Pressurised reg soaking

[happy-diver]

Exposes all the leaks that pressurised reg soaking thing
Perhaps something these responsibly serious divers do

I pressurise again a couple of days before some diving
Turn off the valve and let the spg do the testing for me

 

[rsingler]

Let's look at why the manual recommends pressurized soaking. I'm an Apeks service technician.
It's really for the knucklehead diver who soaks his regs unpressurized, pushes on the purge button while submerged, and then lifts the second stage out of the water while the first is still in the sink, allowing water to track down the hose back into the first stage.
Recommending a pressurized soak fixes the ignorant diver problem.

Now let's look at unpressurized.
First, as an environmentally sealed first stage, there's no need to soak the XL4 AT ALL! No cavities where salt or sand collect, so all it needs is a brisk rinse with the intake covered with a yoke plug or a DIN cap. Any retained salt might give you a little verdigris corrosion, but that's just cosmetic.
The second stage indeed needs soaking and flushing with running water to dislodge sand particles and dissolve salt. Don't push the purge button, which will allow water into the hose. But if you do, that's still not the end of the world, if your second stage is lower than the first. A bit of water in the hose will drain right out if you hang the reg set from a towel ring and hold the purge button down after the water has collected at the bottom of the hose.

Yes, it's generally a good idea to follow the manual. Then again, consider the litigious climate and undertrained divers for whom the manual is written. You do not have to soak your second stage pressurized. I just rinse off my first and lay it on the counter. I run my second under the sink faucet, into the mouthpiece and sideways across the exhaust tee. I shake it and do it again. Then I drop it in the sink and come back later. I hang it from a towel ring with the first stage uppermost and put it away the next morning. Every few months, I soak the end of the bcd connector in 1:3 warm vinegar and rinse it off. Done.

 

[SinkingBouy]

Let's look at why the manual recommends pressurized soaking. I'm an Apeks service technician...

This is what I needed, thanks for the lengthy explanations and the reasoning

 

[kelemvor]

Hi all, new divers who just invested in x2 Apeks XL4+ kits for me and my wife. After reading the manual it specifically says about pressurised soaking the regs for around an hour, which I intend to do.

TLDR What kit should I get to pressure soak the regs.

I was intending to get a "spare air" kit with its own hand pump to eliminate the need to get refills from a diveshop (something like https://banggood.app.link/aSi1Y6tkI9). Only thing is I'm unsure what kind of fitting I'd need to be able to connect the regs 1st stage... We were thinking of getting an H valve to do both regs at the same time.

We don't have any intention of using the spare air (or a pony), it would only be for soaking.

I was also looking at a pony bottle, but these seem larger and need to be refilled by a dive shop (and then would need servicing etc. = more of a pain)

Regardless of your opinion on spare air, it won't work for this purpose. The regulator on a spare air is permanently attached to the bottle and you fill it via a special fill port on the side of the regulator. You can't connect your own regulator to it. Well, you might be able to if you removed and trashed the included regulator thingy, then managed to find a valve that properly fit the spare air tank, and then treated it like any other pony. But that's a lot of money wasted to achieve just having a normal but tiny pony bottle.