their place.

Given that X-deep decided that the Stealth Tec 2 which is a highly regarded and popular rig would benefit from being a redundant bladder system - there must be a demand and a rational for this kind of system.

As always of course there are many ways to skin a cat dependent upon other variables.

Correct on that part. The additional inflator doesn't cause drag but causes clutter and above all, it causes major inconvenience for me. The D-ring on the right is very essential component of the rig because that is where my back up light sits and that is where I will be clipping my primary first stage during a deco-gas switch. Those are two are VERY crucial situations and to have in inflator sitting on that D-ring presents a menace to work around in those highly crucial times.

To elaborate further, when I am doing a gas switch, it is one smooth and instinctive movement to switch to the deco reg and then clip the primary to the D-ring. I can do that without even looking at the D-ring. When there is an inflator hose in the way then after switching, I would have to visually locate the D-ring because now there is an annoying inflator hose sitting on top of it. Then move that out of the way but it keeps coming back. Similarly, lets say that I am inside a wreck and I have a primary light failure. That second light on the D-ring is my life now. If I drop it, I will end up dying in very dark conditions. Unrestricted access to the light is a very high priority for me because light failure happens far more often than bladder failure.

I have lived in Dubai so I know the climate you are talking about. No that climate would not move me in the direction of a double bladder wing. Not even slightly. I dive Florida and North Carolina water in drysuit, and my trilam drysuit, worn without undergarments is way cooler on surface than a wetsuit. Think about it. Wetsuit is thick rubber and you get roasted in it on surface while waiting to jump in. Drysuit is thin, loose trilaminate which can be filled with air. I choose the drysuit any day. After spashing, in wetsuit is not that much an issue because you are wet. If I was doing decompression diving in Dubai, you bet that I will be in my drysuit. If I still wanted to feel the ocean on me and wanted the wetsuit then I would change tanks to get the more floaty ones but that would be option 2 for me not 1.

 

[bakodiver391]

I have a long corrugated hose on my backup bladder and simply lace it through the bungies on my wing. I have no extra inflator hose on the right side so no extra clutter at all and my chest area is as clear as with a single bladder rig. In the event of a primary bladder failure normal diving is over, so pulling the secondary inflator out of the bungies and either orally inflating or plugging the primary inflator hose into it, while not streamlined, is better than hanging on a bag or trying to hold stops by swimming.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Using a bag is the worst idea. I tried to rescue myself in a simulated wing failure and the bag shooting thing did not work too well. Besides that, the only real wing failure that I ever had was not the failure of the inner bladder but the corrugated hose on my Oxyecheq wing coming apart during a dive. The only thing that would have helped would be a second inflator. An additional bladder without an additional inflator hose is preparing you for a puncture in the wing that only effects one bladder and not the other. Such a puncture is rare but if it does happen and something is strong enough to go through the outer shell of the wing and also the first bladder then what is there to cause it from going through the second bladder? It will puncture both bladders as they sit against each other anyways. Double wing with a single inflator does not prepare us for the more common type of wing failure, which is a ripped apart corrugated hose.

Swimming up and holding stops is not bad in a balanced rig that has been calculated and set up specifically for that purpose.If it was super negative steel tanks then Id not be able to swim up.